Animalcules (Crisscross)

Note & Sketchbook

Featuring decorative sewing and a patterned cover this Crisscross notebook has 128 pages of 140 gsm acid free cartridge paper and is suitable for writing and drawing. We’ve chosen the Cambridge Imprint green Animalcules patterned paper. Crisscross binding is inspired by Japanese stab sewing. It was invented by Ann Goy in the mid 1980s who wanted to create the look of stab sewing in a book that could fully open.

The method has been called Secret Belgian as a result of the generosity of the inventor and the charms of the book itself. Ann showed the structure to others, who liked it so much they passed it on to others who passed it on but only its country of origin was retained. Ann’s Crisscross binding spread worldwide, under its mysterious name. Until bookbinders Hedi Kyle and Emily Martin, long considered experts in the method, revealed they’d found the original inventor who was indeed Belgian but a secret no more. Ann Goy prefers that we use the original name for her method and we’ve adopted it here at Ink & Page.

Animalcules is an original Cambridge Imprint design and a simpler one-colour version of their Milky Way design, which itself loosely based on an eighteenth-century French domino paper. Animalcule roughly translated as small animal, is a term coined by the 17^th century scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek inventor of the microscope and the first person to see the tiny life-forms in rainwater we call now microorganisms.

Dimensions: 15.5cm x 10.8cm x 2.2cm

Also available as a desktop size book
Please contact us if you would like to order one