I'm back. There's no place like New York City, and Madison Signatures is a quintessentially New York shop, nestled just east of Central Park in a cozy 2nd floor walkup. I almost missed it because I was expecting a storefront. The proprietor, Phil, is a dapper gentleman who sports a feathered hat. His shop specializes in beautiful personalized stationery as well as Filofaxes. If you're visiting New York, you'll be impressed by Madison Signatures' selection of Personal and Pocket sized leaves. In Personal, there are some harder-to-find papers like Cotton Cream and Clouded. There's an impressive selection of Mini leaves as well. The selection of A5s is a little more limited, and there's even a small section for the discontinued Deskfax. If you use Personal, Pocket, or Mini, you'll probably find what you're looking for. With the larger sizes, I'd recommend calling or emailing first.
Where Madison Signatures truly excels is in service. Phil held his last packet of A5 Project Planner leaves for me for 2 months, sight unseen, even though he could probably have sold it to someone off the street during that time. He even offered to open early for me, since I went in to pick it up on the morning of my travel day. (It turned out not to be necessary.) As I was leaving, a woman was coming in about some custom-engraved stationery or invitations, and she was clearly a repeat customer, for she was greeted warmly, like a friend.
While I was in NYC, I also scored some A5 binders at a Japanese bookstore, which I'll use for archiving. I'll report on that in a later post.
Hi, folks. Despite the thin paper, I made the move to a Personal, and absolutely love it. I realized, in my eternal search for the perfect calendar, that it wasn't the perfect *calendar* I needed, but a pretty little organiser I can use to keep notes, lists, To Do's, projects, etc. I pretty much ignore the calendar pages (something that will become acute Monday when my Moto Q arrives for desktop syncing), but use my tabbed pages daily. I'm feeling optimistic about this one.
ReplyDeleteThat excitement aside, I wanted to draw your attention to a site they linked, I think, from Moleskinerie yesterday. In the search for pens-that-don't bleed through, some of the tiny-tipped Japanese models available at http://www.jetpens.com might do the trick. I used a spread of these (usually in the needlepoint, .3 and .5 mm models) when we had a retailer in town, but my supply dried up when the store disappeared. Today's payday, and I'll be refueling later on.
Happy philofaxing...
Tracy
Oh, and Pilot P-500 needlepoint gels (Extra Fine) aren't bad in terms of bleed. Sharp point, wonderfully thin line, but not scratchy.
ReplyDeleteHi, Tracy! Good to hear from you again, and that the Personal is working out for you.
ReplyDeleteThanks SO much for the pen advice. I'm going to try the ones you mentioned.