About me

Photo taken while experimenting electronics with ESP32-CAM, on the first random try.

José Naranja, Madrid, Spain.

I like Asia a lot. I also like to take photos and travel. Especially traveling to Asia. Asia is great.

I used to fill notebooks and now I also make them. I guess I’m a notebookmaker. Actually it's an amazing dedication which touches many different creative fields.

I post more regularly on my Instagram account than here: @jose_naranja

Everybody is welcome to this blog.

The Nautilus Manuscript for sale

The goal of this notebook is to reproduce my journals in a way people from all the world can have them in their hands and feel the same touch, size, cover and paper than the originals.

Tittle: The Nautilus Manuscript / El manuscrito Nautilus
Size: 14 x 9 x 2,5 cm
Number of pages: 208
Paper: Vergè (laid) 100g/m2
Cover: Hard, black color and real leather
Bookbinding: Bound by hand

Produced in small batches. Check availability before placing an order.


Price: 325 EUR

AVAILABLE

Each copy is numbered and signed.

International certified shipping included.

IVA/VAT included in the price, when applied (inside European Union).
Shippings to worldwide.

How to order:

There are 3 ways:

1. Email me to naranjacorreo@gmail.com to place an order. Worldwide shipping from Spain.

2. 🇺🇸 USA customers can also buy directly here:

https://amarillostationery.com/collections/jose-naranja

Amarillo Stationery is an online shop based in USA. 

You can pay directly in USD. Domestic shipping from Chicago.

3. 🇯🇵 For Japan customers can also buy directly here:

https://wanderlustbytsl.com/collections/books

Wanderlust is an online shop based in Japan.

You can pay directly in JPY. Domestic shipping from Japan.

 

A few years after the release of The Orange Manuscript my second published notebook is now a reality.

A very personal project made with pleasure and full passion. Countless iterations to take care of every detail extended the process a lot of time. But it was worth, finally. 

When I was offered to publish it under a few of those "top publishing houses" I thought this would save me a lot of manufacturing work and headaches. However industrial process can't guarantee valuable details and accuracy. Mass production often kills the essence and that's exactly the key in this case.

Therefore I decided the production to remain full manual. This is time consuming and brings much higher costs and headaches but the result keeps the soul of my original notebooks. As I always say, making your own notebooks adds a unique and special feeling and link.

I found a small workshop with good professionals who take care of the bookbinding process, specially working with the laborious leather cover. Slow method but worth.

As for the printing I did numerous tests. I chose the best of the best and the print quality shocked me every time I see closely. Really magic! Thanks to the experimented good man from the printer who helped me a lot to manage some main guidelines in the beginning.

And the new baby is THICK.





The Nautilus Manuscript is facsimile, a replica which collects copies of my written pages from 2015 to 2019. Notes, ideas, memories, experiences and difficult to catalog stuff fill the pages. Many of these spreads can be seen in the draft or finished along my posts in Instagram. It's written mostly in Spanish and some pages in English. All full visual.

Here an overview of all the pages together and some samples:

 

 

 

I'm so happy to complete this personal project and now I can share it with the world.

Many thanks for reading.

Extra! @skybambi recorded this nice video flipping pages when she received her copy. 

You can watch it full here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CWyVTIUhu8M/

Or bellow in 5 parts:

The importance of making your own notebook

I've imagined many times my dream notebook. Too much thinking but doing nothing. However I had clear each detail in my mind: Size, thickness, leather cover, verge paper, full flat when open, etc.

Some reasons to encourage you to do your own notebook:

1. It's the only way to have it as you want. It's almost impossible to find your perfect notebook in a shop. Fortunately nowadays stores shows plenty of books with a number of brands never seen before. Most of them contain paper with non acceptable quality. If you like the paper but maybe not the cover, you get it and time later you realize it's not your perfect jewel because you see only the mistakes.

2. It's made with love. No industrial process. Everything takes energy and it's not the same if it was been created by a salaryman without any care than done with your own hands with passion. See how bookbinding is done here: http://josenaranja.blogspot.com.es/2015/07/about-bookbinding.html

3. A strong link is created with your notebook. This is the key. A mystical relation which will boost the creativity and will appear in each letter and drawing. Fountain pens note these details, you know, right?

The result can only be a beauty because it's in touch with reality.

