Saji are pocket-sized, one-of-a-kind editioned notebooks made from hand-printed art.
Each cover is cut from a single, limited edition A4 screen-print, foil stamped, and thread-bound to 40 signatures (80 pages) of premium recycled pulp-fiber writing paper. Cover designs are based on old textile motifs discovered in a Heian-era Shingon buddhist monastery in Southern Japan. The cover paper has been carefully selected to highlight unique artefacts and inconsistencies of hand-printing, and to wear down uniquely with age, just like your favourite pair of jeans.
These notebooks will patina — just like denim or leather — as they age.
Available in dot-grid or blank pages — because everyone has their preference.
Only 250 of these notebooks will ever exist. Each notebook is individually numbered and ships out next-day with a copy of its origin story.
Product Details:
Page count: 40 signatures / 80 pages, 120gsm 80% recycled pulp-fiber premium writing paper
Page decoration: Dot grid or blank
Cover: Hand-screened by the venerable Tim King in Vancouver, BC. Individually numbered.
Binding / finishing: Foil stamped, thread-bound with duotone thread bookmark
So, What’s The Deal With These Things?
For most of our lives, objects come and go like trade winds without any real lasting effect. We buy impulsively, thoughtlessly, emotionally, and then our things, once objects of such feverish attentions, simply fade into the background of diurnal existence, landscape that we speed by heedlessly on the great freeway of life.
But every once in a long while, something surfaces in the fog for some peculiar reason.
In 2017, I found two beautiful screen-printed notebooks in a small vintage clothing shop nestled in an alleyway in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. I had been drawn in that day not by the promise of buried treasure but by the curious nature of the building. In fact, wandering the streets and alleys of urban Asian cities had become something of a pass-time for me during those years.
Those small notebooks gave me joy. They lived on in pockets and in backpacks, and as I traipsed across Asia I filled them with sketches and drawings, thoughts and to-dos. Both in physical materiality and in personal meaning, they became imprints of my life, cherished ephemera, creased with age, and textured by sweat and dirt and daily wear.
Eventually, I filled the books. The seasons turned and I left Vietnam.
I searched everywhere I went, but never found worthy replacements. I kept the old books on a shelf in my library: peculiar, beautiful relics filled with the invocations of my personal history; totems to whole stretches of time that had vanished, leaving only fallible memory in their wake.
After wandering across Asia for years, I would move back to Canada to pursue a career in design. These notebook are my homage to those little Vietnamese journals; a three-year labor of love, and an attempt to re-create a treasured belonging and share it with you.
Each cover is cut from a single, limited edition A4 screen-print, foil stamped, and thread-bound to 40 signatures (80 pages) of premium recycled pulp-fiber writing paper. Cover designs are based on old textile motifs discovered in a Heian-era Shingon buddhist monastery in Southern Japan. The cover paper has been carefully selected to highlight unique artefacts and inconsistencies of hand-printing, and to wear down uniquely with age, just like your favourite pair of jeans.
Each notebook is individually numbered, and these designs will never be printed again.
I hope you enjoy them.
