Moleskine & Clairefontaine

I like Moleskine. I like the convenience of examining & buying it at local stores rather than having to send off for it like I had to do with my Clairefontaine notebooks. I like the pocket, the color of the paper, the hard back & the band that keeps my 4 X 6 notebook shut. If I never wrote with fountain pens, I expect that I would think the surface of the paper is just fine but I do like using fountains pens & a lot of different colors. Last night I tested the Moleskine paper against a larger, spiral bound Clairefontaine notebook paper using cheap fountain pens.

Just by running the tip of a finger over the two, I could tell a difference. The Clairefontaine paper is much smoother. There is probably a term for that! I got out a handful of cheap Pilot Plumix pens with italic nibs which I bought from Target while they still had them.

Note to self: discuss converters someday.

The more expensive pens I used were two Lamy Safari fountain pens & a 1980s Pelikan fountain pen I ordered years ago off eBay. The poor thing is probably on its last legs. The cap doesn't stay on anymore so the ink dries out & then it is a pain to get it going again. In its time, it was beloved.

As for ink, I used all kinds & all colors in converters. Some pens were nearly empty, some full. The conclusion? The pens that were draggy on the Moleskine, slid across the page much better on the Clairefontaine. Some doodles I drew & colored soaked through several pages of the Moleskine but with the better paper of Clairefontaine, the ink only barely showed on the other side.

& there you have it, Clairefontaine paper wins but I still like Moleskine.