Set of 4 plain paged notebooks approx 11 cm wide by 18 cm tall in a light-weight slipcase. The book format reproduces the style of the King Penguins series.  

King Penguin books were a series of pocket-sized monographs published between 1939 and 1959. They were the first Penguins to feature hardback covers as well as colour printing. The covers were often pattern papers whose motifs reflected the content of the book.

Each book has 60 sides of 130 gram ivory cartridge paper. 

The cover papers are designs by Elizabeth Friedlander for the Curwen Press (now out of print). 

Elizabeth Friedlander (1903 - 1984) came to England from Berlin and worked in the UK as a freelance industrial artist . She was an accomplished calligrapher and designed at least 17 papers for the Curwen Press.

The Curwen Press came into being in 1863 and its work in the early C20th had a strong focus on well-designed commercial printing. Contemporary artists were commissioned as illustrators and designers and in the 1920s, the Curwen Press began the production of  a collection of iconic pattern papers, commissioning designs from young artists including Eric Ravilious, Enid Marx, Edward Bawden,  Engraved patterns were transferred onto lithographic plates. They were used widely in publishing, for example by the Folio Society, by Penguin and by Hamish Hamilton in the Novel Library series. With the closure of the press in 1984, the manufacture of the papers came to an end.