Archive for Recommended
Rhodia in the USA
If you’ve ever wanted to view all of the Rhodia products currently available in the US, be sure to visit rhodiapads.com where you can also search for a local or online retailer.
Located in New York City, Exaclair is the exclusive US distributor for Rhodia products and also the other brands under the Clairefontaine umbrella which include: Clairefontaine, Quo Vadis, J. Herbin, Exacompta, G. Lalo, Brause, Mignon and Decopatch.
If you have questions concerning product availability in the US, you can submit your question here.
If you have questions about Rhodia products outside the US, please submit your question here.
Official Call for Entries for the 2012 Rhodia Journal Swap: “Favorite Things”
It’s here! Time to roll our our first ever Rhodia Journal Swap: “Favorite Things.” Interested in participating? Read on, then please fill out the form below by Jan 18th. We’d love if you would share this opportunity with your friends! Questions? Please submit via comments. Continue Readering »
The Nib Nook
This my friends, is brilliant. A bit insane, (I can’t imagine how much time this took!) but completely brilliant. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received e-mails from people asking how to choose the nib on a fountain pen. Since all nibs widths are not created equal, Goulet Pens is now offering the ability to compare the nibs of 4 different fountain pens in their new Nib Nook interactive feature on their website. Goulet notes that the writing samples are all standardized using Noodler’s Black ink on 80g white Rhodia dotPad paper which is an excellent way to compare and contrast.
Being a notorious product reviewer myself, I must add my two cents to this process. Continue Readering »
NOFO Rhodia
For one of the last treats on my Greenport vacation, I went to Aldo’s for a double expresso and one of his great pecan scones. 
Heading outside towards the back patio, I spied a large Rhodia pad with “NOFO” sketched on the cover.
Of course, I went over to say “hi” and asked, “How do you like your Rhodia pad?”
The man looked up and said he liked them, loved the feel of the paper, and wrote all his music in them. He bought them in bulk at Dunkerley’s in Southampton.
He looked familiar, and then I realized I was talking to Josh Horton, the former Supervisor of Southold Town. While he was in office he helped to save more than 1,000 acres of open space and farmland, which makes him a hero in my book. He is also a staunch advocate for the preservation of the area’s maritime heritage.
Josh Horton also plays in a band, Corky Laing & The Memory Thieves, and for the last two years has organized the NOFO Rock and Folk Fest, held at the Peconic Bay Winery in Peconic, NY. This year it will be held July 30-31. The lineup includes Foghat, Elvin Bishop, Corky Laing & The Memory Thieves, John Sebastian, Commander Cody, and several more national and local talents.
We chatted for a bit, including how much we both missed having a Dunkerley’s store in Greenport. A Staples and Office Depot were built in nearby Riverhead, and their business dried up. Happily for us, Dunkerley’s continues to boom along in their Southampton location.
Josh said he would send me a photo of his NOFO Rhodia pad, but I forgot to give him my card. Anyway, if any of you will be out on the North Fork at the time of the weekend festival, please be sure to go hear Josh and his band, and say hi to a fellow Rhodia aficionado.
NOFO Rock and Folk Festival 2011
Corky Laing & The Memory Thieves
Aldo’s -
A History of Gfeller Casemakers
More and more people write to Exaclair asking where they can get a custom leather cover for their journal or notebook. Our diaries and sketchbooks are precious possessions, and nothing lends a sense of ruggedness and individuality more than a leather cover. After all, it was made especially for you.
Gfeller Casemakers makes covers for Moleskines, and recently they started to make them for both large and pocket Rhodia Webbies. They also offer their Idaho Professional Field Folio specifically sized for the A4 top stapled pad. All their products can be seen here.
It is important to me to know the history of a company or product I plan to make my own. It will tell me about their values and character, and by extension, what’s important to other people who own and use the products. It’s that perceived kinship–past and present–that helps me to decide whether or not I want to belong to that group.
At my request, Steve Derricott, president and co-owner of Gfeller Casemakers, wrote this history of the company. I am delighted and honored to share it with you on Rhodia Drive: Continue Readering »
Rhodia & Cheese
Since I love cheese, this delightful email caught my eye…..
“There once was a family obsessed with cheese, when offered fromage they always said please! Their quest for cheese took them quite far, discovering how passionate they truly are! So they plotted and planned to bring it all home, NO longer for cheese will you have to roam! We have cases to fill and floors to mop…bringing the village a little cheese shop!” 
“My sister and I are opening a cheese shop in our home town! Alongside cheese, we want to showcase all of the products we’ve grown to love/need!”
“I love my Rhodia notebooks. From symposium notes + travel journals (aka universal pictionary) to new purveyors + tasting details for our shop, I can’t imagine jotting them in anything but my trusty orange Rhodia!”
Thank you, Lydia! Rhodia + cheese fans, Claremont, California has a place just for you! Please visit Claremont Cheese when their site is launched – claremontcheese.com – and in the meantime follow them on twitter – http://twitter.com/cheesecave.
New Pen Makers
Are pens and notebooks making a slight comeback? I have noticed that even people who manage most of their calendar and communications by a blackberry, iPhone, or some other kind of electronic devise still like to to carry around a notebook for meetings or to record their ideas, private thoughts and observations. They also carry a pen. Or two.
Along with the surge in notebook interest have come some new pen makers. Three new pen companies I am following are Edison Pen Co. in Ohio; The Goulet Pen Company in Virginia; and the Norsk Workshop in Florida. You can also follow them on Facebook: Brian at The Goulet Pen Company, Patrick at Norsk Workshop and Brian at Edison Pen Co.
I hope to get to meet each of them at a pen show in 2010, where I will leave poorer but much happier!
Do you have a new or favorite pen maker to recommend? Are you considering entering the field?
GTD+R
Kenji OHTA runs a blog called GTD+R, based on GTD (Getting Things Done), the popular action management method as applied to Rhodia notepads.
A beginner’s guide to freelancing
Phil Gyford has a checklist on making the big switch from working for someone to working for yourself.
When is something worth doing?
David Seah’s The Printable CEO does not promise to clear out your task list, but it makes you feel good that you did make progress. Setting goals around a bubble chart makes it fun too.
