Recreation of a Conklin Crescent Filler fountain pen. (Photo by Unattributed, Licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Introduction

I don't recall any point in time where I had any interest in fountain pens. I was born well after the time of the fountain pen, and there weren't any relatives in my family that had any special attachments to fountain pens. Then, there are some questions to answer:

• What drove my initial interest?
• How long have I been interested in them?
• Do I have some objective in collecting fountain pens?
• And of course: why fountain pens? Why not other writing tools?

Answers to these questions await, along with a few extra tidbits here and there along the way.

Why Fountain Pens

The idea came to me last fall. I was looking for something to do during the coming winter, didn't rely on a computer or cellphone. And, it was on my mind that as I age, it's necessary to do things that will help with hand/eye coordination, and manual dexterity.

Fountain pens was a natural fit. I'd always liked looking at really nice calligraphy. But I knew I would drop it if I tried to force myself to learn calligraphy. However, I did see where improving my penmanship could be beneficial.

What I didn't expect was that I would find a solution to a different concern I'd had. What problem was that?

The Journal

I've tried to keep a journal on my computer for years, and failed miserably. When I am sitting at the computer I have a tendency to write what ever is on my mind as quickly as I can. (Even this post has gone through severe edits: I just cut four paragraphs from an earlier session.)

But soon, I found that my mind seemed to be working differently when I was holding a pen and looking at a piece of paper. There is something that is much more intentional when writing in ink. You have to have intent in the words that you put on the page, there's no backspace key for a pen. There's no cut-n-paste for moving things around on the page.

This meant that what I wrote had to have intentionality. And, to gain that intentionality I had to focus and use my mind differently. It was almost like finding a zen place where my focus guided the pen, and what flowed out was more meaningful to me since it couldn't be edited easily. (Yes, you can scratch out things, or write in the margins, etc., but this is very limited compared to the edits you can do in a word processor.)

This has made the fountain pen “hobby” one of the best things that I have undertaken in over a decade. It has brought me a better connection with my writing, and that connection is allowing me to write in a way that I haven't in a long time.

(Another theory I have is that over the years the changes that have been made to software have actually made it worse for writers. I know, for example, that I started to dread writing in WordPress ever since they introduced the Gutenberg block editor.)

Collecting Goals

I didn't set out to start collecting fountain pens. That came as a result of the re-found connection with my writing. This led to me doing a little research into writers that use (or used) fountain pens. As it turns out there are quite a few people that were or are known to use fountain pens:

• Mark Twain
• Ernest Hemingway
• James Joyce
• Stephen King
• Salmon Rushdie
• Neil Gaiman

And, the thing that really clicked, and made me laugh my bum off was finding out about the letter Samuel Clemens sent to Roy Conklin, the founder of the Conklin Pen Company. In the letter Clemens extolled the virtues of the Conklin Crescent Filler (picture at the top of this article) as a “profanity saver” as it wouldn't roll off his desk. This communication led to Clemens endorsing the product and appearing in print advertisements until his death in 1910.

But the more interesting part was non-authors I found that use or collect fountain pens:

• Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Albert Einstein
• Rick Wakeman

This isn't even an exhaustive list, I've seen lists of 50 or more people. However, many of them were somewhat obscurer to me.

The one that really sealed it for me was finding out that Rick Wakeman (former keyboardist for Yes, and prolific recording artist in his own right) has been collecting vintage fountain pens since the 1970s. This was an activity that he undertook while on tour with the band.

This is where my pen collecting hobby came from. I decided to build a collection of pens that represent people that have some significance. The objective is to collect pens that are period correct representations of the instruments that would have been used by a person who meets my criteria for notability.

My current list has about 15 people on it, of which I've only acquired 4 pens. I have no illusion, I might not be able to acquire fountain pens representing everyone in the current list. And, I might add more people eventually (my current thought is that a collection of approximately 20 pens would be ideal).

Current Focus / Obsession

Currently, I have been fascinated with Parker 51 fountain pens. Especially ones that used the Vacumatic filling system.

Parker 51 clone that incorporates the Vacumatic filling system. (Photo by Unattributed, License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

I have on my list at least one author that was known to use a Parker 51 fountain pen, so eventually I will try to find a period correct pen. But for now, these clones will suffice for my personal usage.

Conclusion

So, the story started pretty simply: I wanted a winter hobby that would help maintain my hand/eye coordination and manual dexterity. But it quickly turned into something else as I realized it was different writing with a pen and paper again.

Then, doing a bit of reading about people who have used and / or collected fountain pens has inspired me to start building a small collection of my own. In the meantime, I am using pens that are clones of classic pens, or new pens that are modern reinterpretations of this over one hundred-year-old technology.

The benefits using fountain pens surprised me. It's literally changed how I approach my writing. (This essay is not an example, as I wrote it completely here at my computer.) It has given me a renewed focus, and is helping me to improve the ideas that I am committing to the page.

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Categories: #Hobby, #Collecting Tags: #fountain-pens, #writing, #history, #authors, #collectors

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