We have cut twelve new colours across three Italian leathers. Seven of them are Pueblo from Badalassi Carlo, four are Buttero from Conceria Walpier, and one is Freedom, also Walpier. Each exists in both shapes we make — the standard cover and the trifold wrap — and in A5 and A6, which is twenty-three product pages and one page that is waiting on a reshoot.
This is a long piece because there is no short way to say what a colour does. A swatch tells you where a hide starts; it does not tell you that Pueblo Oliva loses its gold wherever your thumb sits, or that Freedom goes paler when you bend it rather than darker. Below: what each leather is, then every colour, then which of them is the wrong choice for you and why.
Pueblo
Pueblo comes from Badalassi Carlo in Tuscany. What makes it different is mechanical rather than chemical: the grain side is brushed instead of polished, so instead of a smooth face you get a dry, slightly fibrous surface that catches light unevenly and never shines.
That surface is the point. A Pueblo cover arrives looking as though it has already been somewhere. Handling burnishes it — the fibres lie down, the tone deepens, and a thumb rubbed over a scratch usually takes the scratch out. The change happens exactly where your hands go, so within a fortnight the spine and the front corner are ahead of the back panel.
It is dyed through with no coating on top, which is why it never develops the glossy worn patches finished leather gets at the corners. At 2.0–2.2 mm, it feels soft from the first week and breaks in quickly.
Seven of the twelve new colours are Pueblo. Their brushed surfaces record handling clearly, so they are the wrong choice if you want a cover that stays put.
Prugna Pueblo — plum
Prugna is plum, and on Pueblo it arrives looking dry rather than rich — a wine-dark tone with a dusty cast over it, because the surface is brushed and the raised fibres scatter the light instead of returning it.
It is the colour that changes least dramatically and most steadily. Handling lays the fibres down and the tone drops into a deeper wine wherever your hands go: the spine first, then the front corner. A scratch rubbed with a thumb usually disappears into the nap. Nothing sits on top to wear pale at the corners, because the dye goes through the hide and there is no coating over it.
If you want a dark red that never looks lacquered, this is the one. If you want it to stay exactly as it arrives, no Pueblo will do that.
Prugna Pueblo Leather Cover · Prugna Pueblo Leather Trifold Cover
Oliva Pueblo — olive
Deep olive with a gold cast in the nap. The brushed fibres catch the light and throw back something warmer than the base colour, and it moves as you turn the cover — which is why photographs of this one look brown on some days and bright green on others. In the hand it is neither.
Handling flattens the fibres and takes the gold with them, leaving a darker, denser green along the spine and the front corner while the back panel stays as it started. On a trifold that happens quickly because the flap, fold and spine all pass under your hands.
Its changes are easy to see, so it is the wrong colour if you want a cover that looks the same in a year.
Oliva Pueblo Leather Cover · Oliva Pueblo Leather Trifold Cover
Rosa Antico Pueblo — antique pink
Rosa Antico is Badalassi Carlo's antique pink, and on this hide it lands closer to a warm coral than to anything you would call pink. It is a soft coral rather than a dark or saturated shade.
Pale colours on Pueblo travel further than dark ones. The burnishing that shifts Prugna by a shade takes this one toward a dusty terracotta, and the split follows your hands closely enough that within a season the cover reads as two tones rather than one.
It also shows things. If a mark on a pale cover would bother you, Prugna does the same job without the record-keeping. If the record is the point, this is the leather.
Rosa Antico Pueblo Leather Cover · Rosa Antico Pueblo Leather Trifold Cover
Napoli Pueblo — naples yellow
A deep mustard-amber — Naples yellow in Badalassi Carlo's naming. Because the surface is brushed rather than polished, the raised fibres scatter the light and the panel reads less like a flat yellow and more like a lit one. It changes noticeably as you turn it under a lamp.
Where a cover is held the fibres go down and the scatter goes with them, so the tone moves to a denser, browner gold. The spine leads and the rest catches up over the year. Nothing here can flake or crack along the fold, because the colour is in the leather rather than on it.
