Tag Archives: Confidant

Review: Baron Fig Lock and Key LE Confidant and Squire

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Let’s start this review off with a statement about the internals of the Confidant and the Squire- they are exactly the same as any standard edition. The Lock comes filled with BF’s dreamy creamy paper with enough tooth for all your penciling needs and enough coating to pair with almost any fountain pen. This paper is where it is at for both graphite and ink. The pale gray dot grid is a tad narrow but disappears into the background of your writing. Perfection. The Key is loaded with a Schmidt P8126 refill and the standard spring loaded twist mechanism, that works smoothly.

The Key (Squire) is machined out of solid brass and is uncoated which lends itself to forced patina as well as natural patina via use. The weight is more than double a standard Squire despite the extra weight the pen is still ridiculously comfortable to use. Because of the balance of the pen being toward the front end, I don’t find that it tires my hand at all in use. I’ve spent several days working on characters and an outline with the pen and filled many composition book pages with it. The pen is perfectly comfortable.

The Lock (Confidant) is covered in dark forest green fabric that reminds me of Maine Balsam Fir trees at dusk. The debossed maze on the front and back cover lends a layer of structured tactility that begs for the cover to be stroked. The end sheets are printed in gold foil that matches the bright brass of the Key. The subtle linen texture of the end sheets paired with the smooth foil is a lovely touch. Again, it’s tactile and I find myself absentmindedly stroking the pages. The ribbon bookmark is golden in color and typically about an inch too short for my taste.

The pairing of the Lock and Key in terms of look and color is perfect. The gold of the brass on the dusky forest green is a perfect combination. The brass shines against the deep green color and looks great. The combined tactile nature of the Lock and Key is fantastic. I want to pet my journal and fiddle with the pen. The weight of the pen is great and the whole package feels good in the hand. Continue reading →

First Look: Unfinish Baron Fig Limited Edition Confidant

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I have to admit, when Baron Fig contacted me with an offer to review this Confidant I wavered. I love the Confidant for so many reasons, but this, this Unfinish business, well, it’s controversial. I missed out on Askew, and admit I thought that one was a little silly. But oh my the social media crankiness was delightful. So in comes Unfinish, delightfully weird and a dash wacky all printed up in non-photo blue. No weirdo lines, just little images that aren’t finished. If you doodle this might be your dream journal. If you just want a Confidant you can write in, don’t fear, the printing is pale enough that it disappears behind your writing- whether you use blue or black ink or graphite. There are no lines just unfinished little images throughout the book. You need lines? Hit up The Well Appointed Desk for some printable line goodness. I find the little images kinda cute and silly. If I wanted a journal to doodle in with a bit of a prompt, this would be a good choice. Some of the images remind me of Keri Smith’s “Wreck This Journal,” i’m not sure why, but they do. It also reminds me of Dada and Fluxus, and a bit of surrealism. Look up Hannah Hoch for more Dadaist goodness. Unfinish sports all the same goodness that all Confidant notebooks have- solid fabric covered hard covers, smythe sewn, quality paper that is FP friendly and nice with pencils, and a too short bookmark.
In short, it is a lovely, if quirky, notebook or journal. It won’t fit the needs of some folks, and will likely incite passionate debate in the stationery forums, but for those who will love it, they will do so with excitement.

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First Look: Baron Fig 2018 Planner

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This planner begins with a Baron Fig Confidant base- a solidly built grey notebook. In this case medium, or flagship size, with a charcoal gray cover. Flagship size is 5.4×7.7 inches or 137x196mm with 192 pages of toothy but fountain pen friendly paper. The paper is off white. All ruling is light grey.

Inside the planner is where it differs from the Confidant. There are different sections, starting with a year overview, followed by month at-a-glance, then week + day view, and finally a notes section with dot grid ruling. As I’ve mentioned, the ruling is all light gray. For me, it is perfect- it disappears behind the inks and pencils I use most often, while being completely visible in regular light.

Depending on your use- the week + day view might be perfect. I’m in a profession where I need to schedule myself by the hour on the hour- so I needed to add in times to each day. I looked for self inking stampers but found none that would work for the available space. I picked up (and was gifted) a few number stamps as well as to do list stamps. Combined with an acrylic block I am able to stamp each week and day with 9am-7pm along with lines. This lets me schedule clients and easily see which times are open. In the past I didn’t need to have the hour marked out and this planner would have worked really well for me. I like the generous openings for each day with smaller spots for weekends.

The month at-a-glance is useful for planning vacations, paydays, and other activities. I also found the year overview useful to track vacations and days off. In the monthly section I used rubber stamps to label holidays and days the office is closed. I then used these to easily find the same dates in the weekly planner section to also easily label those same dates. This way when it comes to scheduling, it’s easy as can be.

I had never used rubber stamps in a Confidant before, and there are some important things to be aware of. First if you are stamping something with a lot of “black” area and you are using a REALLY juicy wet stamp, it will soak through to the verso. It stops short of completely soaking through but it is visible. Because the paper is good for fountain pens, it does take a really long time for pigment in to dry. I used a blotter sheet while I was quickly working, and even after an hour, the in was still wet. Use of a heat gun to dry pigment ink is totally necessary. Stick to fast dry ink pads or keep your heat tool handy.