Notebooks breathing

So many memories kept inside.
Notebooks are time machine and experiences vaults.
They are alive therefore they need to breath.

The wheel center

Big coincidence here. 

My last notebook is a mandala. Pages are connected in different ways. Some links are visible and some hidden but all of them contribute to create a new being.

The centre of the notebook is the centre of the wheel, The Wheel of Fortune. I had no idea what to draw in this singular point, too much thinking blocked me and I left this special page for the end.

The solution came in a mystical way: The universe sent me the proper information. First I drew just a circle, then I modified it into a egg shape (the egg of the creation). Suddenly it changed into a brain. Inside the brain I thought to set a big eye or a big vagina. Or a man in lotto position. 7 chakras was next natural association. Then I visited Mr. Google to check the right colors and I read "chakras" means "wheel". 

Everything goes to the same point!

Why worry too much about perfection?

An old topic. Trying to reach a level of perfection is not a good approach. Doing things fast and with a minimum of care if a disaster or, better I could say, it's random: Sometimes the result is amazing and most of the times it's not. What's the solution? There is not solution but experience helps. It will say if something works or not. To improve that superpower experiments are needed.

Perfection is not possible and not recommended. Excellence is the right way.

Here the test page, one of the last pages on every notebook I keep there to try inks and effects without any care. Now I realize it's so great and it has a touch of freedom. And it's much better than other pages.

Last tests for The Orange Manuscript: HAPPY & POSITIVE!

Good news. Last tests in a professional printing office gave amazing results. It makes me happy after so many attempts and loops looking for the best quality.

A big step in the manuscript adventure!

Teapots

Teapots are good teachers. Herman Hesse wrote a nice tale where a couch could be a teacher for eyes which are ready to learn. It shows the light, perspective and colors.

Teapots can do that too. In top of that they can talk.

Not forget to mention the power of a pencil plus empty paper. They ensure fun and a door to creativity. Accessible to everyone and everywhere. This in an important point.

Treasure box. ALERT: Do NOT use these boxes for archival conditions

I was happy to include the last notebook together with his parents, grandparents and more. The family grows. I used to keep then inside a fireproof and waterproof box since they are treasures. I always remember the fire in Peter Beard's house and the lost of many years of notebooks. Tragedy.

However while trying to protect my notebooks I was putting them into a high risk. I know now these kind of fireproof boxes are not recommendable for humidity reasons. Indeed, I did some tests tracking the moisture inside and... surprise! The humidity increases even when it's empty and filled with room air (to discard the possibility of humidity caused by the items). It comes from the wall box, materials which contain water or something similar. Fortunately I keep a silica gel bag inside and the damage was not so bad, I hope.

It looks like keeping the notebooks safe from fire will have to wait until I discover a solution.

Eau de Donau, black version

I got this by surprise. Definitely it adds another point of view of this well known spread. Blackboard style.

Last notebook completed

Written during the last one and a half year: From Summer 2014 to end of 2015.

I see the notebook as the final artwork and I'm exploring challenges beyond its usual behavior. All pages together are part of a whole element, a mandala. They have secret connections and links which make richer the information, much more than they do separately.

The Orange Manuscript for sale

After long time setting up the pages and testing, The Orange Manuscript is finally ready. A facsimile compiling 120 selected pages, copies from my original notebooks.

How could I define my undetermined writing? This artwork itself is a love letter to notebooks, a flight of fancy (as someone said) and also a part of me. A holder to keep ideas and experiences with full passion and dedication. Discover by yourself the feelings traveling along its pages.

The Orange Manuscript includes the following pages:

 

Update: Since end of July 2020 cover is made of real leather. Pages remain the same.

Tittle: The Orange Manuscript / El manuscrito Naranja
Size: 14 x 9 x 1,7 cm
Number of pages: 120
Paper: Vergè (laid) 100g/m2
Cover: Hard, black color and real leather
Bookbinding: Bound by hand

Each copy is numbered and signed.

Pages written during the period of time 2015 and earlier.

Produced in small batches. Check availability before placing an order.


Price: 285 EUR

AVAILABLE

Each copy is numbered and signed.
International certified shipping included.
IVA/VAT included in the price, when applied (inside European Union).
Shippings to worldwide.

