After writing the post about my favourite pens I realised I couldn’t do that without also writing about my favourite inks, as this is another…
I’ve been collecting fountain pens for a while and when people ask which pen I’d recommend the same names keep coming up again and again…
Sometimes you’ll come across a fountain pen that feels slightly scratchy when you use it – the nib might write smoothly in one direction but…
Many people find that buying pens, inks and paper from Japan is a good way to both save money and access a wide array of…
Background Back in the late 1950s & early 1960s Pilot made a series of pens called the “Super” which eventually morphed into the single-letter E…
This is a question that gets asked a lot in the fountain pen world and I’ve given it some thought and seen a few really…
Nibs are some of the most distinctive design features of any fountain pen – they are the part we connect with the most because they…
Here are some of my Sailor pocket pens, in date order … or as accurately as I can achieve. From 1960 – 1971 date codes…
Here are some of my Pilot pocket pens arranged in manufacturing date order. I thought it might be interesting to photograph each one in a…
In early 1960s Japan office fashions changed and male workers started to wear the newly designed “Hong Kong shirt”, which combined a formal collar with…
There has always been a bit of negativity surrounding some Chinese pen brands because some people consider many of their pens to be “copies” of…
It might seem a simple thing but when you own a good pen you want to be able to pick it up and write, first…
I’ve been interested in Japanese pocket pens since I bought my first Pilot E95S from Amazon Japan back in 2023. Fountain pen enthusiasts consistently rate…
Identifying exactly which slimline pen you have can be quite tricky, with the numerous small changes and subtly different models available from 1959 to 2008.…
Recently I’ve been looking at the possibility of using fountain pens to write my specimen data labels. These are small labels pinned under a specimen…
Between the years 1960 and 2010 Montblanc produced a range of slim-bodied fountain pens in a new sleek and modern design. To this day they…
One of the great joys of owning a fountain pen is the ability to use a vast number of bottled inks and to express yourself…
This is a good question that should probably be asked more often of a lot of types of everyday equipment that has very high-end, expensive…
Japanese companies have a long history of making high quality fountain pens, which shouldn’t be a surprise when you consider Japan’s art and writing culture.…