Deirdre Saoirse Moen

Desiderata Pens is a modern American maker of inexpensive fountain pens. Breaking tradition with other modern makers, instead of a traditional fountain pen nib, they use a dip pen nib. A Japanese dip pen nib.

Specifically, they use a Zebra G nib, often used for manga.

My Own Issues With Modern Steel Nibs

Generally I hate modern steel fountain pen nibs. Why? They tend to be super hard and scratchy. I’ve famously hated on the Lamy Safari, as I find its nib worse than most in this regard.

Yes, you can tune modern steel nibs to be less scratchy. (But why should I have to?)

They can even be tuned to be a tidge less hard, but not enough for me without some real expert work. At that point, you might as well have bought a better nib from the start.

There is, so far, only one modern steel fountain pen nib I like: Pelikan’s 200-series nib. I think it’s brilliant. It has some give and a tidge of line variation.

And Then There Are Dip Pen Nibs

Note: for dip pens, the pen is what fountain pen people call the nib, where the pen holder is what fountain pen people call the pen. Because a nib doesn’t provide the fountain part, the feed/ink reservoir does.

Famously, dip pen nibs have more line variation than all but the most prized vintage fountain pen nibs. However, they’re not intended to be used with any of the methods that fountain pens feed ink.

This is both an advantage: dip pens work well with inks that’d clog fountain pen feeds, e.g., India ink, white inks, and metallic inks.

It’s also a disadvantage: you’ve also got to work with an open bottle of ink.

I don’t know about you, but I do not lead an open bottle of ink kind of life. If you’ve ever seen my hands on the day I’ve refilled my fountain pens, you’d understand. I use Amodex Ink remover, but it’s not perfect. And neither am I.

If you do want to learn more about dip pen nibs, here’s a great post to start.

Now, granted: dip pen nibs tend to be scratchier than fountain pen nibs, and many are known for catching paper. When I’m writing with a fountain pen, I want the attention to be on the words in my head, not on the awareness of the nib’s interaction with the paper. Drawing, however, is different, so my standards are different.

What Desiderata Has Done

Desiderata’s figured out a way to put a dip pen nib onto a fountain pen feed, add a sac at the back, and make a fountain pen. Most of their pens run $100-120, but their matte black delrin pens run $50 plus shipping.

I haven’t spent a lot of time playing with my Desiderata pen yet, but so far, so good. I am trying to learn how to draw, and the line variation I get, even with the bog standard Visconti fountain pen ink I have lying around here in droves, well, it’s incredible.

Desiderata Has YouTube Videos

Here’s a very short one. You can hear the scratchy.

For dip pen people, this much longer video review may also be of interest.

The Big Wrapup

I’m trying to learn how to draw, so this seemed the perfect accessory for the analog portion of that endeavor. I can carry it around. It’s a dip pen, except it’s not.

Desiderata’s least expensive model is $50 plus shipping.

Sounds like a great deal to me.

Just want a dip pen for manga-like drawing? JetPens to the rescue. Don’t forget the brush pens. (JetPens has an amazing variety of pens and stationery, many of those items from Japan.)

Originally published at desamo.staging.wpengine.com. You can comment here or there.

In 2008, a fountain pen enthusiast from Australia was visiting the San Francisco Bay Area, and Ethernautrix, ever the charismatic one, started and named the Pen Posse.

Initially, we were all on Fountain Pen Network, but as the field diversified into different boards, it got complicated coordinating meetings.

Eventually, I started a Facebook group for Pen Posse, which made it much easier for people to get notified of meetings. We don’t have a formal leadership, though AltecGreen (Ricky Chau) starts most of the meeting requests.

Some of us use fountain pens to write with. Some are more into drawing. Or calligraphy. Some just like them. Whatever. It doesn’t matter why you like them.

Some only use old pens. Some only use new pens.

Some only like off-brand cheapie vintage pens they can repair. Some like the uber slick expensive pens.

We welcome all.

Sometimes we do fun things like visit SF MOMA. Or go out to restaurants. Or visit wineries. Or do karaoke. Or comedy clubs.

We’ll still love you if you use a ballpoint most of the time. Or a rollerball.

