Friday, September 19, 2014

Mysterious Pocket in Cherry

Today, the postman finally brought me the Filofax I had traded with a nice lady in the US.
It is a pocket size, cherry red (some say it's raspberry) coloured binder without a name. Just the mystery around it is what made me go for it. So, without any further ado, here's my take on the Mysterious Pocket in Cherry.

Two of the first things I noticed were:

a) It doesn't look like a Finsbury:
The grain on the Finsbury's leather is different and more textured, harder to the touch, if you will. Not to mention that the dye of the leather is done in a way that is not uniform, so the wrinkles of the leather will be slightly lighter than the grain.






b) It is not leather:
I'm so accustomed to touching leather, that as soon as the bonder was in my hands, I could feel it wasn't real leather.
This is hard to explain for me, as not only is it a tactile experience, but also how it looks and how it sounds when I pass my fingers across it.



The way the strap wrinkles when stretched out, and the feel of these wrinkles.
And of course, the smell. It has many scents I cannot pinpoint, but among those, leather is not one of them.

Inside layout



On the left, the layout reminds one of the Finsbury, with the mesh ID slot, the card slots at the top, and the full length pocket. Except this one only has two, rather than the three card slots, like the Finsbury. 



In the place of where the thirds slot should be, there is, stitched, a piece of textured PVC leather with the Filofax logo embossed. The piece that has the slots and the mesh isn't textured, but plain PVC.


On the right, there is only a notepad pocket. All this is done in a form of nylon. 


The pen loop is not elasticated and it is also made of the same PVC leather. Markings under the strap read "JGT".




This binder is indeed a mystery to me, as there is nowhere to find the name of the model.
It does have the usual F on the spine and the logo on the ring mechanism. But that is it. Even the 3 letters on the strap don't give me any clue, except maybe, that there is no letter L to signify 'Leather'.



Oh, and just last night I found one exactly the same on Ebay. It also didn't state the model.

Let's hope one day I'll be able to know more about this nice binder. :)