Further planning for my European trip, I thought I might like to start a travel journal in the style of olden day- collagists…..just keep a little notebook in my pocket onto which I can record thoughts, sketches, photos and scraps of my journey. Something my kids might like to look at in the future, when they start to travel themselves. The moleskine cahier (French for notebook) is stuff of legend.
The little rounded edge notebook, bound in black leather or brown paper, originally produced by small French bookbinders in the late 19th century, is often romanticized as the bohemian travel journal of choice. Its mythos puts it in the hands of luminaries such as Oscar Wilde, Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and Henri Matisse.
And, as stated in the blog “Stuff White People Like” (which lists moleskine notebooks at #122); “it’s a good rule of thumb to know that white people like anything that old writers and artists liked: typewriters, journals, suicide, heroin, and trains are just a few examples.”….all of which I actually do like. Except the heroin (although, admittedly, I did write a rock opera about it). So? Shut up.
Although book binders in France stopped its production in the 1980’s, many companies (most notably the brand Moleskine) have picked up mass production in past 20 years.
It remains a favorite vehicle of artists' expression, both for their own use and to alter and sell for others to fill.
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| Cahier entries from a WWI French Soldier |
Further planning for my European trip, I thought I might like to start a travel journal in the style of olden day- collagists…..just keep a little notebook in my pocket onto which I can record thoughts, sketches, photos and scraps of my journey. Something my kids might like to look at in the future, when they start to travel themselves. 
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