New REGALIA Paper from Endless Stationery: As Good as Tomoe River?

This is a video about "Regalia Paper", a new paper from India. I got an unexpected package in the mail from Endless Stationery last week. They're not a sponsor... they didn't ask for a review. I don't know how they got my address, but I'm glad that they did: they sent two notebooks with their new "Regalia Paper".
The first was an Endless Recorder hardcover with Regalia paper instead of the Tomoe River 68gsm that they've been using for years. The second was a desk-pad called a "Creative Block", basically a tear-off notepad with dots on one side and plain (with a logo) on the other.
So, as you'd expect, with a new paper that I don't know anything about, I decided to run it through a battery of tests: I tested it for sheening, shading, feathering, bleed-through and ghosting, and I also did a cursory test of how much it picks up the oils from my skin and rejects ink (which is a problem I sometimes have with Cosmo Air papers).
= INDEX =
0:00 Intro: Regalia Paper
2:00 Endless Recorder Basics
3:17 Regalia Paper Basics
4:00 Writing: First Impression
4:44 Ghosting No.1
5:07 Sheen
8:55 Bleed Through No.1
9:12 Shading
10:36 Feathering Tests
12:48 Feathering & Bleed Through
13:45 Availability
14:49 Fingerprint Test
16:13 Conclusion
= MUSIC =
The bulk of this music in this video is by Kevin MacLeod.

[@MarysInks]

I must be a hardcore stationery nerd. I was riveted!

[@thewetpen]

Well Mary, I must say that if you have your own channel for discussing pens and inks, then I was probably staring pretty hard in your direction when I made that comment ;-) Glad you enjoyed it, though!

[@sounavaghosh]

Thanks for the great review!

[@breadyegg]

Thank for the review. It matched my own experiences vs TR68. Basically great performance in all the benchmarks. Another thing I noted was how crisp the lines were on Regalia. Even under a loupe the edges of letters have no distortion or warping at all. With TR68, the edges of lines are a little warped or lumpy. I'm assuming this an effect of the fibre of the paper. It was like Vector Art vs a GIF (for the nerds out there). There is that drag you mentioned but I also noted that the line width of the pen on the Regalia goes maybe a half nib-size up. eg. a Fine nib looks like a Fine-Medium.

[@thewetpen]

Agreed... I get the same effect with Cosmo Air papers and Regalia: the nib makes such complete contact with the paper that the line width is a bit wider. That's fine with me, I use broad nibs anyway to show off the color of the inks I use, but it's definitely worth mentioning!

[@kenmillman8591]

Love your videos. Informative and relaxing!

[@thewetpen]

Thanks Ken :-)

[@TheDormousesDesk]

Fascinating! Thanks for doing this work. I’ll have to check out this paper at some point.

[@thewetpen]

Yes, I had been waiting patiently for someone to make notebooks out of Cosmo Air Snow, and these are just as good or better. I do hope they make some soft-cover notebooks, though.

[@fossilimprint2954]

Fascinating, you did quite a bit of work and I appreciate all the comparisons.

[@thewetpen]

Glad it was useful!

[@parasmehta5313]

Thank you for this!

[@KevinNYank]

Really glad you covered the hand oil issue from Cosmo Air! This is the #1 problem I've had moving from TR68 to Cosmo Air. I wish Regalia had done better on this, but it's good to know either way, especially with the fresh news that Cosmo Air paper is being discontinued!

[@thewetpen]

Hey Kevin- this was the first I'd heard of Cosmo being discontinued, thanks for the info! Now I'm deciding whether or not I want to stock up at all 🙂

[@roxiesossa3210]

Great video Matthew! Thank you for your incredibly thorough & exhaustive testing. You rock! I placed my first Endless order today. Looking forward to trying it out! LOVE the music btw!

[@thewetpen]

My pleasure :-) I'll have to listen to this video again to see what music it was...

[@CamsCampbell]

Great video. I'm ordering a Regalia pad now from Nero's Notes UK

[@hansspiegl8684]

Very interesting and helpful - thank you for your work!

[@thewetpen]

Glad it was helpful!

