I have found Miquelrius A4 spiral bound notebooks to be far superior to anything else I have found for fountain pens - but I live in Australia and havent tried Rhodia and Clairfontaine which arent easily available here. I am interested to hear from people who have tried Miquelrius and could rate it against other fountain pen friendly brands.

Where have you been buying your Miquelrius in Oz? I amusing Clairefontaine and Rhodia which I order from the USA.

I haven't used it yet, but try "search." There have been other threads on it here
and it seemed to rate well. It is on my list to try.

I can't comment on Rhodia or Clairefontaine, but I just recently picked up a couple of Miquelrius' Grid-It notepads with the Jan Tschichold layout grid. The paper looks and feels wonderful, but feathers and bleeds terribly with anything wider than an EF nib.

I've used the 4 colour Miguelrius spiral bound notebooks, and as you've discovered, their paper is excellent for fps.
Much prefer to Clairefontaine or Rhodia which by comparison are too slippery and are less aborbent so you
have longer drying time.

I have used Miquelrius, Rhodia and Moleskine.

Poorest quality paper is the Moleskine. Middle is the Miquelrius and best is the Rhodia IMHO.

Ironically the Miquelrius is fine for all of my pens, but the Rhodia is exactly as LDF describes, slippery with a longer drying time. The Rhodia is still a joy to write on with most of my pens, but the VP didn't like it and sometimes one or two of the others skate about a bit. The ink doesn't get drawn from the pen as there is practically no absorption.

I have only used the bound Miquelrius pads and they can be a bit of a hassle to open as can all glue bound books.

As a matter of interest to UK FPN'rs, Miquelrius make their pads for the Paperblanks chain in the UK and they have the Paperblanks name debossed on them where Miquelrius' debossing would be (on the back cover at the bottom usually). They do a 30 page A5 pad, which is brilliant.

Miquel Rius is easily as good as or better than Rhodia or Clairefontaine. I prefer very wet nibs so the slickness of Clairefontaine is an issue for me.

Of late, I've been buying Miquel Rius over any of the others.

--Roy

Miquelrius has excellent paper, at least as good as both Clairefontaine and Rhodia. It feels more like Rhodia to me - not quite as smooth and heavy as Clairefontaine.

The only reason I don't use it more often is that I can only find it spiral bound and lined here, and I inevitably wreck any spiral bound book I carry around with me. The paper is certainly FP friendly, though.

I have used a variety of Clairefontaine, and Rhodia, comparing them to my Miquelrius Notebook One that I was lucky enough to find in my college bookstore I would say it's rather smooth, does not bleed or feather with a variety of pens( Lamy safari M and F, Esterbrook J with 9450 and 3550) as well as inks (Pelikan Brilliant black, Waterman Black, Lamy Blue, and Diamine Golden Brown). Overall, if you cannot get Clairefontaine or Rhodia easily, you couldn't go wrong with a Miquelrius notebook!

Hello inkypete. At first, Myers carried it under the Jordi Labanda brand (it had Miquelrius written on the bottom of the back cover which was plastic). Then they apparently ceased to stock it and the only supplier that I am aware of is now Hidden Agenda 182 High Street Ashburton in Melbourne. Even they dont always carry it. I am from Albany in WA.

Wow, I never thought I would hear of another visitor to Hidden Agenda. It is such an understated little store which mixes in a bunch of flashy stuff with some real quality. I was last there about 4 months ago and they had a good range of high end Italian journals which were pretty expensive, but definitely worth a visit if you into writing paraphenalia.

They also had a pretty wide range of Noodlers. The only place better for inks in Melbourne would be Pencity.

I find it quite amazing that the few pen shops I have visited (Australia is a wonderful country, but not for pen collectors - and Perth is the only city within way over 1000 miles from Albany where I live - until recently a total of zero pen shops in Perth) sell numerous pens, inks etc etc but look blankly at you when you seek to buy quality journals or notebooks , as distinct from single sheets. Surely the fountain pen experience comprises pen, ink AND paper... Is this a worldwide phenomenon? Its my experience that without a good supply of reasonably priced fountain pen friendly paper the whole fountain pen thing crashes and its back to ballpoints. How many people would have hesitantly tried to get into fountain pens only to be totally put off them by pen shops that sell the pens and dont mention the necessity to use smooth paper?

I made the decision to expensively obtain Rhodia ePure notebooks over the Internet from Nota Bene in Montreal ( http://www.nota-bene.ca/ ) - as they're impossible to find here - (despite having an excellent local store with most of the Rhodia products on the shelf http://www.lairdoffice.com/ ).

The delivery arrived yesterday and the ePure is exactly what it looks like - the cover is really identical to the 'leather-look' Miquelrius notebook covers, but it has Rhodia quality paper inside - really the best of both worlds -- except hard to get. Also, Nota Bene only carries blank pages (hmm perhaps it doesn't come in lined versions).

Still, the niceless of the Miquelrius cover and binding (and same size) with the quality of good FP-friendly paper -- close to perfect...