I'm Mario, a Spaniard who moved to Sweden about a decade ago. As a lifelong stationery aficionado, notebooks have always been a part of my daily life—whether for journaling or jotting down work notes. Some of my all-time favorites come from Japan, where stationery is elevated to an art form. But as I continued importing paper from across the globe, I began to wonder: why isn’t Swedish paper, produced in one of the world’s leading paper-making countries, just as renowned as its Japanese counterpart?

By profession, I’m a software engineer, spending most of my day in front of screens. When I step away from work, I find joy in artistic pursuits, and one of my favorite creative outlets is bookbinding.

That’s how Papel Sueco came to life. It all started as a personal project—creating fine notebooks for myself, inspired by the design and quality of Japanese brands, but made with the finest Swedish papers I could source locally. After some searching, I discovered a few exceptional papers, crafted just a short distance from my workshop, that rival anything I had been importing. Now, those very papers are the foundation of Papel Sueco, where every notebook combines my passion for craftsmanship with the incredible resources of my adopted home.