How to order:

There are 3 ways:

1. Email me to naranjacorreo@gmail.com to place an order. Worldwide shipping from Spain.

2. 🇺🇸 USA customers can also buy directly here:

https://amarillostationery.com/collections/jose-naranja

Amarillo Stationery is an online shop based in USA. 

You can pay directly in USD. Domestic shipping from Chicago.

3. 🇯🇵 Japan customers can buy directly here:

https://wanderlustbytsl.com/collections/books

Wanderlust is an online shop based in Japan.

You can pay directly in JPY. Domestic shipping from Japan.

BITCOIN accepted. Send me an email to pay in BTC.




Digital version


There is a digital version of The Orange Manuscript in pdf to watch in screen. It’s free and you can see it or download it here or click on the PDF icon.

Feel free to share the link with other humans, aliens or robots!

10 years of Moleskine

10 years using Moleskine exactly now. Here my very first Moleskine notebook together with one of the last pages created now. Huge evolution. 

Happy birthday to me!

Close up

Going close to the detail shows a new perspective. The beauty of ink on paper.

The Poet Photocopy

Encryption experts needed! In an unprecedented gesture of defiance the photocopier located in third floor decided to disobey orders and it transformed cold technical reports into an explosion of creativity that exceeds the capacity of any human for the following reasons: 1. Increased number of characters, then huge number of possibilities. 2. Random nature. A product of a mind can never achieve what is generated in a random field. Here I put the result as a poem compared with a human generated poem (La tempranica, 1900).

The perfect studio

Here while work in progress. Now I just need to do it in reality. Some day.

About the notebook evolution

When I started to write on board of Transiberian Train the handwriting became horrible because of the train moves. I decided to stop. I was naive and my mistakes were the typical from a beginner. The evolution in the art of notebooking was teaching me step by step and at the right time every small detail which does a notebook worth. In those days missed the not straight lines kept the train essence itself and also I didn´t know the reality was the key to transfer the feeling of Transiberian experiences, in live and with fresh emotions. Since my first explorations abroad I was doing travel journals. A huge change happened when I got a book from the public library named “Travel Notebooks”. Among the authors in that book one of them kept my eye: Peter Beard. His aesthetic and obsession about notebooks showed me the way to another level and I understood the art of notebooking was an entire area to be mastered. One month later, in Summer 2007, I started a round the world trip for 9 months, my first travel using Moleskine. I had already used a couple of them in the previous months as private notes and agenda.  One thing was clear for me: It was the perfect container to store information and document a travel. Another mistake: Keeping different notebooks. I learnt later the notebook should be only one, wider than just a commonplatebook and it should be able to eat everything. A life notebook, a total notebook.

All was growing very fast and each notebook was much better than the previous one. That encouraged me to push ahead. I also learnt to improve every tiny detail from the calligraphy of letter “r”  to the final shape in the block of pages. I discovered new inks and verge paper, a milestone. Unlimited hours in my studio located in Donauwörth during Winter helped to the obsessive develop in the first Moleskine bound by myself with high quality paper. Since then I used Moleskine only for the covers. Ten years after the first Moleskine I did my own leather covers too and the notebook was 100% homemade, mandatory in order to establish a direct connection with them. The notebooks became more and more personal and also mystical. The possibilities were multiplied. Sometimes I felt admiration by Leonardo work, also about Codex Seraphinianus. If I tried to get some ideas from them, suddenly that new stuff was diluted into the aesthetic of my pages like a drop in a river. I had create my own style. Notebooks had been my teachers and they guided my along a new way. I was following that way filling the pages with extreme care and passion, more or less one notebook per year.

The pages accumulate ideas, experiences, hilarious inventions and any kind of notes. However one day someone asked me while holding one of my notebooks in his hands: “But, what´s the utility of this?”  I was not able to reply. Time later I thought if people use to buy cooking books because of their utility and among my pages there is a recipe to prepare beans, I could conclude my notebooks are useful, no doubt about it.

Filled notebooks

It uses to take me about one year to fill each notebook. Now I feel the need to find a good name for them.

Le Voyage du Mat

The journey of the fool (better say Mat) is the travel of everyone. It starts much earlier than our own existence and goes from an egg to other egg.

Tarot is an inexhaustible fountain for trained eyes.