We just got a couple new images from Christian Skagen’s “Horizontal Fields” series, which we blogged about last week (with my apologies for having flubbed the title; sorry — it’s “Horizontal Fields,” not “Horizontal Lines” as I first wrote).
Anyway, click through to see some pieces Christian made with J. Herbin Rose Tendresse and Bleu Azur and a Pelikan M250 EF:
Let me preface this by saying that nearly everyone keeps a variety of different notebooks, made by different brands, in regular rotation. We know that. We endorse that. And we all have different needs/preferences in terms of writing instruments; fountain pen users love our heaviest, 90g paper, while others need nothing more than a few pages of lightweight 64g to receive their gel pens and rollerballs and pencils.
But Karen and I were nonetheless intrigued to see pen maker Brian Goulet’s recent vlogs over at Ink Nouveau. As you may remember, Brian likes to subject the notebooks and stationery that his company sells to various acts of ink-related torture. A couple weeks ago, he put a Habana, a Webbie, and a Moleskine to a head-to-head bleedthrough test with a couple drops of J. Herbin. That video’s embedded above, so you can see the results for yourself.
Brian’s since done more detailed comparisons of Moleskine vs. Habana and the Moleskine vs. Webbie to discuss size, thickness, price, and all the other factors that help determine which notebooks best fit your needs. In a world where you can’t always try before you buy, they’re great tools to aid your decisions.
To learn more about Brian and his pens, check out this profile at Rhodia Drive!
This morning’s post, from guest blogger Kate Marshall, reminds me of a quote that’s usually attributed to May West: “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.” Still, sometimes you’ve gotta pare things down…
I first started using fountain pens when I was a child but I didn’t start collecting or using them on a regular basis until about four years ago. Next thing I knew, I had about 20 fountain pens: Lamys, Bexleys, Sailors, Pelikans, etc. Eek. I had too many pens and I didn’t use them often enough to justify keeping them. It’s time to sell some pens. As I do this, I’ve been rethinking the focus of my pen collection. When all is said and done, I expect to have:
• four Pelikan M400s
• three Pelikan M620s
• one Pelikan M205
• two Aurora Optimas
• one Bexley Submariner SE
• one Namiki-Pilot Vanishing Point (also known as the Pilot Capless)
• one Sailor Professional Gear
• two Sailor Sapporos (Professional Gear Slim)
• one Levenger TrueWriter
In four years of pen collecting, I’ve learned that:
I really like Pelikans, especially when they or their nibs come from Richard Binder.
I favor piston-fillers and other filling methods over cartridge-converter filling systems.
Why didn’t I buy a Vanishing Point sooner? Despite the converter’s painfully tiny ink capacity, this is the best pen ever! And it comes in pink!
I’m really hoping that once my pen collection is slimmed down, I won’t snap up every new pen I see. By focusing on pens I really love, I hope to better appreciate their value and quality. I know there are others whose pen collections (or watch collections or misprinted calendar collections or what-have-you) number in the hundreds or even thousands. And that’s cool—Kate’s not here to judge. But I’ve decided that I just have too much darn stuff in my life and it’s time to pare it down.
Granted, the day that Pelikan announces a pink M400, all bets are off.
Guest blogger John Cullen teaches literature at Ferris State University and has a lot of dogs and horses. He’s been a fountain pen fiend for about thirty years; here are his thoughts on the Habana…
(Image via Writer’s Bloc.)
Well, generally I have gotten pretty cynical about journals over the years. I hate to think how much I have spent only to end up throwing journals away because they will not open flat on the table or the paper inside the journal is so bad it makes the writing experience feel like punishment. Add to that the fact I use a fountain pen and you can see why finding a good journal has been a trial.
Recently I got on a chat board where people discussed these issues in depth and many people recommended I get a Quo Vadis Habana notebook. In fact, people spoke in glowing terms about these journals. Yeah, right, I thought, but then I figured I would give one a try. What a pleasant surprise this journal has been!
The Habana is roughly 5 x 9 inches and comes with 80 pages of Clairefontaine lined paper. The cover looks and feels like leather, and the spacing on the white paper is generous. So from a cosmetic perspective, this is a great journal. There is even a stretchy band to keep the journal closed.
But how would it work when actually put to use?
IT lawyer and fountain pen devotee Tom Hall recently sent us this review of J. Herbin’s Rouge Caroubier… be sure to read past the jump to see a page from his epic vampire novel-in-progress!
Bring on the red ink!
I am quite fond of Bastille Day. After all, I am part French and believe that the overthrow of monarchy should also be celebrated. It is also the birthday of my good friend, Blake, who was born to American parents in Marseilles shortly after the war. For choosing to arrive on Bastille Day, he was awarded the French Legion of Merit. Evidently the French war veterans were very puzzled to encounter a small boy proudly wearing one of their nation’s highest honors. Viva le France!
