Image of the week: Moleskine notebooks

Photograph: Reuters / Alessandro Garofalo
Photograph: Reuters / Alessandro Garofalo

Small black notebooks with rounded corners were the MacBooks of Paris-based artists and writers like Henri Matisse and Ernest Hemingway in the late 19th and early 20th century, but it wasn't until the mid-1980s that travel writer Bruce Chatwin called them Moleskine notebooks.

In 1997, a small Milanese publisher brought them back to life and this week the Moleskine company, now a manufacturer of digital accessories as well as upmarket stationery, listed on the Italian stock exchange – the first company to join the main Milan market since cashmere brand Brunello Cucinelli a year ago.

Luckily for Moleskine, given the economic crisis in Italy, it sells 90 per cent of its products in other countries.

Laura Slattery

Laura Slattery

Laura Slattery is an Irish Times journalist writing about media, advertising and other business topics