Needs no introduction. Worldwide icon of lifestyle notebooks and stationary. Legendary and contemporary. Moleskine started off with a small plain black notebook, but succeeded to expand the collection into an outstanding alternative for the giant heap of run of the mill, mediocre and uninspired paper ware. They even do stylish reading glasses these days and cedar wood pencils.

THAT COMPANY CALLED IF

IF is a leading trade gift supplier of book accessories and impulse-purchase gift ranges.
Founded in 1996, IF was created as a company dedicated to the design of products for the gift and toy industries. After 15 years of progress, IF now employs over 50 staff and distributes gifts to over 70 countries. Typical IF products are book holders and book lights. The Electronic Dictionary Bookmark was winner of the Gift of the Year 2011 Award.

CRUMPLED CITY MAPS

The crumpled city maps have been designed as soft, light, but strong, waterproof objects,
which can be quickly ‘crumpled’, rolled into a ball, and thrown into one’s bag. The design plays with people’s behaviors and gestures, allowing them to do something that is usually ‘forbidden’, which is to scrunch up a crisp document. The collection of maps includes: Berlin, London, New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome and more. Each one comes with its own carrying pouch.

BIS PUBLISHERS

Bis Publishers is known best for their reinvention of the traditional memory game. Contemporary themes are used to create memory cards that inspire. Imagine beating your opponent by memorizing striking examples of street style fashion, or remembering pictures of real and fake designer furniture.

ROSIE FLO

Roz Streeten, the graphic artist behind Rosie Flo: ‘The Rosie Flo colouring books evolved through hours of sitting and drawing with our daughters when they were small. They gave me instructions as to what I must draw and each time I promptly obeyed. With twelve colouring books now in the range, all on different themes and some with unusual paper stock, we have also introduced postcards, posters and a beautiful colouring fashion show to construct’.

URBAN GRIDDED NOTEBOOK

The modern city is controlled by the grid – We should not let it control our creativity. A blank notebook and sketchbook that is gridded with 127 cities from all around the world.
Great for urbanists, architects, designers, artists,… everyone who enjoys urban areas.
Begin to realize the possibilities of cities while taking notes; or map your travel in a city… The possibilities are open to create anything within the modern city grid.

THE BEAT GOES ON

Calendarium of Deceased Musicians 2012. 420 Pages, linen-engaged hard cover with gold embossing, rounded corners and ribbon. About 1300 deceased musicians are waiting to be honored. Life as a musician is not always as safe as it seems on the surface. One faces drugs, conservative terrorist groups, non-grounded microphones, abuse of hand weapons, jealous wives or the capacity of your liver.

BOOK DARTS

Book Darts are precision-cut, paper-thin metal line markers that attach easily to any page.
To use, place Book Dart at desired line, close book and press in. Sliding a Dart onto a passage
assures you can recall it easily even in a closed book.

Blue Q: ‘Our legendary level of materials and craftsmanship is standard equipment on everything we make, whether it is a lip balm, lotion or decorative notion.’ They should also mention their shoppers, overnighters, water bottles, chewing gum and even paper lanterns. You name any object. Chances are that Blue Q has its own unique and charming interpretation of it.

ACCOUTREMENTS

According to themselves Accoutrements is ‘the world’s premiere wholesale supplier of amazingly awesome toys and novelties. Other companies shake in fear at the astounding breadth of our mighty product line.’ They have a point there. Year in year out they keep supplying Cortina with a never-ending stream of funny artifacts. We never stop laughing.

MAGNETIC POETRY

In 1993 Dave Kapell, founder of Magnetic Poetry, was suffering from writer’s block while trying to compose song lyrics. To overcome this problem, he wrote down interesting words on pieces of paper and rearranged them, looking for inspiration. Dave decided to glue the words to pieces of magnets and stick them to a pizza tin. Anyway. Over three million kits with magnetic word tablets were sold since that fateful night.

UNEMPLOYED PHILOSOPHERS GUILD

UPG is a school of thought that brings the world a statistically significant more philosophically appreciated range of products than other schools of thought. Recently, revisionist historians have pinpointed the birth of the Guild to the time it was still cool to live in New York City’s Lower East Side. Two brothers turned their inner creativity and love of paying rent towards fulfilling the people’s needs for finger puppets, warm slippers, coffee cups, and cracking up at stuff.

WORLDWIDE COMPANY

A horrifyingly omnifarious collection of original gifts. Plasters that make people laugh. Portable art kits that allow people become an artist overnight. Origami sets, stick-on tattoos, bicycle shaped paperclips and pill shaped pillboxes that make great presents.

NATURAL PRODUCTS

This company has an unnatural creative power for inventing amazing beauty-products. Facial care, body wash, tissues, lip balm, hand cream, Natural Products gives all these an original and contemporary twist. Ever seen an owl-shaped, blue, dispenser for hand cream that makes you smell of lavender? Well, seek no more, hurry to the nearest Natural Products dealer.

SILICON SMARTIES

Money in your pocket? That’s not very smart. You’d better put it in a purse, pouch or moneybag. Luckily they make them soft and colorful these days. Silicon Smarties come in several bright and cheerful colors. They look good enough to eat, but we advise strongly not to give in to that impulse.

JENNIE MAIZELS

Don’t worry. You do not need needles, pins and yarn to attach these patches to clothes. Any hot iron will do. Jennie Maizels makes cloth plasters to serve every disposition. The soft-of-heart ones can choose the sweet birds on the blossoming branch. If you like to gamble in life, you’ll love the flaming dice patches.

Cortina introduced many brands in the Netherlands  and some of them even in Europe. Brands, sparsely known by the time of their introduction, that found their way into the hearts of a growing number of devotees. Among these brands and products you will find Moleskine notebooks with their traditional aura, Blue Q bags with designs made by graphical artist from all over the world and our recent addition of the silicon purses by Silicon Smarties. There are many spectacular brands in the Cortina portfolio but all brands have something important in common: authenticity.

Our product portofolio is hard to grasp. Most of the products could as easily fit in a bookshop as in a concept store. For convenience sake we split them up in two groups: book related and gift related products . Have a look around or make use of one of the many ‘tags’ you will find around the site.

In november 2008 Cortina established their new headquarters in an outstanding new building in trendy Amsterdam-Noord. Our storage and dispatch  facilities are now better reachable then they used to be on the old location in the centre of Amsterdam.