Nota Bene
My favourite store in the world (so far) is a bigger-than-it-looks papeterie in Montréal called Nota Bene. It is a stationery and art supply paradise, with a huge selection of notebooks of every kind, letter-writing papers and envelopes from all over the world, art paper, sketch and watercolour books, and even storage solutions. Plus a very large spread of mechanical pencils (and significantly more pens, if you’re into that) behind a special counter independently staffed by a knowledgeable fellow.
In my most recent visit, my first since retail started reopening with the pandemic, I stocked up on a variety of my favourite kind of journal: slim A5 lined books with thread-stitched binding. Lately I’d been going through one of these every two weeks or so over the course of the summer as the break from work allowed a focus on writing and crafting. My haul at Nota Bene included Emilio Braga, Roterfaden, and a few new brands I hadn’t seen before.
Something I was very happy to see in stock was the A5-ish version of Heinz-Jordan’s Permanent Sketchbook, a big chubby Canadian-made sketchbook with very nice paper, bound such that it opens flat easily - something necessary with the very large number of pages in each book.
Heinz-Jordan’s merch is not easy to find in most Canadian stores, despite being a home-grown art supply brand. Their paints and paint-related supplies are fairly ubiquitous, but many art supply stores only stock a small number of their paper products, and so far I have only found an obscure store in Yukon that stocks these particular books for online purchasing, in the size and orientation I prefer.
The insane selection of papers and paperboards are too many to choose from, as are the variety of envelopes. I have been trying to find some affordable quality mailers of various sizes, but somehow Nota Bene always tempts me with the slicker and more expensive lines.
Something I caught on PencilTalk a while back was the fact that Nota Bene stocked these intriguing German notary strings. I have been using them as binding cord for booklets and notebooks. I believe the ones I bought were the North Rhine-Westphalia colours.
Nota Bene has precious little branded merchandise. I was surprised they did not have any branded notepads or pencils, considering how easy these are to source, but I was able to find two Koh-i-Noor-made branded 2mm lead holders, in raw clear-coat aluminum. They are quite fun to use and I actually keep them in quite frequent rotation in my pencil cup.
Nota Bene has a fairly good online store selection, but not all of their stock is there. If you’re in Montréal you should absolutely visit this space and bring a big bag to carry away your goodies.
