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In defense of absorbent paper: Strathmore Writing


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I've been greatly enjoying my various Japanese papers for a long time now, and after many many testings, I think I'm homing in on exactly what I like there. I'll be revealing my favorite in my other thread on paper torture tests. 

 

However, I wanted to take a break and try out something else, because I've been slowly refining my tastes towards a style of paper that doesn't get a lot of love in the online FP community: absorbent paper. But, since I tend to play with ink and paper primarily as a means to discover my favorite implements for everyday "work" rather than for various types of artistic expression or the like, I think my value system around paper is different. Frankly, I think absorbent paper is highly underrated by many. 

 

For my personal maximum daily writing enjoyment, you want paper that feels good to use and handle, isn't frustrating, has great legibility and read back, takes all the fountain pens you'd want to use, dries quickly, has archival properties, helps with water resistance, and shows off the ink to good effect. 

 

The traditional wisdom emphasizes two characteristics of ink, shading and sheening. But people often miss that shading and sheening come with negative consequences. While shading and sheen allow you to experience the full range of an inks behavior, from what happens when there is only a little bit of ink to a pool of ink that dries on top the page, it does so at the cost of allowing you to experience the possibly richest portion of the true ink color at its boldest level. That is, if you have a lot of shading, it means that you're naturally reducing the saturation level of your inks on the page in many areas. This diffuses the overall tone of the ink. Sheening can also obscure some of the pure color of the ink with indirect colors. While shading and sheen makes the ink somewhat interesting from a diversity perspective, it also doesn't let the richness of a pure, saturated ink experience through except in small doses. You lose the solidity of line and you don't get to experience the ink at its most saturated as often. Moreover, heavy shading can reduce the clarity, readback, and legibility. It can detract from the crispness of the line and the flow of the pen. High sheen means large amounts of ink that isn't staining paper. High shading means less ink in some place than others. Both of these mean less water resistance to dye-based inks that need to penetrate the paper to increase their limited water resistance. 

 

So, for me, there's a really enjoyable aspect of ink that is often missed on papers that sheen and shade too much: the pure, saturated tone of the ink itself. I came to appreciate this when I noticed that some inks that appear lackluster and somewhat insipid, increase their richness of color and tone simply by a change of paper to something more absorbent. Just as an example, the extra absorbency of A.Silky paper gives an increased richness to Platinum's Blue Black ink in broad nibs where on some other papers you might get a more pale line. 

 

I'd like to highlight a great example of the "quality absorbent paper" genre that I recently got to play with, and that is now in the rotation to experience use as a daily notebook: Strathmore Writing paper. This is 90gsm 25% cotton archival quality paper in natural white. It has some really significant benefits: it's super fast drying (double or triple that of more famous Japanese papers), so much so that it is almost instant (under 3 seconds on many inks); it takes the ink well, without excessive bleeding or feathering; it's highly archival (cotton), it makes your inks more water resistant, and it highlights the richest tone of your ink at its most legible. 

 

Of course, this obviously comes at a cost, yes, the paper is not as bleed resistant as some other papers, and it will have small amounts of woolliness or spot feathering with certain inks, but for the benefits, the trade-offs on feathering, ghosting, and bleedthrough are very little, and equal that of some less quick-drying inks. Because the paper is cotton, it's also a little softer, and there is a texture on the paper that will give more feedback than the hyper-smooth papers out there. However, it's still smooth paper, and as a writing stationery, it gives an experience to the reader that is more luxurious than just the sterility of ultra smooth paper. 

 

If you're just chasing the chemistry of playing with inks and the artistry of ink properties, you'll obviously be disappointed, but there's something romantic to paper like this and something essentially practical and usable at the same time. It's the sort of quality, luxurious paper that gets the job done and emphasize practical qualities over the extremes. Yes, it's not going to let you shine a spotlight off the sheen of your inks, like you might with LIFE L Writing paper or the like, but take a look at the scans of the ink below, and notice how the blacks and the blues of these scans have a chance to jump out and highlight their color qualities in a way that you just don't get in other papers. Look at the "boring" standbys like Waterman, Sheaffer, and Parker and notice how much richer, bolder, and more full they are. This is the sort of paper that, IMO, elevates those inks. And then look at inks like the pigmented or IG inks, and how they let these heavy shaders lay down bold, clear swatches with distinct and saturated colors. There's an increased vividness to the inks that you get instead of the wider range of shading and sheen. 

