My Serendipity with Fountain Pens

      I know that to most people, stationary isn’t something that would really draw your attention, but for a nerd like me, it always turns my head. I can walk past a street full of nice food and boutiques with a wallet full of money and spend nothing more than a plate of dumplings in hand, but I may empty my wallet if I get into a fine stationery store. Among the myriad branches of stationary I am extremely partial to writing instruments, and among them, fountain pens especially. I wish to simply share with you how I fell under the spell of fountain pens, and my humble collection. For they are my greatest delight, and oh, what a joy to write with them!

     Fountain pens aren’t normally the type of things that can be seen lying around the place. How did I even get my hands on one of them?

     It was the second semester of my junior year in university. I was taking this course on marketing, and the professor asked us to investigate a manufacturing company, analyze its pricing strategy, strengths, weaknesses, and so on. I was searching for a decent mechanical pencil at the time, and I found a company, Lamy, that makes pencils just the way I like it. This was before the professor handed us the assignment. So I thought to myself, “Why not?” and chose the company as the subject for my presentation. Business school students tend to pick industrial giants for presentations of the sort, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but listening to the same awesome stuff a company did in three respective courses really dims the awesomeness. Even Steve Jobs would seem mundane. I was already tired of that, so something different works for me. Something that interests me greatly, and something that most people don't really pay attention to.

     I started my investigation, and I soon found myself staring admirably at a modern, sleek pen set in my palm. A little bit of background knowledge for people who's new to the pen hobby: Lamy is a young German company founded in 1930, grew to prestige in the 1960s, and is now one of the major pen manufacturers in Germany. I got these the fountain pen and pencil set from a fabled fountain pen shop in Taipei, I remember reading loads of pen-related literature online before I paid the actual visit, and I still seem so amateur, luckily the shop's service was extraordinary, and the pen set cost me little more than one thousand dollars (that's roughly 35 USD ). I inked up the pen, while marveling at the novel (to a pen rookie, of course it's novel) inking mechanism, the cartridge filler. I put the nib to paper, and I knew immediately this is something I won't put down or away for a good long while. I inked up again later that night.

     Why do I fell in love with fountain pens almost instantly? I suppose it’s because I like the extraordinary feeling I get when I set the pen nib on paper. The term “go with the flow” is a perfect description of how it feels when you write with a fountain pen. I’ve always been a stationary fanatic since the day I learned how to read and write. I personally find writing a very soothing activity, and it comes in handy when I have little time at my disposal to do anything outdoorsy. I can enjoy myself with a sheet of paper and a nice pen in hand; a fountain pen adds supreme writing experience, the way the ink flows effortlessly out of the nib and forms all sorts of lines and letters and how the ink creates different shades of colour simply just fascinates me. Most of them have extremely appealing aesthetic design, special design: Vacumatic,aeromatic, lever-filler, button-filler, piston-filler, leverless, snorkel...there are thousands of them, and that’s just the ink-filling mechanism, don’t get me started on the nib, otherwise you will be listening to me babbling all night. So, being a stationary fanatic and an enthusiastic dribbler, it is little wonder that I’m madly in love with this stationary jewel of the 19th century. I also happen to be a history geek, and fountain pens have had a fair share of human history. Leaders in the past use fountain pens to sign treaties and monumental agreements. Winston Churchill used a Conway Stewart to sign the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947, while Roosevelt used a Parker 51 (some sources said a Duofold.). You can see the attraction fountain pen holds for a guy who studied three versions of history textbooks back in high school. I now own two of the iconic Parker 51 and many, many other pens of various brands and origins.

My beloved Soennecken collection.

     Most people today treat pens like it's a disposable object, like a sheet of tissue that will be tossed away after use. "Convenient and easily replaceable!" is the slogan many adverts use from ball-point manufacturers these days. Unlike most products we have to use today that are “made to be replaced”, fountain pens are “made to last”. Many vintage fountain pens only require a replacement of the original ink sac and are good to go as a faithful vessel of the human brain despite the fact that they may be half a century old. A pen lover could still easily find a 50-year-old pen on eBay which costs no more than a hundred dollars.

     It seems that I’m not alone in this march back in time. Several international news agencies reported that fountain pen manufacturing companies saw a resurgence in sales during 2005~2012. Although the main reason for the comeback had been speculated to be show-off purchases; I myself can also feel a slight change of wind based on personal observations. More and more customers seem to appear in the pen shops I often hang out. It used to be just me and two or three other people strolling lazily in the shop, browsing pens and ephemara. Now it’s always a score or so customers in the shop, and sometimes I will have to have to help the clerks answer other customers’ questions! (Well, the easy ones, of course.) The age group also seem to descend to people of my age or younger. It is a real pleasure to chat and discuss with someone who also loves fountain pens, but nothing pleases me more to see someone decide to embrace fountain pens as his or her everyday tool instead of using it as an object to signal the owner’s exceptional taste and class. The feeling is oddly similar to a devout Christian witnessing a heretic convert.

     Fountain pens used to be important to people. They were treated with care, the way normal people handle their phones today, and yes, I said normal because I’ve seen people who abuse their gadgets. With appropriate treatment, a fountain pen can easily last decades. I have 2 Parker 51 from the 1950s, a Blackbird from the 1920s, and a Mentmore that’s been made around the time of World War I (It's more of a pen for parts, it's nib is no longer functional). So if you apply the concept of depreciation, the initial purchase price will be even less than the price of a cup of tea per month. Impressive, isn’t it? 

 A Parker 51 Burgundy and a 21 Teal blue. Also, see the seal wax? It's super cool.

                                         
     

     Another fascinating merit about fountain pens is that they don’t create so much used ink cartridges like normal pens do. At least, most afficionados don’t use ink cartridges, there are way more methods to fill your pen with ink in a environmentally friendly fashion. I prefer to use piston fillers or aeromatic filling systems to suck ink from ink bottles into the pen reservoir. Each refill is around 0.7~1.5 cc, depending on the model, and a bottle of ink can refill a 40~50 times or so, each time costing around 3 to 10 NT dollars, depending on how much you are willing to spend on your ink. If you do the math, it is quite apparent that the long term cost of a fountain pen is far lower than a normal pen that people use today.

     Enough of the salesmen talk. Although I’ve only started using fountain pens for three years, I’m seriously in love with these beautiful creations of mankind, and the values that they represent. My colleagues are now quite used to hearing me mutter, during lunch time, ”OMG she is an absolute beauty…..." not because I’m watching Victoria’s Secret live show, it’s cuz I’m looking at pictures of beautiful fountain pens other pen geeks shared online. I seriously cannot see myself living a life without these awesome pens. I know that my affection for them has exceeded normal people’s maximum tolerance for nertitude, but as I’ve never had a problem with being the oddball, there is no way I’ll ever part with them. There's always something new to learn about fountain pens, always a new design or era differences waiting to be discovered.

End of FIRST EVER POST. Scottie out. 

  

     "I see pens in green, crimson patterns too! I use them to write, for me and you! And I think to myself, what a wonderful world!"