Recently in Pens Category

The pens at the left are from the Aurora Afrika series. My Aurora Afrika fountain pen is one of my favorites. It's one of my evening pens. (You've met the Pelikans, the 400 and the Niagara Falls. This completes my set of evening pens.) The ballpoint has the same striking design, but when I use a ballpoint, I use a simple, inexpensive Bic or something like that. I don't see the point of investing as much as you have to invest in a pen like an Aurora Afrika simply to have a ballpoint. Having a fine fountain pen is the whole point, so far as I am concerned.¹

The beautiful colors in the resin body speak for themselves, but one of the things I most enjoy about my Afrika is its nib. It took me 6-9 months to get it broken in. It was scratchy until either it adjusted to me, I adjusted to it, or both, but now it leaves a beautiful, wide line. And what makes it even more interesting is that my Afrika has a medium italic nib. Even though my penmanship is far from beautiful, when I write with my Afrika, the line has delightful variations in width and tone. It gives a dull, pedestrian (though legible) line a little spark and verve.

Here's the Fahrney's blurb.

Aurora presents Afrika - the first in a limited, numbered series celebrating the continents of the world. Aurora has captured the life, color and emotion of this adventurous land in the Afrika design. The resin barrel and cap in warm earthtones are hand-turned by a master craftsman and adorned with a matte gold clip and trim. The barrel ring depicts six African tribal shields. The black crown has a semi-precious agate stone set on the top as a symbol of harmony and peace.

Fahrney's no longer mentions the availability of the medium italic nib. I wonder if that means it's no longer available.

I have a couple of pens that I can't find online images for. I've mentioned the silver Levenger pen that a student of mine gave me almost 15 years ago. I haven't mentioned a Stipula with a partially transparent barrel showing the ink reservoir. I'll keep looking for images of them, and if I can't find ones on-line, I'll eventually pull out my camera and take my own photos.

In the meantime, here's a more recent addition to my collection. In fact, it's the one I'll be writing with tonight -- a Pelikan Niagara Falls. I've only had it for 3-4 years, so it's less familiar than my Pelikan 400, which I've had almost as long as that silver Levenger.

The pelican clip and the striped body mark this pen immediately as a Pelikan, but its body is metal rather than resin. That "heft" gives it a nice hand feel. Unfortunately, the ink doesn't flow as smoothly as it does in my 400. Whether that's because I'm still breaking it in¹ or because there's something different about the nib or the feed, I don't know. But the difference is clear enough that if I had to make a choice and carry only one of my Pelikans with me, the choice would be easy. It would be the 400.

Here's some of what Fahrney's has to say about it:

For its new Wonders of Nature special edition series, Pelikan has created a writing instrument as beautiful as one of the planet's most awesome spectacles - Niagara Falls. Created at the end of the last ice age, this natural wonder borders the U.S. and Canada and is the most powerful waterfall in North America. The falling water is artfully portrayed on the pen using palladium-plated metal that is elaborately inlaid with cobalt blue resin. The result is stunning, set off by the silver clip and rings which sparkle like sunlit drops of water. The Niagara Falls plunger-fill fountain pen has Pelikan's 18K gold and rhodium nib, formed and polished by a master's hand.

My Graf von Faber Castell is another of the pens I regularly carry with me. It's one of three morning pens in my journal rotation. My other morning pens are the Namiki Falcon I wrote about last week, and another of the pens I haven't mentioned yet.¹ My evening pens are my Pelikan 400 and two other pens I haven't written about yet.

Mine has a indigo blue body, but other than that, it's identical to the one pictured above. I fight with this one a little. Even though I fill it every time before I use it, it often seems that the ink stops flowing smoothly after I've filled a page or two. I have to stop writing and manually feed the nib by rotating the converter. Other than that it's a very nice pen. The nib is firm, and it leaves a beautiful line. It's enough of a defect that I wouldn't call it my favorite, but it's still a part of my morning rotation. Clearly I like it pretty well. It feels solid and well-engineered, like a well-made German automobile. Here's part of Fahrney's blurb:

Don't let the graceful lines and elegant looks fool you - these German-made pens are built for precision and performance. The Graf von Faber-Castell Guilloche fountain pen has a unique design that distinguishes it from the ordinary. As the name implies, the finish is characterized with guilloche patterns etched into the colorful resin barrels. The fluted metal caps, curved, spring-loaded clips and tapered grips are silver-plated and coated with rhodium to prevent tarnishing. The Guilloche fountain pen has a superior, two-tone 18K gold nib

I've had my Namiki Falcon for nearly 10 years. It, along with my Pelikan 400 and a couple of other pens I haven't featured yet, is my favorite pen. In fact, of my four favorite pens, it's the only one with a fine nib.¹ It also has the most flexible nib of any fountain pen I own. It's the only one I have that wrote smoothly from the moment I started using it. Others took awhile to break in. As it says in the Fahrney's blurb:

Touch the Namiki Falcon's 14K gold nib to paper and enjoy a response you've never experienced before. Black resin barrel has gold-plated clip and trim. Uses cartridges or converter.

