Cambridge Imprint Hardback Notebooks are inspired by the slim patterned German Insel-Bücherei books of the inter-war period. (In the United Kingdom, King Penguins had a similar design, and later on Ladybird books shared the same format.) They have 80 pages of lined cream paper, sewn properly and bound into a slim, light hardback notebook, covered in our patterned paper, that opens completely flat.

Each notebook measures 18.5 cm tall by 12 cm wide. The front cover has a rectangular cream label.

This pattern is a reconstruction and reproduction of a hand-block printed textile by Enid Marx, which covers a chaise longue in the permanent collection at Compton Verney. Enid Marx was a pattern designer and illustrator whose career spanned much of the twentieth century: a contemporary and friend of Bawden, Ravilious and Angus, and an apprentice of textile printers Barron and Larcher in the 1920s. This paper was created on the occasion of the exhibition ‘The Pattern of Life: Enid Marx and Modern British Design’ at Compton Verney in 2026. In reproducing the pattern we tried to preserve the rhythm and spontaneity of the infinitely various interconnected lozenges created by Marx’s free printing style. Marx called this design ‘Fairy and Stipple’.