Oblation The Ink and the Crow Pocket Journal

A pocket journal with a charcoal handmade paper cover, letterpress printed in black foil and stitched by hand at our Portland shop, with blank fountain pen friendly pages inside.

The cover illustration takes its cue from Aesop’s The Crow and the Pitcher, in which a thirsty crow, unable to reach the water at the bottom of a pitcher, drops in pebbles one by one until the water rises to meet it. In this version, the pitcher is a bottle of ink, and the journal is a place for your own creative solutions, whether those arrive as notes or drawings.

The cover begins as a sheet of charcoal handmade paper that we make ourselves, deckled edges and all. We letterpress it in black foil so the artwork catches the light against the soft gray, then bind each journal by hand with a pamphlet stitch. Inside are blank pages of 75 gsm Iroful paper, which takes fountain pen ink well and leaves room for both writing and sketching.

• 3⅜ x 4¾ in (85 x 122 mm)
• 64 blank pages
• 75 gsm Iroful paper, fountain pen friendly
• Charcoal handmade paper cover with black foil letterpress
• Hand-stitched pamphlet binding
• Handmade paper, printing and binding all done at our shop in Portland, Oregon