I use the converter and bottled ink, as I do with nearly all of my fountain pens.

Besides revealing my addiction to the world, there's another danger in making these posts. I have to search for illustrations of the pens I write about. In looking for a photo of my Namiki Falcon, I discovered that there's now a Namiki Falcon 2.

I'm afraid I may have to buy one. The resin barrel on my Falcon is nice, but I really like the looks of that red Falcon 2, and the barrel is metal. Here's what Fahrney's has to say about it:

A perpetual favorite with serious fountain pen users, the Falcon offers one of the very best flexible nibs on the market. The Falcon 2 gives you the same exceptional writing with a new bold look - the barrel and cap have been redesigned in high quality metal in four distinctive colors: Sapphire Blue, Chocolate Brown, Black or Burgundy. Rhodium-plated accents add a contemporary yet timeless appeal. The Falcon 2 fountain pen has a stellar 14K gold and rhodium nib that delivers ink in a smooth and controlled manner assuring an exceptional writing experience. Its outstanding responsiveness allows you to create thick and thin characters as you vary the pressure on each stroke.

My Pelikan 400, my Cross Townsend, and my S. T. Dupont are all fairly formal pens. I use them either for writing in my journal (the Pelikan) or for signatures (the Cross - when I have it with me - and the S.T. Dupont). My next good pen wasn't a pen at all. It was a pen and pencil set from Rotring (fountain pen above, mechanical pencil below). I use them -- each a Rotring 600 with lava finish -- as working instruments, especially the mechanical pencil.

Both have a solid metal body with good weight and a hexagonal shape that sits securely on a desk without rolling off. The fountain pen has a stiff nib that is perfect for detailed work, whether correcting papers or drawing diagrams. The mechanical pencil comes in models taking different lead diameters. Mine takes 0.5mm, which is perfect for scratching out derivations on a notepad or sketching crude diagrams or figures. I used the fountain pen frequently, until I got myself a Namiki Vanishing Point fountain pen. You'll hear about that one in a few weeks.

I planned to write about another one of the pens I own this week, but the new catalog from Fahrney's was in my mailbox when I got home Friday night. The Pelikan Indian Summer pen shown above is on the back cover,and it's simply too beautiful to ignore. I have a Pelikan Niagara Falls special edition that will show up in a later entry. The Indian Summer is part of the same series exploring "the fascinating natural wonders of the world."

The newest release is perhaps the most beautiful of all - Indian Summer. Experiencing the extended mild weather and spectacular colors of a true Indian Summer is a wondrous event. The autumn leaves change and glow in breathtaking yellows, oranges and reds. This unrivaled play of color begins in August in parts of Alaska and the mountainsides of Canada and continues through November, spreading across most of the United States. The term "Indian Summer" is rooted in the proud culture of the native Americans. It describes their love of bold colors and the final hunting season before the onset of winter, when warm temperatures tempt animals out of their quarters one last time. Using only the finest materials, Pelikan crafts the Indian Summer writing instruments to perfection. The focal point is the multi-colored, lacquered and polished metal barrel with elaborate silver engravings of leaves and mountains. It flows into the dark brown, high-grade resin cap and pen ends. The fountain pen has an 18K gold nib with rhodium accents that is masterfully formed, polished and carefully hand-tested.

Wow! I don't need another fountain pen, but this one is really hard to resist.¹

When I pointed out last week that I like fountain pens, Karina (of Aspiring Ecologist) suggested I try a weekly pen post, rather like the shoe of the week posts Dr. Isis makes. I don't know whether I'll be scouring pen catalogs (mostly Fahrney's) for pens to feature, but I did decide to start a series of posts about the fountain pens I own. I know that a few of you knew that I liked fountain pens before reading last week's post, but I doubt that any of you are prepared for how many posts are coming.

I was going to start with a post about a very nice sterling silver pen from Levenger that was a gift from one of my graduate students a number of years ago, but I couldn't find an image of it on the Levenger site. Apparently, it's no longer available. It was one of the first nice fountain pens I owned. I'll take a photograph of it and post it some time later in this series.

I could have started wiht a post about the cheap cartridge fountain pen that I used as a post-doc,¹ but that didn't seem right. So I'm starting with a post about my first serious fountain pen, a Pelikan 400 that I've had since 1995 or 1996.

Those of you who know me know that I have a weakness for fountain pens. The Delta Evolution (pictured above) is not only an attractive pen (available from Fahrney's for a mere $636), it was designed to celebrate Darwin's bicentennial. Quoting from the blurb on Fahrney's web site:

Delta's Evolution celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and his remarkable theory of natural selection. The limited edition pens are hand-turned from solid blocks of marbled blue resin with antiqued, solid sterling silver accents. The central ring depicts the famous sketch "Darwin's Finches" in high relief. The fountain pen has an 18K white gold nib engraved with a snail shell. Each mode is limited to 809 pieces. Cartridge/converter fill.

Tempting. But too rich for my blood. The Conway Stewart Limited Edition Darwin fountain pen (pictured below) is even more tempting, but at $2328, I'm afraid I'll have to give it a pass too.