Small black notebooks with rounded corners were the MacBooks of Paris-based artists and writers like Henri Matisse and Ernest Hemingway in the late 19th and early 20th century, but it wasn't until the mid-1980s that travel writer Bruce Chatwin called them Moleskine notebooks.

In 1997, a small Milanese publisher brought them back to life and this week the Moleskine company, now a manufacturer of digital accessories as well as upmarket stationery, listed on the Italian stock exchange – the first company to join the main Milan market since cashmere brand Brunello Cucinelli a year ago.

Luckily for Moleskine, given the economic crisis in Italy, it sells 90 per cent of its products in other countries.