The Notebook
Introduction
- The founding story of Moleskine reminded me of why I started Open Atlas in 2020, which ultimately failed. Moleskine has such a strong branding that people were willing to pay a premium and buy seemingly more notebooks than they would actually use.
3. Drawing
The sketchbook also allowed an artist to develop their own style and repertoire, an additional memory bank that collected a body of material to refer to at a later date.
And take a note... with slight strokes in a little book that you should always carry with you... preserved with great care; for the forms, and positions of objects are so infinite that the memory is incapable of retaining them, wherefore keep these sketches as your guides and masters.
In one gallery, they actually had a notice which said, 'No Sketching.' How obnoxious! I said, 'How do you think these things got on the walls if there was no sketching?'
- "Hockney's telling point is that it is not enough merely to look at a work: if an artist wants to learn from it, they need to make their own record of it, and in doing so, come to fathom it better."
4. Zibaldone
- Gregorio Dati wrote down his promises:
1 January 1404
I know that in this wretched life our sins expose us to many tribulations of soul and passions of the body... I also see that since my birth forty years ago, I have given little heed to God's commandments. Distrusting my own power to reform, but hoping to advance by degrees along the path of virtue, I resolve from this day forward to refrain from going to the shop or conducting business on solemn church holidays... Whenever I make exceptions I promise to distribute alms of one gold florin to God's poor. I have written this down so that I may remember my promise and be ashamed if I should chance to break it.
We should note, too, that the labour involved in copying out a chunk of literature changes the way the copyist relates to it. Transcribing a poem or letter forces the writer to read it multiple times, paying attention to the fine details of word selection and word order, and to consequently enjoy what one scholar calls 'a more intimate and meaningful experience than they could have with purchased texts'. You only take on the significant labour of such copying if you really enjoy the text, and you then find that you come to know it and appreciate it much better.
6. England
- “the Italian practice of using a zibaldone as a storehouse for ideas, references, quotations, and whatever random thoughts seemed useful.” (pg 92-93)
8. Luca
- Fra Luca copied and compiled mathematical concepts into a book in layman terms (pg 106):
Fra Luca wrote informally, in Tuscan, not Latin, making it accessible to anyone with a basic education.
- 4 business notebooks (pg 107):
And one of the first lessons that its aspirational readers digested was that every business needed at least four blank books - the memoriale, or day book, the giornale, or journal, the quaderno, or general ledger, and a book for correspondence - and maybe even a fifth, the squartafoglio, or waste book. These had to be properly kept to avoid 'great trouble and confusion'. Your fortune depended on your notebooks and on how well you used them.