About the journal
Bookbinders is not a bindery catalogue, though the name has fooled more than one searcher. It is the continuing voice of a Brisbane stationery shop that opened a website in 2014, waited on Iroshizuku, posted Midori refills as letters, and later kept a counter at Aspley on Gympie Road.
Image: Kgbo. CC BY-SA 4.0. See the image credits.
The old site spoke in the first person plural of a small shop. It announced shipping adjustments as if they were news, because they were: two Traveler's refills could travel Australia Post as a letter for a couple of dollars if you knew how to pack them. It treated a tasting journal from 33 Books Co. and a Word notebook from the United States as arrivals worth a paragraph. It sold TWSBI demonstrators so a customer could watch the ink, and it sold sealing wax so a birthday parcel could look like a parcel.
This publication keeps that register. We write long, in Australian English, for people who already own a pen and for people who are about to. We do not pretend to be a shop floor any longer. We are a journal that grew out of one: practical about climate and postage, sentimental about paper, and unwilling to let a “digital detox” become a slogan detached from the object that makes it possible.
What we cover
Fountain pens, filling systems and nibs. Bottled ink in a hot house. Traveler's notebooks, Midori MD, Leuchtturm1917, Field Notes, and the dated diaries that actually start in January for the southern hemisphere. Paper that behaves. Travel kits that survive a glovebox. The analog habits that still earn a place beside a phone. And the Australian counters — Brisbane first, then the rest of the map — that still keep these things in stock.
Read the topic hubs, the editorial standards, or write for us if you have a piece that belongs here. If you only wanted the shop hours, they are part of the archive now, and the contact desk is still staffed.