I have been 'circulating' through my underused collection of Filofax Personal Size organisers and other brands in this size since December last year. Using each one for a week or two before swapping my pages in to another organiser. My page fill now fits in to any standard 23mm ring size organiser. Or smaller if I reduce the number of months of my diary that I carry.
The Filofax Winchester and Filofax Kensington are two organisers I have recently tried out.
The Winchester was my first Filofax bought in 1986 (40 years ago!) and the Kensington came in to my ownership a few years ago, it doesn't show any signs of a lot of use.
The Filofax Winchester is of course from the era when organisers were made in England, this one most probably in Forest Road, Ilford at the Filofax Factory there. Production there ceased in about 1993 and was moved overseas. The Kensington being from overseas and some say the quality suffered.
When I swapped from the Kensington in to the Winchester I noticed a couple of things straight away. The pen loop on the Winchester is very tight for my mechanical pencil (Pentel P207) to fit compared to the Kensington. I have an old Papermate ballpoint pen that fits the Winchester pen loop comfortably.
Also modern plastic 'Today' markers stick out of the top/bottom of the edges of the Winchester. Only by a mm or two
I did some measurements to see what the differences were between the two designs.
- Kensington = 285 mm open and flat, 190 mm high.
- Winchester = 275 mm open and flat, 183 mm high
- Today marker = 185 mm high
The Kensington seems to have much softer leather, I'm guessing because it is thinner, but it feels good in the hand and in every day use.
What other differences are there between the two:
- This particular Winchester is a 4CLF (4 pockets Calf Leather with fastener) it therefore has three pockets in the front inside cover (ID pocket, business card pocket and a full height vertical slip pocket) and one full height vertical slip pocket in the rear inside cover.
- The Winchester pockets are covered by broad flaps which also act as ring protectors. There are no zips to go wrong.
- The Kensington has eight horizontal card pockets and a full height vertical slip pocket on the inside front cover. With another full height gusseted vertical slip pocket on the inside rear cover. There is also a full height gusseted vertical zip pocket on the rear inside cover.
- Both feature Krause style rings. The Winchester has a plain polished top cover. The much later Kensington has the filofax branding, engraved into the top cover of the rings.
- This era of Winchester like other Filofax organisers of this age do not have the f embossed into the leather of the spine, the Kensington does. My Winchester has my initials in vinyl letters, still there since I attached them 40 years ago!
Naturally the Winchester being my first holds a lot of memories, especially as I still have my diary inserts from the first few years to look back through and see what I was up to!
Do you have a favourite old Filofax?
What questions or discussion points have you got for us today?
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