Walk into any stationery shop in France and you’ll see an extensive array of these beloved notebooks. They are the classic composition books introduced to French schoolchildren in primary school; the notebooks, in various bindings, sizes, and colors then become seemingly indispensable for decades to come. We consider this version the simplest, the most economical, and the one with the most useful size and binding in this wide range of notebooks. In cafes, you’ll see adults writing in them; in grocery stores, consulting them; they’re pulled out of briefcases, purses, and backpacks; they’re on desks in libraries and in bookstores. Anywhere someone needs to write something, there seems to be a Clairefontaine notebook.

The pages are smooth, 90g, ivory, French-milled paper that is ruled, acid-free, pH neutral, marker and fountain pen–friendly. The spine is stapled.

The French company that manufactures these notebooks was founded in 1858 in the town of Etival Clairefontaine, ninety km from Strasbourg, in the valley of the Meurthe River. There, the production of paper was to become an important business because of the availability of rags supplied by the local textile industry. In 1880, the company’s paper mill began manufacturing envelopes, soon to be followed by the iconic notebooks. 

Softbound; forty-eight sheets (96 pages); 6" x 8-1/4" with A5 paper. Choose by cover color.