I must have had my head down because I completely missed this one. If you’ve read my blog for any length of time you know that I almost exclusively use Fabriano Paper in my hand bound journals. While I use the journals I make, there are still plenty of Moleskines, Rhodia notepads and Quattro pads around the house and it seems like they multiply like rabbits. A couple of days ago while I was browsing through a Utrecht store I discovered the Fabriano EcoQua.
The Fabiano EcoQua comes in a variety colors which include Lemon, Lime, Raspberry, Wine, Black, Blue, Stone, and Orange. A variety of sizes and binding styles are available also and i snagged the A5 size which is around 8 1/4″ X 5 3/4″. The paper inside is dot ruled with light grey dots and the pad is bound along the side with a glued binding. The front cover is a heavy textured card stock and the back cover is lightweight cardboard.
Here’s the front cover, you can see the texture and may be able to make out the Fabriano embossed into the cover.
Here’s a shot of the back cover. Not much there except for the details about the pad itself.
Here’s a photo of the binding. It’s fairly typical for a pad and is glued padding compound which is a fexible PVA adhesive. Like any other pad, you can easily pull off sheets of paper.
The pad is made from smooth 85gm paper. Side by side with a Rhodia, I’d say the the paper in the EcoQua is almost, but not quite as smooth and it doesn’t seem as opaque as the Rhodia paper either. The paper is off white and I want to say it leans toward a cool grey but that may just be the dot rule tilting my perception. The paper does take ink incredible well. I tested the pad with a Lamy Safari pen with a fine point and Pilot’s Iroshizuku Yama-Budo ink. It’s a great red-purple color and while it is a wet writing ink, the EcoQua took it without any problem. There was no feathering to speak of and it seem to dry fairly quickly. You can see a sample in the image below.
Here’s a little better detail of the ghost.
I still had some questions about the opacity of the paper so on the second sheet of the pad I jotted down some text with a Lamy Safari pen with an extra fine nib and Noodler’s Black ink. If you look closely you may be able to see the text on the second page ghosting through just about half-way down the page. Not a show stopper, but something to be aware of if ghosting is something that really bothers you.
If you’re environmentally conscious, Fabriano’s got that covered. The pad is made in Italy in an environmental responsible way that is certified by the FSC. The paper is chlorine and acid free and is recyclable.
Overall, I really like these pads and I’ve already gone back and purchased a couple more to strategically locate throughout the house and office. Since I focused on the A5 adhesive bound pad in this review, I really didn’t enumerate all the options that are available so here’s a video about the product that I found on YouTube that will give you a better idea of the other options.