Because the paper is so good for ink, ink looks amazing on it’s creamy surface. I have been very pleasantly surprised by how nice the stamp inks look. I’ve used red, teal, indigo, and pale teal and it all looks wonderful. The cream paper does darken everything by a shade or two. But it looks great. The stamps are crisp and edges neat, except where I used too much pressure. I’m able to write names into the lines easy as pie, and the ink looks great. Pencil also fairs well enough. Once the stamps are set pencil erases off the page and the stamp is still strong and vibrant.

Overall, with just a first look at this, and basically setting up the planner for use next year I’ve found it to be pleasant and well built like any Confidant. A year in my bag will tell me how well the cover stands up to abuse and coffee, but based on my use of other Confidants I suspect it’ll fair just fine. As with any planner if it will work for you is really based off the week at-a-glance layout as the bulk of the planner. I suspect I’ll be using the Saturday and Sunday spots for to do lists as I keep my outside-of-work life separate from work.

You can find the planner here.

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First Look: Baron Fig Limited Edition Confidant Raspberry Honey

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The Baron Fig LE Confidants have fresh covers wrapped around quality innards.Their newly updated paper stock is thick, has some tooth, is decent with fountain pens, pencils, gel, rollerball, ballpoint, and other inks. There is minimal bleed and show through. Feathering? The new Baron Fig paper doesn’t even know what feathering is, bro! The dot grid pattern is pale enough to fade into the background, which I adore. The book block is Smythe sewn and done well- I have no glue creep or loose stitches in mine. The creamy off white paper is great for long writing session and journaling. This paper is great and I love it.

They have changed up their limited editions a little bit, in this box there is an included booklet with a short 16 page illustrated short story called… Raspberry Honey. The illustrations from the story adorn the box and the end sheets. Which is a lovely touch. The cover of RH is brick red or as BF calls it maroon. The color is dark enough that dirt and dust won’t mark it up easily. It will gather cat and dog hair, so if like me you have light colored dogs, well, all that hair will show. The cover is debossed with little bees all over. They are precious and tactile. It is a really different cover from the previous Metamorphosis edition. And I love it. I love feeling the little bees under my fingertips but know that they aren’t felt when I write on the pages of the notebook. The color on this one is hard to photograph. I tried my best to capture it, but you know every monitor is different. It looks good on mine.

Sadly, the ribbon book mark is still about an inch and a half too short. It is a lovely shade of pink that reminds me of raspberries and cream, or rosé.

You can get one at Baron Fig’s Website here.

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Review: Baron Fig Metamorphosis Confidant

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The Metamorphosis is a really well done journal. It sports a nice hard cover that is covered with a nicely textured linen (or similar) bookcloth in very light salmon aka Millennial Pink, the end sheets are bright blue. It feels awesome. The spine is flat and opens relatively flat. It’s Smythe sewn like most journals of this style and this gives the journal quite a lot of flexibility and strength. I have not found any loose stitching in my Metamorphosis. It sports a bright blue wide cotton poly blend ribbon that is heat sealed to prevent fraying. It’s a tad too short for my preference, I’d like a full 2 inches protruding from the bottom of my book, but this has less than an inch. This makes it hard to use as a place marker and for opening the notebook. Unlike other journals of this style there is no elastic or pocket in the back. More on that later.

The paper inside is cream colored with grey dot grid or ruling if you chose that option. The dots are quite large but spaced 5mm apart. The gray of the dots is light and they fade into the background of my writing no matter what tool I’m using. BF doesn’t disclose the weight of the paper but it’s a decent thickness without being cardstock heavy. Most of my fountain pens performed relatively well on the paper with a minimum of bleed and soak through. There wasn’t a great deal of show through either. You can comfortably write on both sides of the page and have no problems reading it all. That last 12 leaves/ 24 pages (an entire signature) are perforated so you can tear them out. It does take quite a lot of effort to tear them out so no worries on them working their way loose. The paper is smooth but has enough tooth that it is wonderful with pencil. I actually prefer it with pencil over pen- even fountain pen.

The linen cover, like any linen cover, attracts dust and a bit of dirt. It shows up especially on this pale salmon shade. That said, I like the look as it wears in with use. As I’ve used the journal and bent back the spine repeatedly, it now sits flat on a desk but doesn’t close as well as it once did. I have giant rubber bands I use to hold it closed, but that’s not totally needed. I adore the paper and the color of the dot grid, I do wish that the dots were a tad smaller.

Overall I really like this journal and I know it won’t be my last Confidant, I’ll definitely be back for more. I do not miss the inclusion of the back pocket- a addition I rarely use in journal in which I write. However in an art journal I would miss the pocket. Once the book has been opened a few times the cover has difficulty staying closed, hence the large ass rubber band you see in my pics. It holds my Metamorphosis closed. It’s ugly crepe rubber but I love it. I bought a giant box of them and use them all the time. I as looking for some that were FN “bands of rubber” size, but ordered the huge version. I like them anyway. I digress. I love my Confidant. Perhaps Baron Fig can add a nice braided or woven elastic pen/cil holder to their stable of accessories? 

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