 

Obviously this sort of paper isn't for everyone, but this is the sort of practical, usable, solid paper that still delivers a luxurious experience, albeit in quite a different fashion than your typical ink-resistant papers that are the darlings of the FP world. 

 

914225405_StrathmoreBlackInkTestFront.thumb.jpg.b0eaadfae2d1a94ca552ba906b09ee32.jpg1407636563_StrathmoreBlackInkTestBack.thumb.jpg.bf6a4fff9fe3203924365dfbd56352b6.jpg1345817760_StrathmoreBlueInkTestFront.thumb.jpg.592f2ccfcde23ff42b05ff744de8f3b8.jpg1946737903_StrathmoreBlueInkTestBack.thumb.jpg.a036a92ac2811048aac5ff7bd6869c0d.jpg

 

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On 3/15/2021 at 3:06 AM, Karmachanic said:

As well as these traditional correspondence papers 😀

Original Crown Mill

G Lalo

Smythson

Crane

Southworth

Amatruda

 

As an aside, you may enjoy this short read:

https://cool.culturalheritage.org/byorg/abbey/ap/ap05/ap05-5/ap05-503.html

 

Yes, Strathmore Writing is just an example of the genre. I felt like these papers deserve a little more love in the community.

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2 hours ago, arcfide said:

I felt like these papers deserve a little more love in the community.

 

Not from me, not if feathering and bleed-through comes part and parcel with the paper being absorbent. Not exhibiting shading or sheen would be the least of my worries.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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Thanks to the op for the extensive review. I’ll chime in with my experience: strathmore is not too absorbent in that lines do not widen much compared to other papers like tomoe river which widens lines quite a bit. You can get 500 sheet reams of Strathmore paper which is cheapest way to use it. It’s nice paper, the only drawbacks are that it has more feed back than most other papers and it does not show shading very well at all. 

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Love this kind of papers, specially when they are good. The sad part is that it is ever more difficult to find good writing paper.

 

But I treasure the paper I still keep around from ~30 years ago. Absorbent, ragged but with little or no feathering and little or no see-through. I can understand The Smug Dill, but I can't help missing those times when paper gave you feedback and was still pen and pencil (at the same time) friendly.

If you are to be ephemeral, leave a good scent.

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Thanks for that writeup. Nice to see I'm not the only one not following main stream ideas.

 

I've never been a fan of wood papers. The wooden, "fountain pen friendly" papers that people talk about seem like bad papers to me. Although some are nice papers in an artistic sence, they don't seem appropriate for things I want to keep, or send to others. That's just my opinion.

 

Currently my favorites are Gnatural 100% cotton 80gsm, and even nicer, their 85gsm 75% cotton and 25% linen. The latter has tiny, barely visible, red and blue fibres in the furnish which is for security, but makes a subtle warm look for those that care about the look their papers. Those are UV dull and have no fillers. You can get them on Amazon. They also have a nice 36gsm all cotton and a 60gsm cotton/linen paper both of which are like air-mail papers and have smoother surfaces, but you have to order them directly from the manufacturer.

 

When I joined the fountain pen forums, I was quite surprised to find so many people with little interest in traditional paper and ink qualities. My aesthetic background in that regard is taken from letter press, which strives for clarity and permanence. I accept that fountain pen ink has other quite different requirements, but I'm still flummoxed at how many inks have almost no endurance, and in fact, are difficult to read.  It also took me a little while to figure out why people were talking about drying time. The answer of course, came when I discovered that they were using hard papers, presumably in order to get ultra smoothness and the visual effect of shading. Now it's all eventually becoming clear, and I realize that I'm just an odd duck. Nevertheless, I hope others read threads like this and realize that there is another world.

 

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Well, yes. That and that nowadays most paper is designed for printing, not writing, which has different demands. To me, printer/copy paper feels like waxed, making pens drag and bleed and generally  misbehaves with FP ink. Coated paper, in comparison is smoother and allows for clean lines and all the niceties of ink to show up, but being less absorbent is also "slower".

