Some notebooks ask you to adapt to them. The de KEMPEN asks nothing of the kind. Designed and made by Brepols in Turnhout, Belgium, a bookmaking house with roots stretching back centuries, it is built around one straightforward idea: a notebook should simply get out of the way and let you write or draw.

The cover is flexible and light, so it travels easily and opens without resistance. The lay-flat binding takes care of the rest, holding the pages open across the full width whether you are left-handed, right-handed, or somewhere in between.

Inside, 90 g/m² FSC-certified cream paper gives you a smooth, unhurried writing surface. Ink absorbs quickly, pages do not bleed through, and the warm cream tone is noticeably easier on the eyes than bright white paper. Choose ruled pages for the structure of numbered lines, or plain pages for an open canvas.

Each colour in the de KEMPEN range has its own marbled endpaper, drawn from an authentic Brepols design preserved at the National Museum of Playing Cards in Turnhout. The detail is quiet and deliberate, much like the notebook itself.

A ribbon bookmark keeps your place. A subtly cut corner at the base of the cover is a small nod to the Brepols missals from which this notebook takes its lineage.