[@donaldgoerig6171]

Love the Seattle shots!

[@thewetpen]

Thanks! I shot that footage for a video that I still haven't made... though it's not completely abandoned, yet :-)

[@AtilioEscobar]

Best paper review I've seen to date.

[@thewetpen]

Glad you found it useful!

[@freddymoisesgarcia]

Thank you for this great video! You have a new subscriber now.

[@thewetpen]

Hey Freddy, thank you! Glad to have you here on the channel!

[@MarshaLove0723]

Thank you, for your through and informational paper testing! I'll have to pick up one of these notebooks to play with.

[@thewetpen]

Hey Marsha! Thanks for spending half of your day watching it 🙂

[@MarshaLove0723]

@@thewetpen Ha! If they get 'too long', we can always break up the watching into multiple segments. Bring it on! 😂

[@deltaavatar6249]

Excellent review Thank you :D

[@thewetpen]

My pleasure! Glad you found it useful :-)

[@davecharvella4854]

Excellent, as always. As an aside; I know we both love our Ranga pens, but if you haven't tried a Lotus, you really need to. They have become my new favorite from India. Superior craftmanship to Ranga and in my experience, superbly tuned nibs "right out of the box".

[@thewetpen]

Hey Dave, thanks! I actually have been looking at Lotus pens myself, recently. They are a bit more expensive (for Indian pens), but some of them look absolutely gorgeous, and more refined that most hand-made Indian pens.

[@thewetpen]

I ended up getting a Lotus Everest. It's gorgeous :-)

[@jamesaritchie1]

Lotus????? I have to admit that Lotus has never appeared on my radar until I read your post. I'll look into it. I greatly prefer gold nib pens, and I'm now selling off the large majority of my steel nib pens. I went more than a little insane during the Covid lockdown, and boredom combined with fountain pens and inks with terrible results. I had as couple of TWSBI pens before the lockdown. Now I have twenty-eight. I bought a number of other brands, as well, some of them, such as the Opus 88 pens, three of them, Benu, three of them, seem pretty expensive for pens with steel nibs. But I am still open to select, unusual pens with steel nibs. I am, for example, keeping my Benu Talisman Dragon's Blood with a green background. But I'm getting rid of my Opus 88 pens, and about a dozen of my TWSBI. I like all the pens I'm getting rid of, but I have too many that I bought out of boredom. I want to be much more selective with steel nib pens, largely because I like to use all my pens, and I have a dozen pens with gold nibs that I use the large majority of the time.

[@MariaRosseau]

Really interesting! Thanks for the thorough testing. You convinced me to get some Cosmo Air Snow to try out. Made my own journal, using TRP 68, Yamamoto Bank Paper, and Cosmo Air Snow. While I love (old) TRP 52, I don't love TRP 68. I do not like bank paper AT ALL except for the sound it makes when it's crinkly with writing and ink. I also like Snow better than Light, because heck yes to white paper, inks just pop more. But I'm not sure I love that feeling of like... I dunno, writing through a marshmallow.

[@thewetpen]

I'm going to have to watch your journal making videos... that's something that I've really wanted to do, but haven't managed to do get. It's the sewing of the signatures that puts me off, I think. :-)

[@MariaRosseau]

@@thewetpen Oh if you want to get into it, I recommend someone like DAS Bookbinding - he really knows what he's doing.

[@thewetpen]

@@MariaRosseau There's a good chance that I've seen his videos, and a bunch of others. But sometimes it takes just one last one to push me over the edge to trying something 🙂

[@jamesaritchie1]

I don't like any TR paper. And I don't like any paper that is crinkly. Cosmo Air all feels draggy to me. The marshmallow analogy is a good one. It does feel better with a lighter than normal touch, but that's hard to maintain.

[@yankeegonesouth4973]

"...you have to be a pretty hardcore stationery nerd to stomach a video like this one” Hmm... Maybe I have a problem. Well, confession is the first step. ;)

[@ilikepens]

Another good one buddy!

