The orange Rhodia pad
Rhodia was founded in Lyon, France in 1932 by two brothers, Henri and Robert Verilhac. It was one of the earliest notebooks to use thicker and fountain pen friendly paper. The paper is very smooth and easy to write on. The cover on top of the pad has three distinct lines and they are designed to perfectly fold the cover backward. The design of the notepad is simple and it hasn’t really changed much since the beginning. This iconic orange pad now comes in many different sizes and these days Rhodia has been making many other paper products with similar smooth paper in different notebooks in different colors.
While researching the history behind Rhodia pad, we were also on a huge digression. We are always wondering the original inspiration of the color orange used in many vintage stationery. We found a place that mentioned orange was a fashionable color in the 30s in France and the thick card stock was mostly in orange, which is why Rhodia went with orange. Other than Rhodia pad from the 30s, other pens from BIC, and Corvina, UNI and even Rabbit brand from Taiwan all had their earlier pens/pencils in orange around 60s/70s. Do you happen to know why the orange color? 😀 Let us know! We really want to find out!
While researching the history behind Rhodia pad, we were also on a huge digression. We are always wondering the original inspiration of the color orange used in many vintage stationery. We found a place that mentioned orange was a fashionable color in the 30s in France and the thick card stock was mostly in orange, which is why Rhodia went with orange. Other than Rhodia pad from the 30s, other pens from BIC, and Corvina, UNI and even Rabbit brand from Taiwan all had their earlier pens/pencils in orange around 60s/70s. Do you happen to know why the orange color? 😀 Let us know! We really want to find out!