Fountain pens and their related ephemera are my favorite collectibles. I have always loved fountain pens. Perhaps it is because I so enjoy everything historical and old, and the fountain pen represents a bygone era when writing seemed to have been an art, and the instruments used to write with, were works of craftsmanship. Writing now is more a matter of the mundane, a chore to hurry through, and the tools used to write have become more mechanized and less artful (I say as I press the keys on a keypad to write this). But there is something to be said for these artifacts of our bygone, more labor intensive, days.

I have found that using a Fountain Pen makes writing an experience. Whether a vintage fountain pen or a brand new modern one; whether the pen makes a line that is flexible, fine, medium, broad or even more exotic - whether it costs you $25 or $1750 or is made by Montblanc, Sailor, Matador, Parker, Waterman, Pelikan, Omas, Visconti, Sheaffer, Conklin, Conway Stewart, or a complete no-name; the routine, gray, mundane, boring chore of writing suddenly becomes bright, important, fun, fascinating; actually, more of an engaged celebration - a treat beyond words. As boastful as these words appear, they are absolutely, positively true. Even the paper you write on thanks you, nodding and smiling in approval.

I so enjoy the sound of a nib as it scratches its way across paper, along with the wetness of the ink as it glistens on the page slowly drying; the bottles of ink, and the act of filling a fountain pen with it.  Most of all, I enjoy the effortlessness of writing with a fountain pen--a fountain pen wants to write, and when I am near one, I can hardly resist its call to pick it up and do just that. From the flared, pointed, and frequently embossed dual toned nibs, to the finely crafted barrels and caps, nothing quite bespeaks of ones good taste and feels so sophisticated as a fountain pen.

It is easy to overlook the fact that it has only been during the last 200 years that writing has been practiced by more than just the privileged few. While dip pens replaced hand-cut quills as writing instruments in 1780, when the first steel point was made in England, it was 100 years before the commercial pen became common. The fountain pen was invented in the 1830s, but it was not made commercially until the 1880s. Fountain pens, and the art of making them, was comparable to high-tech computers of today’s age.

Before 1700 most writers were scribes who concerned themselves mostly with the law, significant trades, or the church. With the advent of the industrial era in the nineteenth century, when education became more ubiquitous, the need to communicate through paper and pen forced the transition from the use of the quill to the more easily transportable fountain pen. By the twentieth century fountain pens were firmly established as the most commonly used writing instruments and remained so until the invention of the ballpoint pen in the late thirties (1938 to be exact). Fountain pens continued to be used widely through the sixties, until the ballpoint pen came into ubiquity, resigning the fountain pen to the status of an almost forgotten and iconic artifact like its sister, the quill. And like the quill, we are reminded only of its existence when we come across its stygian ink, long dried, scrawled across the crinkled parchments containing our history. However, like all things historical, they have a way of coming back into vogue. The fountain pen is making its elliptical sweep back into our lives and the pages we write about them. Today, the fountain pen plays an intriguing role as a statement of artfulness and a symbol of personal taste and sophistication. In addition these pieces of craftsmanship have become a considered, transportable, liquid investment, prized by collectors the world over.

Welcome to my small corner of the noosphere where I have on display some of the pens I have collected. I have decided to “clean the drawers out” so to speak, so the pens listed here are all for sale.