You don’t even have to be on Facebook, but it’s much easier if you are.

Oh, and if you don’t live in the bay area, but you’re coming to visit? We’d love to meet you. We even meet conveniently close to SFO most of the time. Heck, I’ve gotten off a plane only to drive straight to Pen Posse. More than once.

We’ve had visitors from: Philippines, Australia, Singapore — and other places, too.

You know where we are. Join us.

Note: there’s also a local group that meets quarterly, the Pan Pacific Pen Club. Pen Posse meets far more frequently (and far more irregularly).

Originally published at deirdre.net. You can comment here or there.

My friend Nicholas and his daughter took rinolj and I out to lunch when we were in Melbourne. Then we went to the Melbourne museum, where she wanted to show us the dinosaurs. (We saw dinosaurs!)

We had a great time.

She and her father are now in Florence. Nicholas and I are avid fountain pen people, and so he took his daughter to a pen store. The pen referenced in the post looks like this, and is partly made from lava from Mt. Etna:



And here's the story.

We had an awesome Pen Posse meeting on Saturday including a visit to a distillery, a visit to a wine maker, and an awesome dinner Posse member Ricky organized.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7953903@N03/4717660030/in/set-72157624191998157/

Unfortunately, the hard surfaces and the loud singing triggered a migraine. The first song was a bit painful in that space, the second I feared a migraine, the third triggered it halfway through and I ran out after it finished. This is the first time I've had one where I know I heard sound distortion that others didn't.

Worse, I was the designated driver. We made it home just fine, but it wasn't pleasant.

Sometimes, I'll bounce right out of parties, and others have thought me cold because of it. Truth is, I'm a bit crowd-phobic, and that can be part of it, but a bigger part is the fear of a migraine. I don't get them often, but the idea that I'm in a room where I can't easily evade a sound trigger before a migraine develops really frightens me.

Because of that, though, I really wasn't in any condition to exercise. Rick and I both collapsed; I had taken medication and slept for 15 hours, after which I assessed the remaining headache as about 80% tension, 20% migraine.

Did my walk tonight, finally, but it was only half my Sunday mileage.

I'm behind again. Oh well.

I haven't commented on this before because I haven't really been able to identify how I feel about this other than:

1. It's not in line with what the person being honored would have wished.
2. It is cultural appropriation of an icon.

...and yet...

3. There is some money going to a good cause.
4. One aspect of the design completely nails one area he was an innovator in.
5. To my knowledge, it's the first attempt by this company to honor a person of color [update: not born in the west. I own the Obama inauguration pen, doh!].

Please cushion your forehead now....

Ready?




The Montblanc Mahatma Gandhi limited edition pen.

This is a man who owned the following (in addition to his loincloth) at the time of his death:

His two dinner bowls, wooden fork and spoon, the famous porcelain monkeys, his diary, prayer book, watch, spittoon, letter openers and two pair of sandals. (And presumably a pen, though he used only pens made in India, having started the Indian fountain pen industry.)

The design elements honor Gandhi's invention of the charka and invention of the Indian homespun industry (including the homespun Gandhi wore throughout the later part of his life), and I think that part is actually cool. As a pen, it's nice, but overall? No.



That said, they did have consent from a member of the family, Tushar Gandhi, and Montblanc has already given over $145 grand to Gandhi's foundation (and will give more based on sales), which will be used to build schools and housing for rescued child laborers. (Link to Gandhi Foundation here; PayPal link for donations, if you are so inclined and able, is on their home page.)

Gandhi "would have been amused that such a lavish and ostentatious pen was being dedicated to him," he said by phone from Amsterdam Friday, where he is attending a human rights conference. "He wouldn't have possessed it."

Here's some other articles about it and the resulting controversy:

BBC news

TheSpec.com One of Gandhi's grandsons, Rajmohan Gandhi, said he was "not pleased" by news of the pen. He spoke last night at McMaster University as part of the Gandhi Peace Festival.

Hindu.com Gandhi: "I have no copyright in my portraits but I am unable to give the consent you require."

Hindu.com on the just-beginning legal controversy.