Plain Lab · notebook
Blank Insert
One hundred and twenty-five pages carry no line, dot or rule, left bare for whatever the leather cover is going to hold.
Specification
- Trim
- 127 × 177.8 mm · 5 × 7 in
- Pages
- 128
- Leaves
- 64
- Sheets
- 32
- Signatures
- 4 × 32pp
- Spine
- 7.32 mm
- Paper
- white
- Ruling
- blank
- Ruling pitch
- 4.94 mm · 14.00 pt
- Rows per page
- 30
Open Blank Insert and there is nothing here to follow. No line waits for a sentence, no dot waits for a diagram, no margin rule marks off a column that was never asked for. The block behind the leather holds a hundred and twenty-five bare leaves, and every one stays that way until a pen touches it.
A ruling earns its keep when the writing is regular: a log, a ledger, a set of notes taken in order. It gets in the way when the mark is not writing at all. A wash of watercolour does not want a printed line running through it. Neither does a pasted ticket stub, or a line of calligraphy practised over a guide sheet slid underneath and pulled out again once the hand has the shape. Bare paper does not care which of these it is holding.
The first page of the block carries no title either. It is an ornamental plate with a blank rule where a name would normally sit. The leather wrapping this block already carries the owner's identity on its own kraft flyleaf, so a second declaration on page one would only repeat it. Whoever fills this book is the one who decides what to call it.
What is inside
- Notes
- 125pp
- Bare paper for anything a ruling would interrupt: mixed media, calligraphy over a guide sheet, pasted ephemera.
- Plate and last leaf
- 3pp
- An unnamed ornamental plate opens the block, a short page explains the binding, and the back leaf is printed as a pen test rather than lost to one.
The film
Page by page
A vertical film from our own bench — this page contacts nobody's server to play it, and downloads nothing until you press play.
Real pages
Made at the Hibrkraft bindery, Bogor · about the maker
Books that sit alongside it
- Squared Insert 4 mmAlso in Plain Lab
- Sketch and Rule InsertAlso in Plain Lab
- Squared Insert 5 mmAlso in Plain Lab
- Isometric InsertAlso in Plain Lab
Questions
Is anything printed on the pages themselves?
No. No line, no dot, no margin rule. The pages are bare from the first to the last of the hundred and twenty-five.
Does it come with a cover?
No. This is the sewn block only, sized for a leather cover made separately. The trade word for that is an insert.
How big is the block?
5 x 7 in, 127 x 177.8 mm, one hundred and twenty-eight pages, sewn in four signatures of thirty-two.
Is there a date printed anywhere?
No. Nothing in it is dated, so it can start on any day.
What is the plain first page for?
It is an ornamental plate with no title on it. The leather cover already carries a name on its own flyleaf; this page is left for the owner to decide.
Does it carry conversion tables or emergency numbers?
No. This block has no reference section at all, just the bare pages, the plate, and the pen-test leaf at the back.
Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.
