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…
This year we’ve witnessed a massive reduction in the number of insects nationally – to such an extent that even the national media have been…
One of the most fundamental things we do is to work out what things are – it’s a very human interest. We like putting a…
There’s always a lot of debate in the wildlife world about common names vs scientific names so I thought I’d try to sum up some…
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…
Are duplicates a problem? This is one of the commonest falacies that I come across very regularly and it’s actually not a problem at all…
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.…
The Parker “51” was the single most successful fountain pen in the history of … well … fountain pens! It stands to reason then that…
China has had a long history of fountain pen production btu recently they have cottoned on to the growth in the fountain pen market…
(a work in progress) In my recent exploration of the world of fountain pens and inks I’ve been collecting a few old British ink bottles…
When you fall down the rabbit hole that is fountain pens you quickly learn then it’s not just inks you need to worry about or…
Last year I thought I’d get a cheap fountain pen (Faber-Castell Fresh), just to see what they were like these days as I had…