 

The problem is modern uncoated, non-copy, non-printed paper is usually cheap, newspaper-like paper that behaves very badly with pens. Traditional paper, absorbent, non-bleeding, non-feathering, textured, uncoated yet not dragging and allowing pens to glide smoothly while still having feedback and allowing for shading is, for me, the ideal paper to write on. Yeah, sheen will be more difficult to get. But otherwise, it scores so much better than modern papers that it is a no-brainer.

If you are to be ephemeral, leave a good scent.

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Interesting that I find the copy paper that I use for rough copies and scrap has almost the same characteristics with fountain pen as most cotton papers. It is Staples 75g 92 bright. It's about $50 for a box of 5000 sheets compared to $35 per 100 sheets for good papers. I like using it, but I still don't want any wood in my good paper. I want the real thing, just like I want gold jewlery to not be plated or made of some substitute metal, regardless of how strong or shiny. Of course that's just my opinion on materials and I know many people feel differently. In any case, wood papers are generally quite crisp to begin with and then tend to get harder with age, whereas cotton and linen papers are often softer and more pliable and stay that way over time.

 

To me it is the paper that I start with, and having chosen that, I try to match pen and ink to that. This is similar to how woodworkers and metalworkers proceed - they chose the material first, and then the tools after. I don't write cursive so I don't really need my pen to glide, although some inks and some nibs do glide quite nicely on absorbent papers. I definitely don't want any sheen on my inks from not being absorbed.

 

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On 3/16/2021 at 5:43 AM, A Smug Dill said:

 

Not from me, not if feathering and bleed-through comes part and parcel with the paper being absorbent. Not exhibiting shading or sheen would be the least of my worries.

 

Certainly not part and parcel. By definition these papers must be more mechanically susceptible to bleedthrough and feathering in the extreme, but that doesn't mean they aren't more than sufficient for good behavior within the normal range of behaviors for fountain pens. Just looks at how misbehaved many modern inks are in the extreme, such as Noodler's, Iroshizuku, Private Reserve, and other inks with high dye-loads and saturation. This doesn't prevent them from being plenty usable for most people in most cases. 

 

High quality absorbent paper will still have good line quality and will not bleed excessively, but they *will* bleed and feather more at the extremes. And then you have papers like Tomoe River which have more spread than, say, Strathmore paper, but will feather less in the extreme. So, TR will write a broader line all the time, but Strathmore will show a little bit more feathering with heavy applications of ink. It's not clear to me that TR is obviously better in this respect with regards to line quality. 

 

And from the writing sample above with a wet, broad Sailor nib using black ink, I think you will find that the line quality on this writing example is certainly well within the range of many other harder and more ink-resistant papers, while still being faster drying and giving a better color tone compared to many of the alternatives. 

 

 

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11 minutes ago, arcfide said:

This doesn't prevent them from being plenty usable for most people in most cases. 

 

I expect to be able to ‘draw’ at least nine distinct parallel horizontal lines, with a clean gap between each pair of consecutive lines, with a European Fine nib inside a 5mm-tall space on the page; and preferably at least twelve horizontal lines with a European Extra Fine or Japanese Fine nib. Some of my pens — including my recently acquired Edison Collier, which has a steel JoWo(?) EF nib — will easily put down sixteen horizontal lines on Rhodia Dotpad 80g/m² paper.

 

That is a key criterion in my assessing whether a type of paper is fit for my purpose; so whether the ‘shortcoming’ of a type of paper is in allowing lines of ink to spread, be ‘woolly’, or spread laterally along short thin fibres near the page's surface, it'll still cause that paper to perform poorly against that criterion, separately from aesthetic considerations as to whether the lines' edges are crisp, etc.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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1 hour ago, arcfide said:

And then you have papers like Tomoe River which have more spread than, say, Strathmore paper, but will feather less in the extreme.

This sounds strange to me.  You seem to be suggesting that on this Strathmore paper, the ink soaks in, but does not spread out.  Further, you seem to be suggesting that on TR, since the ink can't soak in, it always spreads out (on the surface).  (This is the only combination of behavior I can think of that would lead you to say that there's more spread on TR than on Strathmore.)

 

Am I understanding correctly?

