Best fancy paper for fountain pen writing?

[Toolattack]

7 minutes ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Somewhere I found and wrote it down...perfection...nib, ink and paper....I sure wish I knew where I stuck that piece of paper.

 

Don't worry too much - I can't even remember my kid's names most of the time!

[antares1966]

On 3/9/2023 at 6:47 PM, amper said:

 

Good paper persisted into the 2000s-2010s, but it's all gone now that Strathmore and Crane & Co. have been sold off.

 

Crane & Co. made the best stationery paper in the world, but they exited the retail market in 2015 to focus on their currency paper manufacturing. The stationery business was sold off to the employees, then purchased by Mohawk in 2018, only to be shut down in 2019. They are apparently functioning again, but they no longer sell retail packs of the papers that made them famous: Crane's Crest, Bond, and Thesis papers.

Strathmore Writing still exists in its 25% cotton form, no longer the 100% cotton. There's a new "Strathmore Pure Cotton" line that is 100% cotton, but I haven't tested it. The Strathmore stationery papers aren't made by the Strathmore Paper Company, any longer. Strathmore was sold to Mohawk in 2004, and then the artist lines were sold to Pacon in 2006. Mohawk is a big paper company that has been around for a long time, so the current papers are probably still good.

One other good mention is Southworth Thesis Paper, which is still available at retail in the 100% cotton version, I think. It was never quite as good as Strathmore, let alone Crane, but it's of excellent quality and fully archival.

+1 for Crane stationery.

 

I still have a small amount of a couple or three stationery sets from years ago, some of it did feel like writing on a bank note!