Katie’s story

I made my first leather travellers’ notebook - midori style - in 2023 and after that I was hooked… Since then I’ve made many hundreds, all by hand and in small batches, and I haven’t lost my love of the concept or the form.

What won me over in the first place was the simplicity of the design. A leather cover, holes in the spine to take elastic, two notebooks inside which could be switched out for new ones at a moment’s notice and a leather tag to keep everything closed. Neat, functional… but also beautiful. These are the things that tick my boxes. I wanted something that I could throw in my bag and which would stand the rigours of being jostled about without getting bent and untidy.

I decided early on that I wanted to use metal eyelets for the spines. Not only would they stop the holes from tearing over time, but once I discovered that coloured metal eyelets were A Thing, I realised that I could do what I love best - play with colour.

As an artist, it’s always been about colour. When my eldest was a baby I started up a mailing bag business to help bring in some money to the household. I wasn’t remotely interested in mailing bags, but what did get me excited was putting together different colour combinations and that has followed me into notebook design.

For me, a travellers’ notebook is a canvas - sometimes literally for those that get their covers hand painted - but even for the plain ones there is a satisfying bringing together of the colour and texture of the leather, the accents of the eyelets and elastics and the finishing touch of a hand-cut closure tag.

I’m still learning and experimenting - putting colours together that I would never in the past have dreamed of - but that when they are put together just feel right.

We’ve come a long way since that first notebook. Everything is neater, our leather stock is more diverse and of higher quality, some of the processes are more streamlined (mechanical corner choppers, you rock as an invention!!), but at their heart they are still simple, functional, and especially, beautiful.

I hope you enjoy using them as much as we enjoy making them 🖤

Katie