Plain Lab · notebook
Illuminated Insert
A ruled page held inside a light double-line border, a quatrefoil drawn into each corner and a lozenge at the middle of each side.
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
- illuminated
- Ruling pitch
- 6.00 mm · 17.01 pt
- Rows per page
- 25
Every page carries a frame: two hairline rules a few millimetres apart, running the width and height of the sheet. A small four-lobed device sits in each of the four corners, and a narrow diamond marks the middle of each side. None of it is a picture. It is drawn the same way the ruling inside it is drawn, as lines and arcs rather than an image, so it stays crisp at any size.
Inside the frame, the page rules the same as any lined page: twenty-five lines at six millimetre pitch. The ruling is held clear of the border, so it never looks like it grows out of the ornament. The frame itself is a light one on purpose. A page meant to be written on can carry a border. It cannot carry a painted field without losing half its writing surface to decoration.
Call it illuminated with the obvious caveat: nothing here is painted, and no pigment or gold leaf was involved. What survives from that tradition is the shape of the border, not the labour that used to go into one.
What is inside
- Notes
- 125pp
- A light double-rule border with a corner device and a side ornament on every page, twenty-five lines of six millimetre ruling inside it.
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
- Day Book InsertAlso in Plain Lab
- Two-Column Insert 6 mmAlso in Plain Lab
- Language InsertAlso in Plain Lab
- Expense InsertAlso in Plain Lab
Questions
Is the border a painted illustration?
No. It is drawn as lines and arcs, the same way the ruling is drawn, not a scanned or painted image.
What ruling is inside the frame?
Ordinary lined ruling, twenty-five lines at six millimetre pitch.
Why call it illuminated if nothing is painted?
The name borrows the shape of the tradition, a bordered page with ornament at the corners, not the pigment or gold leaf that used to fill it.
Does it come with a cover?
No. It is the sewn block, sized for a leather cover made separately.
Is it dated?
No.
You observe a candle is a very different thing from a lamp.
