Walk into any stationery shop in France and you’ll see an extensive array of these beloved notebooks. Here, we are offering the spiral-bound version of the classic composition books introduced to French schoolchildren in primary school; the notebooks, in various bindings, sizes, and colors then become seemingly indispensable for decades to come. In cafes, you’ll see adults writing in them; in grocery stores, consulting them; they’re pulled out of briefcases, purses, and backpacks; they’re on desks in libraries and in bookstores. Anywhere someone needs to write something, there seems to be a Clairefontaine notebook.