Fountain pen friendly, student friendly (Silvine paper)
Writing just fine, no feathering. Text is from A Wizard of Earthsea.
Here in the UK, the two brands of paper you will find in the “quality notebooks” section of a stationery shop are Optik (Oxford, Black n Red) and Rhodia/Clairefontaine1. I religiously used Oxford-branded Optik paper notebooks for a few years. However, all this time there was another fountain pen friendly paper hiding away in the “cheap notebooks” section: Silvine.
Silvine is a paper brand manufactured by Sinclairs, based in Yorkshire. They claim to make their paper from sustainable sources, and are FSC certified, which is nice.
Is their paper really cheaper? Well, I’m not a stationery stockist, but I checked prices of single A4 staple-bound ruled notebooks at some UK retailers' websites. Per page Optik was about half as expensive as Rhodia, and Silvine was about half as expensive as Optik.
Silvine also makes other products, most of which I have not tried, although I am fond of their dot grid refill pads.
Paper review
Rhodia/Clairefontaine and Optik paper are similar when it comes to using fountain pens. Thick, glossy (Optik slightly less so), with zero bleed-through and almost no show-through no matter what ink you use on them.
Meanwhile, Silvine paper is more delicate (75gsm as opposed to 80/90gsm), with more show-through, although it still has zero bleed-through. It’s also more rough-textured and matte - although don’t get me wrong here, it’s still writing paper, i.e. incredibly smooth. It has a pleasing feel compared to regular “cheap paper”.
Show-through of the writing from the previous image. Unsurprisingly, the rollerball (bottom) did the worst because I pressed the hardest with it.
Plenty of shading, for example here in Kaweco Smokey Grey. I see a glint of gold sheen on Diamine Wild Strawberry in bright light. There is also less halo-ing than on Optik paper.
I don’t have any properly sheening inks to test, but here is a review on Fountain Pen Network, noting a lack of sheen. Silvine may be nice and thin, but this is not the British answer to Tomoe River.
The rougher surface lends itself to pencils. I also tried some ballpoints (including my favourite Schmidt Softline) and they had the worst show-through of all, to the point where I wouldn’t recommend this paper for ballpoint users, at least not if you’re heavy-handed like me. It’s just too thin.
In use
I think the combination of thinner paper and a lower page count per book is a perfect combination for keeping students' bags light. Since discovering them, I prefer them to my Oxfords for university lecture notes.
Two of my current Silvine notebooks, in A4 and 9x7-inch size.
The A4 is for lecture notes, and it’s a full year old. I like to draw on my lecture notebook covers, and this one was a doodle with paint markers inspired by The Darkangel Trilogy, one of my favourite science-fantasy series2. The 9x7 is my current drafting notebook. The cover has grease spots from when I decided to do some writing in the kitchen.
The cover is another unique thing about Silvine paper notebooks - all the ones I’ve seen on shelves are cardstock with this ‘name and subject’ box in the middle which powerfully brings to mind a school workbook. They make prettier stuff too, but I think it’s a nice change to be able to buy notebooks that do not have a luxury feel at all. It takes the pressure off.
Friendly paper indeed.
The branding on the back.
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Rhodia and Clairefontaine are known to be owned by the same company, which apparently makes multiple subtly different types of paper… which get shared between the brands anyway? I’m staying out of this one. ↩︎
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Please indulge me when I decide to talk about things that are completely unrelated to stationery. ↩︎