[@thewetpen]

Hey Dustin! Thanks 🙂

[@TymberJ]

I stumbled into the Regalia paper a few months ago, and the Endless Recorder notebook instantly became one of my favorites. Amusingly, my main take away from this video is that I really should check out the Cosmo Air Snow/Light... I like the "heavier" 80 gsm weight compared to TRP, and I honestly think it shows off the inks just as well. I will say that the finger/hand oil sensitivity is real -- I've been using it as a planner which has meant I come back to the same page repeatedly over the course of a week. If there's a spot I've handled a page repeatedly, it will show if I then write over it, where TRP and Midori are both much more forgiving of that amount of hand oils. But as long as I keep a sheet of blotter paper with the notebook as a hand rest that mitigates most of it.

[@thewetpen]

I did a video about Cosmo Air Snow a couple of months ago, which you might find interesting :-) I agree... I really like the feel in my hand of a heavier, less crinkly paper. After continued use of the Regalia, I'm still having less trouble with the oil issue than on Cosmo, but it's not a huge problem for me either way... my hands tend to be pretty dry, though.

[@watchin-stoof988]

Wow you’ve got a lot of notebooks - please list your top 3-5!! For me Midori MD, Bank Paper, Tomoe, and Life Noble are top 4 in no particular order

[@thewetpen]

So... my favorite paper at the moment is probably Midori MD, except for the fact that I prefer white paper. Also near the top of my list would be the CD Notebook Premium notebooks, Cosmo Air Light, the Takasago notebooks with bank paper, and Yu-Sari. Also, a few years ago, Colorverse released their Nebula Notebooks, and they were made with Tomoe River OR "Japanese Paper". I don't know what that means, but it's good... I like it.

[@watchin-stoof988]

@@thewetpen appreciate the fast reply! I love Midori MD and considering US pricing they’re really the best. Thankfully I like cream paper on my eyes. I have an MD Cotton which is white but haven’t tried it yet. I haven’t heard of a couple you mentioned so I’ll look into it; especially Bank Paper options. I only know if Paper Mind for now but those are not priced friendly haha

[@watchin-stoof988]

@@thewetpen are all Takasago notebooks bank paper or no?

[@thewetpen]

@@watchin-stoof988 I'm not sure... I just discovered them a couple of weeks ago. So far so good, but I've only got the one notebook

[@watchin-stoof988]

@@thewetpen all good, I’ll risk it and try one - thanks!

[@animula6908]

You talked me into it.

[@asexualatheist3504]

Thanks for your content. I am always looking for fountain pen friendly paper.

[@thewetpen]

My pleasure! Glad you found it interesting :-)

[@cpccohen]

I've never seen anyone shoot paper testing/ink testing as well as you. I wonder whether the impression that Regalia rejects hand oils better than Cosmo might be due to the order in which you pressed your fingers to the circles. If you pressed your finger to Regalia after you pressed it to Cosmo, then Cosmo might have soaked up some of the oil, and so gotten a larger load.

[@thewetpen]

Thanks :-) It's hard to tell in the video, since I rushed through it a bit (the video is still almost 20 minutes long), but for the hand oils testing, I never used the same finger twice. I started on the TR with my thumb and first finger, then went middle and ring finger, then used my other hand for the last one. It's still quite possible that my fingers were not all equally oily, and this was just a cursory test, but the results did match my experience with the papers more generally.

[@TheOldRedBike]

Thank you for an excellent review! I definitely want to try this paper. What I'd like to know now though is: What is that black and silver pen that you show at 17:00??

[@thewetpen]

Ahh, that's an interesting little Indian fountain pen made by V'Sign called the Proton Flora. It cost about $15, and is really lovely... and tiny, about 4.5 inches long, capped. It's great to carry with my passport-sized traveler's notebook.

[@TheOldRedBike]

@@thewetpen Thanks! I appreciate the reply and the info. Keep up the great videos!

[@ameliabuns4058]

I'm so salty that bermingham doesn't ship to canada! Also Sei-Boku is one of my fav inks :) it sheens red on a lot of papers too. it's the only sheening ink that's usable in real life for me outside of playing, all the sheening inks smear when dry. even some normal inks do that, but pigment inks are basically bullet proof no matter what you do to them, I can even lay my hands all over them xD we need more pigmented inks!

