17. Oxford Optik Paper – 80 g/m2
Oxford is often recommended in the community, they make the Black n Red notebooks (with 90 g/m2 Optik Paper) but also offer their Optik Paper in A5 pads (80 g/m2 version) that look exactly the same as Rhodia pads. They even call it officially “orange notepads”.
Anyway, we’re here to talk about paper and not naming schemes. I got an A5 sheet from one of their pads, it’s 80 g/m2, a really nice white paper. I think the paper is actually pretty good. It offers nice shading, good sheen (all three inks), excellent ghosting and bleed-through resistance and honestly I can’t complain about the writing experience either. So on paper (heh) this seems like the perfect paper, yet (and I don’t know why) I just don’t feel it. I don’t hate writing on it, in fact I think it’s great writing on it, I just enjoy writing on other papers more for some inexplicable reason (maybe it’s the squared ruling! I dislike squared).
VERDICT: Definitely a good paper for fountain pens. Highly recommended!