This year I had an additional reason to celebrate — the arrival of a bottle of J. Herbin ink and a Clairefontaine notebook. I had asked Karen for “the gaudiest red” available, so she sent Rouge Caroubier. I promptly cleaned out my best pen (the Parker Centennial Duofold I’ve written of in the past), filled it up and set to work.
I like red ink; I find it easier to see. My secretary appreciates if for much the same reason. It is also appropriate for my non-legal writing project — The Great American (Vampire) Novel. J. Herbin did not disappoint.
The Pilot Varsity is a strange animal indeed: a so-called disposable fountain pen with a stainless steel nib that sells for a couple of bucks, which is just about what you’d pay for a decent rollerball. I came across it by chance when a pen aficionado I know (who restores vintage nibs in his spare time) gave one to me to play with; they were, he explained, a sort of guilty pleasure.
For that amount of money, you might not expect very much, but I was pleasantly surprised—to a point.
IT lawyer Tom Hall has been a devoted fountain pen user for nearly 30 years. Here, he talks about how he got interested in them, and describes his favorite pens…
“Why use a fountain pen?”
It seems a reasonable question. Ballpoint pens are readily available, fairly reliable and inexpensive. Losing or breaking one is no cause for concern. But for the most part they are also dull to look at and many are difficult to use. A good fountain pen floats across the page. Many ballpoints need to be forced to their task. The necessary death grip does nothing for my carpal tunnel.
So I finally got around to removing the boring blue cartridge of ink that came with my Phileas and putting in the ink converter. It took a little longer than I expected: I washed, waited, and loaded up some fresh J. Herbin bleu nuit… and then suddenly couldn’t get the two halves of the pen to close.
As a fountain pen novice, of course I figured I must be doing something wrong. I took the converter out, examined it, compared its length and shape to the other cartridge. The converter was a tiny bit longer, but other than that there weren’t any substantial differences. I scoured the Internet to see if anyone else had had the same experience. No-one had. Finally, I set the whole mess aside and resolved to make a trip up to Art Brown to figure out what was going on.
As it turns out, I’d been sent the wrong kind of converter, one that wasn’t even made by Waterman in the first place. I guess that’s the danger of buying pens from an anonymous retailer on Amazon (Pendemonium was all sold out!). Art Brown was more than happy to sell me the proper converter, however, and now I’m inked up and ready to go.
My first tests—photographed on a breezy day, hence the presence of the snail shell / makeshift paperweight—above and after the jump…
I’m glad Chris, our Amateur Economist, thought to try them, because they’re something I’ve been curious about for months: scented inks from J. Herbin. I first noticed them in the Exaclair product catalog, and I have to say, I was a bit skeptical at first. I don’t wear much perfume, and I can’t imagine smelling anything other than pulped wood when I open a notebook.
Then I realized the scents are probably not as overwhelming as, say, the scratch-and-sniff stickers I remember from my childhood (which are the only real association I have with perfume and paper). Sure enough, Chris seemed to like the bottle of Encre Bleue that he tried, describing the scent as “flowery and generally pleasant.” His daughter liked it, too.
According to the J. Herbin website, scented inks were “inspired by a tradition that began in Italy in the 19th century,” when ink manufacturers “used to collect different scents from the perfume industry and add them to their inks.” Each ink matches fragrance and color: blue has a lavender scent, green has an apple scent, amber is orange, red is rosey, and violet is, well, violet.
Have you ever used scented inks?
I have a tendency not to use the best pens that I own. I’d like to say it’s because I’m saving them for special cards and occasions, but the truth is, I often forget I even own them when I sit down to write a card, or else I opt for a colored pencil. The one exception is the (ball-point) Cross Pen I got for graduation years ago, which I keep in my purse since it’s so small and handy.
At any rate, that’s probably why it’s taken me until now to play around with the new Waterman Phileas I bought nearly two months ago, as per Beth’s suggestion. I’m new to fountain pens, so there was a bit of apprehension. But the Phileas is widely accepted as a good entry-level option, so really, I needn’t have worried. It writes smoothly, in a solid but not heavy plastic case, and it comes with a converter (which I haven’t tested yet) if you want to use your own ink.
I like the art deco-ish design, though I stuck to basic black rather than buying one of the blue, green, or red marbled models. My nib is medium, and I expected not to like that—I’m generally a fine-point fan, but the medium was all I could find—but in the end it was a worthwhile departure, something I would never have tried otherwise. My letters felt solid on the page, intentional (though please forgive the fuzzy photo):
Apparently the Phileas was inspired by the character Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. That’s probably just a bunch of marketing fluff, but it still makes me smile.
