Overall rating
Size: | A5 (A4 & A6 also available) |
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Colours: | Cohiba Brown, Cuba Libre, Havana Gold, Havana Peru, Robusto Black, Cobalt Blue, Garance Red |
Cost: | 45.83€ |
Personalisation: | Yes |
Country: | France |
Available from: | http://www.lekraft.com |
For: | Materials and build quality, industrial personality, personalised paper. |
Against: | Binding screws use more page width than traditional binding methods. |
First Impressions
This cobalt blue leather notebook from Le Kraft or “La Compagnie Du Kraft” is the first product from France we’ve reviewed. It represents everything for which the French are known – style, class, confidence and audaciousness.
The Le Kraft website is available in both French and English languages for European and International customers. This brand has a real hand-crafted boutique feeling about it, and that’s what makes it so special. Le Kraft describes its offering as unique products made with benevolence and sincerity, that are Attractive and tough, indestructible and rechargeable. Frankly we agree.
Their leather notebooks come in a range of sizes and colours mentioned above. From browns to golds, black, blue and red, there is a colour for everyone. We ordered the cobalt blue A5 product to compare with our other review products.
Our notebook arrived speedily via UPS courier and was tightly boxed. The notebook itself was tightly sealed in plastic for waterproofing during travel.
The leather is thick and strong, and the blue colouring faultless. It’s actually been vegetable coloured, and has the loveliest smell out of all our reviewed vegetable tanned journals. You can see in the photos that the leather has a soft matte finish, almost like a suede of sorts, but the artefacts and grain of the leather lead us to believe this is from top quality hide.
Le Kraft is big on personalising their leather notebooks, which we didn’t indulge in. You have the option to deboss your initial onto the lower outside cover, and also on the centre footer of every notebook page. Yep, we said personalised paper! This is another first for us here at Top 10 Leather Journals.
What first caught our eye was the industrial style screw binding screws. This gives the notebook it’s audacious “I can do whatever I like” look. We were impressed by the paper choices available at the time of order, including brown striped, white vellum, brown vellum, and then both white and brown vellum with printed lines. We chose the brown vellum with printed lines – check the gallery below.
1 Week Review
This Cobalt Blue leather notebook is compact and easy to carry around. The blue leather and brown lined paper make for a striking colour combination. The bright Australian winter sun was blasting through the window whilst we took our gallery photos, which washed the blue colour a little, but rest assured it’s vivid when seen in person.
Everywhere we used the Le Kraft Leather Notebook, people commented on the industrial style binding screws. At first we didn’t notice the engraving on each screw, but on closer inspection this was a nice personalisation.
This product isn’t heavy on features, but then again it all seems part of its’ audacious French character. We did enjoy the perforated pages, which made it easy to tear out lists or notes to share.
We also noticed a light cardboard document sleeve as the very last notebook page, which is handy for any receipts or folded documents. The book is securely held closed with the grey elastic closure strap.
Another notable aspect is that the paper sheets are lined on one side only, meaning that when you turned the page, you’ve got a lined page on the right and an unlined page on the left –the best of both worlds for creative types and heavy writers!
One cool perk of this vegetable tanned leather is that if you scratch or scuff it, you can simply rub over the mark with your finger and it disappears. This was stated on the Le Kraft website, and we can confirm it’s true.
Our only gripe (and we had to find one) with this product was that the binding screws take up about 15% of the A5 page width, making your writing area narrower. The notebook didn’t open flat like other products with ‘perfect bind’ or ‘spiral bound’ style spines.
Criteria Review
Quality
Features
Usability
Charm
Value
OVERALL
8.2
"The charmingly Parisian statement piece "
Conclusion
We love the Parisian leather notebook from Le Kraft. It’s charming, it’s classy and it’s audiacious. Le Kraft’s huge range of Italian leather colours, in traditional A6, A5 and A4 sizes, with generous personalisation options, make this a top option for buyers looking for something special. For all these reasons, the cobalt blue A6 leather notebook is the new bearer of our ‘Most Charming’ badge for 2016.
Final Note: Check the Le Kraft website for even funkier leather notebook offerings and designs, some of which can be seen in our gallery on this page!