Back in February I wrote about the refillable leather Victoria’s Journal. The same brand has these cahier-style notebooks in packs of two. Each notebook has 80 pages of cream-colored paper, and has a sewn binding. They’re smaller than A5 size, around 13cm wide by 19cm tall (about 5 1/8 by 7 7/16 inches).
They’re PhP 99 (just over USD 2) per pack of two notebooks, at National Bookstore (their exclusive distributor). For the life of me I can’t figure out if this is meant to fit into a leather notebook cover, but I would love to know if it does. There doesn’t seem to be any such matching refillable cover on sale, alas.
The wonderful thing is that it has fountain pen-friendly paper! (“80 gsm, lined pages, wood-free cream paper”) Well, for most fountain pens with F or M nibs, that is. I’m not sure it’s thick enough or sized enough to take on wet B nibs or flex nibs, but for every day use, this passes muster. Only Herbin Lie de The had the teeniest bit of feathering. I wouldn’t say totally no bleedthrough, but yes, you can write on both pages and read what you’ve written without irritating marks getting in the way. Here’s a photo of the ink test page.
Victoria’s Journals brand notebooks are “Designed in Italy, Made in PRC”. They’re not cheap, but they’re really affordably priced, and stylish. Would I buy these again? Seeing as there are very few locally available brands of this price point (much lower than Clairefontaine and Rhodia) that are fountain pen-friendly, definitely. I still wish there was a leather cover product to match. This doesn’t stop me from hunting down other fountain pen-friendly brands, though. National Bookstore cannot guarantee that certain product lines remain permanently stocked, or that the same quality item can be sourced from their suppliers in the future. We can always hope.
I am not affiliated with National Bookstore except as a regular customer. The items being reviewed are my own purchases.
Personal Geographic 
Really nice post on victoria’s journal,
It’s such a great product & I really like it’s leather covers in different verities. It’s paper quality also good.
I have those notebooks. They’re a bit smaller than the refills for the leather journal, but have you seen the WIllinghorse unlined cahier style notebooks (they come 3 in a pack and are held together by garter) that are sold at NBS? I think they’re the exact size as the VJ refill.
I’m not sure which those ones are, thanks for the heads-up. My concern is that the paper should be fountain pen-friendly, so I’m always on the lookout for those kinds of notebooks.
I don’t really use fountain pens, but I tried it out with a Parker FP using Parker Quink and it was ok, there was showthrough, but no bleedthrough.