Life Kappan Writing Stationery

Jon has gone off and left me with these two non-contributing members of the family, and so I thought it would be a good time to get some writing done.

I’ve been catching up on thank you notes from the holidays, which is always an excellent reason to use some of the fancier paper in the shop.

Life Stationery makes beautiful paper: not only is the paper great for writing with fountain pens, the covers of their notebooks and writing pads often have a vintage flair to them.

This Life Kappan Writing Pad is designed for correspondence or letter writing. It’s B5, 18 x 25 cm, so it’s bigger than your usual G. Lalo or Rhodia A5 writing pad, with a glued top. If you’re using this paper to write letters, it will be too long to fit into A5 envelopes without folding over. I use these Life Airmail envelopes (Size 6) to fit B5 papers.

A pad has 30 sheets, and the paper is very smooth, with very little texture.

The paper has a margin on both sides, as well as space for the header and footer – it’s paper truly designed for writing a letter or a note. It is lined only on the front, although because there’s no bleedthrough, you could write on the back if you wanted to. Because of the paper size and ruling, I typically use this paper for shorter notes or letters, like thank you notes, rather than longer correspondence.

The paper is super for fountain pen ink. Zero feathering or bleedthrough, even though the paper is on the thin side. The lines with all types of inks and nibs is crisp and sharp, with flex nibs and super wet pens. Inks that sometimes show sheen are also great with this paper – you can see a bit of the sheen in the photo below with Sailor Sky High (the blue ink) with only a fine nib!

The ruling on the paper is 10mm, so quite large – I think (i.e. am assuming) this paper was originally designed for Asian characters, so it gives quite a bit of space. It’s also good for italic or inkier flex nibs that need a bit of space.