Modern fountain pens that fill with a cartridge or converter are quite a bore compared to the choices people had in the early 20th century. Aside from the immediacy of the eyedropper, there were matchstick fillers, coin fillers, blow fillers and crescent fillers. Much like today’s fashion houses raid their archives for ideas to update, …
The Stipula Passaporto presses the same buttons tail-wagging puppies and wide-eyed kittens do. It’s barely longer than my longest finger. The Passaporto, as it name more than merely implies, is for travel. It comes with a cartridge and an eyedropper, because you can use it either way. The threads feel tight and secure, which makes …
An Italian pen has not appeared on this blog in ages. I have found them too erratic. The newer Stipula Model T is an eyedropper, which made me reconsider it – cartridge/converter pens simply can’t keep up with what I do to flex nibs. The material is called pyrite resin, and it is gorgeous. (If …
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 …
Actually, it’s eleven, but one of my pens is back at the shop, waiting for a nib exchange. I bought more than ten modern pens this year, many pre-owned, and while I liked them all well enough in the first place to buy them, inevitably favorites emerge. The Pilot Bamboo didn’t make it to the …