Stationery Sunday – Silvine Originals

Stationery Sunday – Silvine Originals

Silvine notebooks bring back lovely childhood memories.

I would walk down to the village shop with my £1 weekly pocket money and purchase a 25p mix of sweets, a can of fizzy pop, a Silvine Exercise Book and a pencil. (Yes, £1 went a long way back in the 1980’s!).

Back at home, I would sit at the kitchen table with my Silvine Exercise Book and write stories and poems. Occasionally, I would just doodle.

It would always be a Silvine Exercise Book. It was only a small village shop, set in what had once been someone’s front room. A wonderfully vintage-looking shop with rows of jars of boiled sweets lined up on shelves behind the counter. The Silvine Exercise Books were on a shelf just by the door and just within my reach.

Sadly, the shop has long since gone and the owner retired and recently passed away, but memories still come floating back.

Silvine Originals

As soon as I spotted the Silvine Originals collection, it brought back memories. I just knew I had to give them a go! So, I am grateful to Silvine for sending me the Memo Book and Note Book to try out and review,

These Silvine Originals books are of a higher quality than the Classic Exercise Books I used to buy. It’s like Silvine has used the Classic range as a base and then perfected it with these Silvine Originals books.

Each Silvine Originals book is made in the same factory, using the same machinery that has been making Silvine books for 6 generations. They are made using paper sourced from a British independent paper mill which has also been producing quality paper for 6 generations.

Silvine Originals Memo Book

There is no doubt, Silvine is an iconic British brand and, unlike so many others, it is still made in Britain. It is a brand to be proud of!

The covers of these Silvine Originals use a wonderfully sturdy 300gsm², red dyed card. It is colour matched to the 1960’s bold red and wire embossed like the original finish (before my time!). Inside, there are 52 pages of 90gsm² Natural White Wove paper – perfect for writing or drawing on.

Silvine Originals Memo Book

When writing in my Silvine Originals Memo Book, I’ve been using my Lamy Vista fountain pen with Diamine Shimmering Blue Lightning ink and I’ve had no problems with show-through or bleed.

The pages have been perforated to make it easy to remove any pages if necessary. The spines are hand-stitched with fully finished ends, meaning the stitching won’t unravel and the pages are held together well.

Writing inside the Silvine Originals Memo Book

At 159 x 97mm, the Silvine Originals Memo Book is the perfect size for carrying around with you and is ideal for making notes, taking down contact details and writing down ideas. I’ve used mine to hand write this blog post, before typing up the final draft.

At 190 x 125mm, the Silvine Originals Note Book is a great size for sketching, putting ideas to paper and doodling.

I love that the Silvine Originals come with a bookmark giving details about that particular book. You can never have too many bookmarks and they come in handy for marking your place in the book.

The Silvine Originals books are a little pricey compared to the Silvine Classics range equivalents, but you will feel the difference in quality.

If you want new stationery with a vintage feel to it, try out Silvine Originals. You won’t regret it!

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Please note: The Memo Book and Note Book were provided by Silvine in return for an honest review.

12 comments

  1. Kelly says:

    I’ve never heard of this brand, but being from the US, that’s not surprising. I like the perforated edges for tearing out – much neater than if using a spiral bound notebook.

    I like the bookmark, too! You’re right… one can never have too many of those. 🙂

  2. Jo says:

    I love Silvine books. Like you, I remember them from my childhood. I know Wilkos still sell them but I assume they’re the Classics range rather than Originals.

  3. Hi Nikki,

    This post brings back some happy memories, although I CAN remember the classics range of books, although the idea of the new updated perforated pages is a nice touch.

    I haven’t handled a fountain pen since school either and didn’t know that you could buy all those fancy coloured ink cartridges. My favourite pen was my italic writing pen, as that portion of my junior school English lesson, was my favourite and one I was actually very good at. I can still remember the rule of thumb about the rounded portions of the letters reaching half way between the lines of the paper, with the tales travelling the full distance between the the lines.

    In fact, I still keep in touch with that junior school English teacher, Mr. Miles, who is now well into his eighties and he still has all the old school class photos and can pick me out straightaway, although I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing!

    I love notebooks and bookmarks, so I shall be on the lookout for this trip down memory lane 🙂

    Yvonne

  4. Jasmine says:

    I didn’t have these notebooks growing up in the states, but they sure do look cute! They remind me of Moleskin notebooks. And your handwriting is BEAUTIFUL!

  5. rashbre says:

    I recognise the brand, although these do look rather smarter than my memory of them which was a sort of pulp-based soft cover and a brownish paper. No perforations either!

    Still, its good that they are still a going concern!

  6. Fatima says:

    I’m a huge fan of notebooks and stationery things. Jotting down to-do lists and ideas for blog posts are always fun in my book — pun intended 😉

    PS You have lovely handwriting!

  7. Mike says:

    Great post — thanks for sharing. It seems we’re about the same age, and my memories of Silvine are very close to your own. I remember that same trip to the shop, and the agonising decisions about what to buy with that precious pound coin. Did I have enough pages left in my current book to last me the week? Could I use that money instead for stickers? For a six-year-old, it was a tough decision.

    Whenever I’d visit my dad’s office, I’d be sure to take nothing with me because, if I was empty-handed, Annie the receptionist would take pity on me and open the stationery cupboard and produce a memo book and a Noris pencil to keep me occupied. Sometimes she’d produce a Silvine cash book — it looked the same as the memo book, but had extra columns in it that meant nothing to me. Still, I was thrilled to have saved that money off my next “shopping trip”!

    She’d also give me a brown envelope stuffed scrap paper to take home. Mostly offcuts and sheets from accounting pads, but sometimes plain A4 or green-lined listing paper. I remember staggering home once clutching a half-full box of yellowed listing paper that she’d found and which fitted none of the dot matrix printers they had. My dad, not entirely keen on yet more stationery coming home, made me carry it myself if I wanted to keep it. I’d cut down the manila folders she gave me to make her “thank you” cards.

    She was very tolerant, and put up with me as I rifled through the things on her desk and looked perplexed at the pages of shorthand she’d written whilst taking notes. I copied her habit of drawing a vertical line down the centre of the page for a while, though it didn’t make any sense if you didn’t write shorthand. Sometimes she’d get me a paper cup of juice made up from powder, which seemed like black magic to me at the time.

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