 

When I've experienced "spread" it's on absorbent paper where the ink soaks in and spreads out at the same time.  On TR (and other hard papers), I rarely have an ink spread wider than the nib placed it.  When I do, I assume the ink itself is prone to spreading out (has poorer cohesion).  Occasionally I find an ink that writes really "crisp" (or "thin) lines - lines that look thinner than average from the same nib (again, I assume greater cohesion of the ink).  I'm currently on ink #89 from the same nib, with each ink getting 4-5 days of use, so I've gotten fairly good at recognizing when an ink writes lines that are either thinner or fatter than average, though I don't own a reticle for measuring.

 

The only way I can reconcile my personal experience with your comment about Strathmore both being absorbent and having less spread is if there's some magic that pulls the ink in but doesn't allow it to spread out.

 

I can find a blank pad of this paper on Amazon for just under $8.  Not sure if I'll pop for it or not, just to test it out, but if the above is accurate, it sounds like an interesting phenomenon.  Like @A Smug Dill, though, feathering and bleed would be big turn-offs, and for me, shading is one of the primary factors in picking an ink. :)  A paper that doesn't show shading would not be interesting to me.

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@LizEF Have a look at Midori MD Cotton reviews to get an idea of performance. Certainly less shading, but as @arcfide points out, increased richness of colour and tone.

 

 

Add lightness and simplicate.

 

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10 hours ago, LizEF said:

This sounds strange to me.  You seem to be suggesting that on this Strathmore paper, the ink soaks in, but does not spread out.  Further, you seem to be suggesting that on TR, since the ink can't soak in, it always spreads out (on the surface).  (This is the only combination of behavior I can think of that would lead you to say that there's more spread on TR than on Strathmore.)

 

 

The way I think about it is that, when considering a line by its width, spread is the median width of that line relative to the surface contact made by the nib assuming no pressure while feathering is the amplitude and variance of the difference of the minimum and maximum widths of the line. Put another way, feathering is how inconsistently the line's boundary is demarked, whereas spread is how wide the line is. You can have paper that lays down a relatively true line with little spread, but that results in high feathering, though usually paper with high feathering has at least some spread. I think some washi papers can behave this way and some other papers that aren't really designed for writing. Spread tends to be more a factor of the surface of the paper and the surface sizing's hydrophobic capacity. For example, on a paper like Midori MD, Clairefontaine, and to some degree Rhodia 80gsm Vellum, the line made on the paper can actually feel a little bit smaller than one might expect from the nib contact. On many other Japanese style papers, the sizing has a tendency to encourage a little disruption of the surface tension, causing the line to settle onto the page more definitively, leading to a broader initial line, but no feathering (since it's ink resistant sizing). I believe from my research that this has to do with the paper fiber, filler %, filler type, and method of creating the surface texture. Both Tomoe River and Kokuyo THIN papers are known for their relatively high amount of spread but very low feathering. On the other hand, other hard papers like Apica's A.Silky or their medium writing paper generally doesn't show as much spread, but can show more feathering under duress.

 

Another subtlety between feathering and spread would be that feathering is generally meant to refer only to ink variance that spreads beyond the median line width. This normally doesn't matter, but in cases like MD paper with a Music nib, for instance (in my case, a Platinum Music nib with Platinum Blue Black on MD paper), the line width has a tendency to actually "shrink in" on itself a small bit, leading to a slightly ragged edge that was not really feathering. This was caused, I think, less because of the ink literally pulling back, but more in that the ink never had the chance to reach certain areas because of the paper texture. On other papers like TR or A.Silky, the line is much more consistent in width, though it is consistently wider. The horizontal stroke of the Music nib was probably half the size difference between a paper like Tomoe River or Apica and that of Midori MD. That meant really crisp lines on MD paper, but a more frustrating experience with that combination because the ink wouldn't lay down where I wanted it to without more deliberate work that required adjusting the way I got the ink down to those places. 

 

 

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10 hours ago, LizEF said:

I can find a blank pad of this paper on Amazon for just under $8.  Not sure if I'll pop for it or not, just to test it out, but if the above is accurate, it sounds like an interesting phenomenon.  Like @A Smug Dill, though, feathering and bleed would be big turn-offs, and for me, shading is one of the primary factors in picking an ink. :)  A paper that doesn't show shading would not be interesting to me.

