My other Danitrio pens have a frog, a dragon and phoenix, a wave, and a pair of ninjas. The baby octagon that arrived the other day must be the black sheep of the family. Or it coalesced from the atoms of Hotblack Desiato’s spaceship. Zaphod’s attention however was elsewhere. His attention was riveted on the …
I was very tempted to let the ninja pen slink away in the night after a routine assassination, but decided it would be best to bring it out into the light and help it confront its mystery-riddled past. Most recently, it had hidden itself in an unlacquered wooden Danitrio box and stowed away in the …
And I keep forgetting to put their pictures up! I’d seen the pen in pictures, and of course the Takuya website has many handcrafted leather wonders to ogle, but to see the Vestaere for real was a treat. The material for this batch of King of Pens reminds me of the Namiki Impressions. The King …
I’m blind without my glasses. I don’t have prescription goggles. Therefore, I am blind in the water. A corollary of that conclusion is that I cannot take decent photos on any beach, and therefore rely on the DMC-LX3’s “intelligent auto” function to clearly see what are only vague shapes and colors to me. I say …
One of the best things about working in advertising is I can shoot myself writing in my notebook during internal meetings when only 4% of my brain is required.
What I like best about the Silver Wave is the band of deep turquoise sky on the top of the cap. This is the only pen I have that makes me think of the beach. Platinum powder, applied with care, recreates the crest of waves as they break upon the sand. The nib is a …
I like frogs. Even real ones. Frogs on pens, though, don’t fuss when you twist them. I decided to write about the pen, but wrote something else instead, but I eventually managed to turn it around and lead it back to the pen, which I am grateful for, because not too many things in life …
I first had two lists: top ten modern pens and top ten vintage pens. That I had acquired enough pens in 2008 to make two lists plus have others that didn’t make it to either list gave me pause. I decided to stick to one list. That was harder than I’d expected. What about the …
Stubs are the smartly-cut jackets of the pen world. They can make anyone (and their signatures) look better. Stubs make broad vertical strokes and thinner horizontal strokes. Unlike italic nibs, the corners of the stub nib are rounded, so upward strokes don’t bite into the paper. Here’s a sampler of my stubs. They’re all factory …
This was my first Danitrio. I haven’t seen another pen similar to it, so perhaps it never passed the prototype stage. The entire pen is ebonite, except the feed. The barrel features sterling silver inserts: one engraved with a phoenix, the other with a dragon. I’ve had it a couple of years, and it shows. …