[@jamesaritchie1]

I have mixed feelings about pigmented ink. Some things I love about pigment ink, and some things I hate. Many of the inks that smear when dry do so because of the paper, not because of the ink. This is one of the main reasons I am not a fan of Tomoe River, and some other paper that tries to copy TR. Pigmented ink is certainly useful, but it can be impossible to formulate it to produce some of the properties most love with dye based ink. I've also seen pigment ink make a pen stop writing when the ink was left in the pen too long, and create a true cleaning nightmare when the ink actually dried up in the pens. We recommend cleaning a pen that is filled with pigmented ink THOUROUGHLY every two weeks. You really do have to be careful with pigmented ink. It is not all created equal, and some of it should never be put in a fountain pen. Anyway, I'm all for more pigmented choices. SAFE choices. But other than very occasionally using Platinum Carbon Black for some oddity, I'm nearly always content with dye-based inks. It does everything I need or want to do, and with fewer potential problems.

[@michaelreed649]

This is my kind of video. Your information is a great help. I subscribed, but have not done a deep dive into your prior videos yet. Off subject, Perhaps you could point me towards a couple of inks? I want some sheening inks that behave well. I don't clean my pens out as often as i should so an ink that is not difficult to maintain would be important. Also, while my latest notebooks are Cosmo Air, i take notes for class on either a rhodia notepad or HP premium 32. The inks would not need to show sheen on these lesser papers but feathering with class notes is undesirable. I am less worried about a particular color than the ink having some interesting qualities. Do you have any suggestions?

[@thewetpen]

Hey Michael, glad you're finding this stuff useful :-) There are lots of good sheening inks out there, luckily, and most of them are well behaved when it comes to feathering and bleed through, since they tend to be slow-drying to enhance the sheen. Some of the heaviest sheeners are the worst behaved, so I'd stay away from the Organics Studio inks for daily use... they don't always dry completely and they smear quite a bit, but I've had really good luck with my Diamine sheening inks, especially the ones from the original Inkvent Calendar series (blue)... these would be Diamine Polar Glow, Holly, and Festive Cheer. Oh, and Seasons Greetings. Diamine really know what they're doing, and they're not too expensive (especially if you buy from the UK... Cult Pens or Pure Pens, for example). That said, one of the things that makes sheening inks sheen is that the dyes in them are more concentrated, so they will take more time to wash out of your pens, but it's nothing that a good soak in warm water won't take care of. I'm also a big fan of Colorverse Supernova, and all of the Krishna sheening inks. Good luck!

[@michaelreed649]

@@thewetpen thank you for the suggestions. I have been looking hard at Polar Ice, and Colorverse inks. Having others support that idea makes me ready to buy. I knew to get Pelikan pens from Cult Pens but did not know about Diamine Inks from England as well. Thanks for that tip!

[@thewetpen]

@@michaelreed649 Oh, I'll have to check out Polar Ice myself, then. I like Colorverse, they're just a bit expensive. Actually, as much as 10x the cost of a bottle of Diamine from Cult Pens. Pure Pens is also good for Diamine, Dominant Industry, and Rohrer and Klingner.

[@poopookhan1261]

Thanks for a great review. I too bought the Endless with Regalia after using their explorer with TR paper previously. Frankly I don’t like it. I find while I agree with your evaluations of feathering etc, there is one thing I noticed which I noticed when looking at your video too. While it’s not truly feathering the letters look much broader on the Regalia than TR or Clairontaine. So if you are like me using Bs and Italics or Stubs the letters get very Broad on Regalia compared to their FP friendly. So while not technically feathering there is some spreading for kcal of a better expression. Would love to know your thoughts and experience on my observation. Thanks,

[@thewetpen]

I certainly understand what you're talking about, some pens do write a little broader on Regalia (and Cosmo papers) but I don't think that it's spreading... it's the fact that the surface of the paper is softer than others like Tomoe River, so a larger part of the ball of the tipping material makes contact with the paper, so the line is broader. I definitely have that effect with Cosmo papers, and to a lesser extent with Regalia. Personally, I most commonly use B and BB nibs because I like the wider lines that show the colors and shading of the inks that I use, so I enjoy the fact that the lines are a little broader on these papers, but I don't have the same experience with sub nibs or other flat tipped nibs... they end up being about the same as they would be on other papers. But that seems to be how it goes with Cosmo paper, and now Regalia.... some people really like it, and others really don't. Good luck finding something that you prefer!