 

While it might be fun to get your thoughts, I can almost guarantee based on what you describe as your preferences that you will hate it. 🙂 I don't think bleed or feather will be an issue for you (just see Jake Weidmann's Spencerian and Copperplate demonstrations on the paper, and you'll see that it does pretty well in that regard), but this isn't just a "no shading" paper, it's a sort of actively anti-shading paper, and anti-sheening paper. It's opinionated and not neutral about the topic! Even inks that shade at the blink of an eye are likely to exhibit zero shading on this paper. You'd have to work pretty hard to get any meaningful shading from this paper. 

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To set the record straight.

 

The following has been written today on a sheet of cheap uncoated paper where I had some notes (not shown) dating from the late 70's or more likely early 80's. Those were times when I had very little money and used to go for the cheapest, including recycling any used paper I could.

 

The paper is so absorbent you do not even have time to notice. I have used Noodler's Lexington Grey, Brown #51 and Organic Studio Nitrogen, on an MB fine, MB medium, a Kaweco 1.1 stub, a Lamy 1.5mm italic and a Garant Alkor from the 60's. I've left an MB slimline in the picture for a size reference.

 

Brown and Nitrogen were diluted for reasons that have no bearing. Even so, the sheen and shading are clear.

 

You can see that it looks on the dry side, there is no visible feathering (only a slight one when seen at maximal zoom, but not noticeable at plain sight), there is shading and sheen, and I can't be sure if the lines are indeed thinner than they do look on Rhodia paper. The point is that this paper is absorbent, and tight, it sucks the ink quickly but does not spread it (as would do a looser modern paper -or newspaper paper). And I remember I didn't like specially this cheap paper as there were far better ones. The nib doesn't glide as on Rhodia, you can feel the texture, but it does not drag or catch on fibers.

 

70s_80s_paper_low_quality.thumb.jpg.db084eec034b21fa08336481a801333a.jpg

 

That is what I refer when I speak of quality. In the old times even cheap paper was made for hand note taking and had some minimal quality.

 

Sorry for the awful writing, I wrote on top of the keyboard of a laptop (have no space left on the desk at this moment) and the awful picture, I took it with my crappy phone. Actually, on the old times I would mostly stay away of coated paper because it would often take longer for ink to dry.

If you are to be ephemeral, leave a good scent.

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35 minutes ago, txomsy said:

coated paper

 

Lest we become confused.

Coated paper is glossy. Writing paper is sized. Newsprint is slack sized.

 

Add lightness and simplicate.

 

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5 hours ago, arcfide said:

Spread tends to be more a factor of the surface of the paper and the surface sizing's hydrophobic capacity. .... On many other Japanese style papers, the sizing has a tendency to encourage a little disruption of the surface tension, causing the line to settle onto the page more definitively, leading to a broader initial line, but no feathering (since it's ink resistant sizing).

 

49 minutes ago, txomsy said:

The point is that this paper is absorbent, and tight, it sucks the ink quickly but does not spread it (as would do a looser modern paper -or newspaper paper).

These two quotes sum up the phenomenon being described - the one that caught my interest - the lack of spread on the more absorbent paper appears to be because of how "tight" the paper is.  The spread on TR (which I don't feel like I've ever seen - even though I use a Hobonichi every day, including as my ink log) is due to "disruption of the surface tension" caused by the sizing.

 

Feathering was never really a concern for me - I rarely use a nib larger than a western fine.

 

5 hours ago, arcfide said:

While it might be fun to get your thoughts, I can almost guarantee based on what you describe as your preferences that you will hate it.

:) I'm not sure I would actually hate it, but my curiosity is primarily witnessing first hand (with my pens and inks) a paper that has crisper lines than my Hobonichi - of course, I suspect the difference might be so slight I'd need that reticle to tell, and that's an even greater expense.

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6 hours ago, Karmachanic said:

@LizEF Have a look at Midori MD Cotton reviews to get an idea of performance. Certainly less shading, but as @arcfide points out, increased richness of colour and tone.

 

Thanks!  I'll look for reviews.  (I think this is another paper I have on my wish list, but it's a case of "I already own more paper than I'll use in a decade".)

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