On a desk with five other notebooks, this is the one your hand goes to. That is either the argument for it or the argument against it.
Napoli Pueblo Leather Cover · Napoli Pueblo Leather Trifold Cover
Ortensia Pueblo — hydrangea
Badalassi Carlo named this one after the hydrangea, and the name is doing real work: it is green under warm light and blue under cold, and the brushed surface makes the shift more obvious than a smooth hide would.
Vegetable-tanned leather usually drags blue-greens muddy, because there is tan underneath everything. Pueblo is dyed through deeply enough that this one holds, and the tan shows as depth rather than as sludge. Where the cover is handled it drops closer to petrol; the panels you do not touch stay where they started.
It is difficult to photograph honestly. Expect it to look different in your hands than on your screen, in both directions.
Ortensia Pueblo Leather Cover · Ortensia Pueblo Leather Trifold Cover
Nazionale Pueblo — italian blue
Nazionale is the classic Italian blue, and on Pueblo it comes out closer to slate than to ink, with the tan of the hide showing through the colour. It is not the flat navy of a coated leather — greyer, softer, and it moves with the light.
Matte navy is rarer than it sounds. Most dark blue leather goods are shiny within a year, because the finish that made them blue polishes as it wears. This one goes the other way: it deepens toward slate exactly where hands sit, and the rest stays dry and even.
If you were going to buy black and found black boring, this is the cover we would hand you.
Nazionale Pueblo Leather Cover · Nazionale Pueblo Leather Trifold Cover
Nero Pueblo — black
Most black leather is black because of what has been sprayed onto it. Pueblo is dyed through and then brushed, so this one is black the way a stone is grey — the colour goes all the way down, and the surface keeps a grain you can see.
It stays flat matte across the panels and picks up a low sheen only where your hands work: the fold, the flap corner, the edge you open it from. On black, that sheen is the only thing that tells you the cover has been used at all.
Its dark, even surface is forgiving. Small marks are hard to see and need no explaining.
Nero Pueblo Leather Trifold Cover
Buttero
Buttero is Conceria Walpier, vegetable tanned and certified by the Consortium. We cut it at 2.2–2.4 mm — thicker than most notebook covers are made from, and the reason a Buttero cover stands up on a desk instead of slumping around the block inside it.
The surface is smooth satin with a tight grain you can see and barely feel. The colour is dyed through the hide rather than sprayed onto the face, so a scuffed corner shows more leather, not a pale patch of something underneath. There is no topcoat, which means there is nothing that can crack along the fold.
It darkens slowly and evenly, and it takes a clean foil impression. Four of the new colours are Buttero.
Red Buttero
A saturated true red, dyed through the hide rather than sprayed on the face. Under the dye is vegetable-tanned leather that keeps working, which is why this red does not fade toward pink: it goes deeper, and a shade browner at the corners, over the first year.
It is bright and deliberately hard to ignore, and that is the reason to buy it. If you would rather it were not, Burgundy is the same leather with none of the noise.
Red Buttero Leather Cover · Red Buttero Leather Trifold Cover
Walnut Brown Buttero
The mid-tone brown most people picture when they say leather notebook, with the grain visible under the colour. Familiar and understated, it works easily with a daily notebook.
Because it starts mid-tone, the first year reads as depth rather than transformation. The spine and the front corner go darker, the flat panels follow, and at no point does it look like a different cover from the one you bought. It is also the colour that lets the construction show — on a trifold, the crease worked in beside the burnished edge is the first thing you notice.
Walnut Brown Buttero Leather Cover · Walnut Brown Buttero Leather Trifold Cover
Burgundy Buttero
A deep burgundy on smooth Buttero: near-red under a window, plain dark brown under a lamp. Dyed through, so the edge you burnish is the same colour as the face.