[@poopookhan1261]

Thank you for the fair, thoughtful and balanced response🙏🏽

[@carlyw.5538]

Subscribed! Which gorgeous ink was used in the Fingerprint Test?

[@thewetpen]

Hey Carly :-) I believe that is a Krishna ink called "Sea at Night". Krishna inks are usually available at Pen Chalet, and there are several others places that stock them now and then... and they can be ordered from India, directly from the company (but it doesn't save you any money).

[@estycki]

I just got into fountain pens this year and I was scratching my head why the top of the paper was writing great but the bottom half crapped out... and what you said is the conclusion I came to, is I have oily hands and it was oiling up the page. I ended up using one of those fingerless gloves at some point. Watch someone come up with fountain pen writing gloves.

[@thewetpen]

There's a type of glove made for digital artists who draw on a tablet screen... it just covers the bottom half of your hand. I have one but never actually use it.

[@estycki]

@@thewetpenThat's the glove I actually have and used, it's for drawing on the tablet ;) it does the trick but it's a bit slippery.

[@red2432]

Nice, i see they have them at goulet pens also.

[@thewetpen]

Oh, nice! I see that they have the Endless Recorders. Hopefully the Storyboards show up soon... I want to see how they fit into one of my covers.

[@ameliabuns4058]

What's your favourite paper overall? like you don't have to pick one :) I'm loving this paper from this review, but I'm not sure where to find them in other formats, I wish they had loose sheets

[@thewetpen]

That's tricky. This really may be my favorite paper, along with Cosmo Air Snow. It would actually be Midori MD, if I could regularly find it in white... but since it's always cream, and I love bright blue inks, it just can't be my favorite. Some of the papers in Japanese CD notebooks are great, but I can't find them outside of A5 notebooks... no loose sheets, maybe not even A4.

[@jamesaritchie1]

@@thewetpen My favorite paper depends on what I'm using the paper for. Oxford Black n' Red for a journal is easy. I use Apica notebooks for projects because the format is perfect. Clairefontaine loose leaf for writing letters. Walmart Exceed notebooks/journals with 100gsm paper for all sorts of things where cheap is good, and they contain pretty good fountain pen paper. I use Rhodia 90gsm Rhodiarama notebooks for a different kind of journal, but I use the 80gsm Rhodia wire bound for a hundred things. I go through them fast. I also have what I guess could best be called an "illustrated" journal. I use the largest, thickest mixed media wire bound art paper book I can find when I need a new one. I've found that it is much easier to write on art paper than it is to draw and paint on writing paper.

[@geslinam9703]

I just don’t get the love for the Cosmo paper. I can appreciate how nice inks look on it, but the process of writing on it just isn’t pleasurable for me. And as you said, anything absorbed from your hands ruins the surface. The Endless Recorder paper isn’t bad, but still not like the original TR. I don’t like Rhodia, or Clairefontaine. Ayush too toothy for my taste. Same with Midori. Just ordered a paper called “Iroful” which is made by Sanzen, can’t wait to get it, though I’m not getting my hopes up too much…

[@thewetpen]

I don't mind the soft surface of Cosmo... especially since I tend to write with broad nibs, which make it less cushy. I do mind the oil absorption, though. Ayush is good but a little heavy and not white enough for me. I've never been a fan of Tomoe River's feel and sound (though I do appreciate its performance) ... so it's not too hard for me to give up. I just got back from Japan, where I did see some Iroful, but didn't get a chance to use it with anything but a glass pen in a shop, so the jury is still out on that one for me... it's in the mail for me, too. Looks good so far. I'm also a big fan of the paper in C.D. Premium Notebooks, and Yu-Sari Notebooks seem good so far, but I haven't tested them thoroughly yet... I just bought two of them a few weeks ago.

