120 x 165 mm 

Journal with lined pages, 240 sides of 110 gsm smooth ivory paper. 

The cover is a design 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.

Commonplace Books are a very purposeful way of using a journal, or giving one as a gift. They have been used since the Fifteenth Century, the idea being to record passages of text, poems, quotations, recipes, reading lists, drawings, sayings, family turns of phrase, calligraphy, aspirations  - any words of perceived wisdom or personal significance -  all making up a memoir of the author’s interests over a number of years. All sorts of famous people have kept Commonplace Books including John Milton, Napoleon Bonaparte, Lewis Carroll and Virginia Woolf.  A brief note about the history and use of Commonplace Books is enclosed with the book.