It is practical. Marks that would show on natural or on a pale dyed hide disappear here, and the darkening over the first year is subtle enough that the cover looks much the same at twelve months as at one. Gold foil is easy to read against this dark colour — worth knowing if you are ordering initials you want visible across a table.
Burgundy Buttero Leather Cover · Burgundy Buttero Leather Trifold Cover
Olive Buttero
Olive with a lot of brown in it. Green on vegetable-tanned leather never stays pure, because the tan underneath pushes it warmer, and we would rather say that out loud than have you discover it in month three.
In practice: it arrives olive with a yellow cast and travels toward moss, and daylight speeds it up. Two olive covers a year apart are not the same colour, and neither of them is the colour on the screen in front of you. On a trifold it opens onto a pale matte green — the flesh side of the same hide, never dyed and never coated — and the two greens move further apart as the outside ages.
Olive Buttero Leather Cover · Olive Buttero Leather Trifold Cover
Freedom
Freedom is also Conceria Walpier, but it behaves nothing like Buttero. It is a pull-up hide: the colour is carried in oils rather than fixed in a flat dye, and pressure moves the oils.
One of the new colours is Freedom, and it is the loudest of the twelve in terms of what it does over time — even though it is a plain dark brown to look at.
Brown Freedom
Freedom is a pull-up hide: vegetable tanned, then loaded with oils and waxes that carry the colour. Bend it and the oils move aside, so a paler tan line appears along the fold against a dark ground. Let the cover rest and the line fills most of the way back in.
That is the whole behaviour of the leather, and it is not wear. On a cover the stressed places are known in advance — the spine, the corners, and the flap edge on a trifold — so those are the lines the leather draws. The oiled surface also swallows the ordinary scuffs a bag inflicts, which means what ends up showing is the shape of how you carry it rather than the shape of what happened to it.
If you want a cover that stays uniform, this is the wrong hide, and we would point you at Buttero instead.
Brown Freedom Leather Cover · Brown Freedom Leather Trifold Cover
Two shapes, two sizes
Every colour is made as a standard cover and as a trifold. The standard cover is two panels and a modular elastic through the spine, and it will hold two or three thin notebooks depending on their thickness. The trifold adds a third panel that folds over the fore-edge — 70 mm of it on A6, 100 mm on A5 — so the block stays shut and the pages stay flat however the bag gets thrown around.
A6 covers are 158 mm tall and 250 mm wide open, closing to about 120 mm; the trifold is 320 mm open. A5 is 220 mm tall and 350 mm open, closing to about 170 mm; the trifold is 450 mm. Sizes are matched to the notebook block, not to the cover, and about 5 mm goes into the fold itself.
The notebook is held on an elastic cord running through the spine, so the block has to bend around the cord. That means softcover notebooks — Midori MD, Stalogy 018, Hobonichi Techo and Cousin, and most sewn softcover journals. Hardcover notebooks do not fit, whatever the outside measurements say.
Personalisation
Up to ten characters, free: initials, a name, a date or a short word, in gold foil, silver foil, or blind debossing with no foil at all. It goes in the bottom right corner of the front panel. The SLOWLINES logo is stamped in whichever finish you choose for your text — gold with gold, silver with silver, blind with blind. We do not mix the two.
Ready to Ship
Check the Ready to Ship section for the finished A6 pieces currently available. These covers are already made, 10% below the made-to-order price, and out of the door in 1–2 working days instead of 5–7. The logo on those is already stamped, so if you want a different foil for your text, message us before ordering and we will tell you which finish that particular cover carries.
See what is finished and waiting
Which one is wrong for you
If you want a cover that looks much the same at the end of the year as at the start, choose a dark Buttero: Burgundy hides marks well. If you want a surface that records the way you hold it, Pueblo in Oliva or Rosa Antico makes that change easy to see, especially on a trifold. Freedom behaves differently: it goes lighter where it bends before it goes darker anywhere.
None of these leathers is finished with a coating, so none of them can crack or peel. What they can do is change, and the whole argument for buying one is that you want that.