[@geslinam9703]

@@thewetpen I read one description of Iroful that said it was like a cross between TR and Cosmo…

[@geslinam9703]

@@thewetpen did you get your Iroful paper? Mine came today. It’s not like Cosmo, and not as smooth as the original TR. if I had to compare it, I’d say it is like Leuchtturm (sp??)….slightly absorbent, but no fuzzing, nice sharp edges, and no bleed thru at all, not even with the broad wet nibs I’ve tried so far. Shading not as nice as on TR, or Cosmo, and the grid is only on the front, not the backs of the loose sheets I ordered - but I definitely like it.

[@thewetpen]

@@geslinam9703 Not yet... mine is supposed to arrive tomorrow or Tuesday. That all sounds good to me, except for the shading :-) I'll have to see how it sheens, too... absorbent papers don't usually sheen well, but maybe it isn't absorbent enough to matter.

[@geslinam9703]

@@thewetpen I don’t have a lot of inks known for shading…but the ones I do, you do get some shading, just not as much. That might be different with inks you have. I’ve been using Diamine Polar Glow, which has sheen, and I’m getting some, using medium, broad and stub nibs. It’s a very pleasant paper to write on, and I’m noticing that finer nibs that feel drier and scratchier on other other papers are very smooth and feel wetter and put down a broader line on this paper. I like it, glad I got it, will definitely use it.

[@jamesaritchie1]

Unlike most, I was never a fan of Tomoe River. I don't like ghosting, for one thing. I really don't like paper that makes most ink dry on the surface. Surface dry leave dye on the surface, and even high humidity can reactivate this dye years later and cause some pretty severe smudging if the notebook is opened and reread. I also don't like how easily it creases, or how long it can take for some inks to dry on it. It's even difficult to use blotting paper on it because it's easy to remove too much ink this way. Too, bulletproof inks work by soaking down into paper and chemically bonding with the cellulose fibers inside the paper. Because Tomoe River keeps ink on the surface, or tries to, bulletproof ink can smudge days, weeks, or even months later, even after all the water in the ink has evaporated away. One of the biggest factors is that I really, really do not like shading. I know we're all supposed to love shading, but to me it just looks like a sloppy mess, like the ink is coming from a cheap pen that is dry half the time, and leaking the rest of the time. I know the majority of non-fountain pen people feel this way. Until they start using fountain pens and everyone tells them that shading is not a bug, it's a feature. Microsoft, anyone? Much of this is my age. I'm old enough to remember when no one liked ink that "shades". It was considered cheap, poorly formulated ink that only the very poor would buy. Then the marketers took over, and suddenly shading was a good thing. It really comes down to what I write, what I want to preserve. I do keep a Tomoe River notebook on hand for testing purposes, but that's all. I'm not going to use Tomoe River for anything I want to preserve Longterm, and I think it's too expensive to use for writing I'm just going to throw away hours or days after I write it. There are a LOT of fountain pen friendly papers out there now, and I think I have most of them. My old favorite is Black n' Red. I use the regular A4 casebound Black n' Red for testing ink, and for writing articles, short stories, etc. I use the Oxford Black n' Red as my personal journal. I started using the Oxford Black n' Red as for a journal in 1969. I think it had been on the market for only a year or two, and it was the ONLY fountain pen friendly paper to be had where I lived. I was only sixteen, and simply had no way to find such things. Oxford Black n' Red costs about twice as much as the regular Black n' Red notebooks/journals, but I think it's worth it. And the Black n' Red spiral bound notebooks the sell contains some of the best paper I've ever used. Oxford Black n' Red sells a number of notebook and paper formats that people in America seem largely unaware of for some reason. Anyway, for me, "as good as Tomoe River" is not necessarily a good thing.

[@XtianApi]

Endless leather cover isn't true a5? Nooooo. Why? Make that stop wetty wet

[@hayden6752]

𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐦 💦