Monthly Archives: January 2018

Newsnibs 003

It’s cold out there, but it’s still busy in the never-stationary world of stationery! Firstly, we have responded to some vigorous nagging from our supportive readers and finally installed a subscription box. It’s immediately to the right of this post, so please do put your email address in. As well as ensuring that you never miss a thing, you’ll be helping to show potential sponsors the size of audience they can expect when they send anything to us for review – we get to see the stats, so we know there’s a loyal readership, but this sort of public sign-up is a big help too.

Back in real life, there’s an actual physical pen show to kick off the year’s retail penthusiasm, in Bristol this Sunday. To whet your appetite, here’s a picture of some of the mouth-watering pens that the great John Twiss has made for the occasion, including more of that funky green lizard action:

Meanwhile, the mighty Pocket Notebooks are apparently considering all sort of shenanigans, up to and including a change of name apparently, a spot of podcasting and, perhaps most excitingly of all, the dipping of a toe into the world of bricks-and-mortar pen shopping. All thoroughly attention-grabbing… but not quite so visual just yet, so instead here’s a pic of an interesting product that CEO Nero and his biped assistants are sending us to play with; a recycled notebook from Berlin which claims to be able to handle fountain pens. Now there’s bravery for you!

In the social media whirl, debate has raged on the Fountain Pens UK Facebook group about where Beaufort Ink gets their actual ink from. Research has so far been technically inconclusive – in that we think we know, but can’t say for absolutely certain – but nevertheless full marks go to the proprietor who responded by volunteering to put test samples in the hands of the ‘usual suspects’ amongst United Inkdom’s contributors. Cue a meta-review before too long!

Finally, if you’re finding winter’s greyness a bit disappointing, there is relief from a couple of new special editions in colours so bold as to be positively, erm, brave. Platinum’s new venomous bile (sorry, ‘Bali Citrus’) Plaisir and the eyeball-searing Vibrant Pink Safari. Well, they are presumably someone’s cup of tea…

For those who’ve been following us for a while, you might like to know that the usual profile pieces and meta-reviews are coming back soon. We’ve been talking to the splendid Pen Chalet (and they’ve sent us some interesting pens to review too), and we have review projects under way for products from Start Bay, Scrikss, Karas Kustoms, Italix, and Kaweco to name just a few. Hold on to your hats!

Newsnibs 002

Time flies like an arrow (and yes, fruit flies like a banana), and a lot has happened in just a week! Here’s more interesting news to whet your appetites for another fix of inky goodness.

First up, the unique aesthetics of Jake Lazzari, who continues to turn out remarkable functional eye-candy. Using feedback from United Inkdom readers, Jake has tweaked the style recipe of the classic Streamline and added a roll-stopper which appears to flow organically from the cap. There’s more eye-popping exotica like this at Jake’s Etsy site, and if you still have Christmas money burning a hole in your pocket it’s definitely worth a look.

For something to put in one, The Pen Shop has an interesting-looking range of inks from Campo Marzio, with a special offer on at the moment: anyone buying two bottles of ink gets the second at half price. There seem to have been very few tests just yet, but rumour has it that the purple one will be experimented upon with gusto rather shortly…

If you’re looking for something interesting to write on, Leuchtturm have an interesting twist on the dot-grid concept – red dots! How much difference that makes to writing is debatable, perhaps, but it certainly looks cool.

If you prefer the classic exercise book format, then Start Bay have something new; they’ve added a softer, thinner leather to their range, calling it ‘vintage lite‘, and it looks rather splendid. But better still, for this weekend there’s 10% of anything on the site if you enter this code: WHATIREALLYREALLYWANT.

Finally, and thrillingly, an affordable new fountain pen from a British firm. OK, so the bodies are made in ‘Asia’, but the nibs are fettled by Italix here and they’re almost legendary for working well. Justly renowned for a range of churchily-titled pens like the Parson’s Essential and indeed the English Curate (which we reviewed back in 2015), ‘Mr Pen’ has added a modelwhich slots right into the ‘budget’ category in price – but wipes the floor with most other pens you can get for £15. Available with a good medium nib, a rather lovely italic nib or even a ballpoint (well, someone has to love them), the solid metal-bodied Deacons’s Doodle is already shaping up to be the bargain of the year – and we’ll put together a meta-review of it here as soon as we can.

 

Newsnibs 001

Well, the year has well and truly got going, all that festive palaver is right behind us and creative new things are popping up all over the place. Here we have the genius, the dubious, the even more genius and the splendidly unobtainable – surely the perfect mix!

Genius first, then. Ever since United Inkdom’s most popular post so far there have been calls for an affordable disc-bound notebook with fountain pen friendly paper. Now, partly in response to those many requests, that product exists! Rutland-based Personalised Stationery have just released their first batch of A6, A5 and A4 disc-bound notebooks. Made with paper which has survived every sort of nib we’ve been able to throw at it so far (like this), they’re also available in an impressively wide variety of rulings – and more individual specifications can be accommodated too. To get in on the first wave, click through here.

Then on to dubiosity. Last year many of us enjoyed the Jinhao 992, also known as the Spiral – a playfully unsubtle ‘homage’ to  a Sailor design, available for 99p. They’re pretty basic and they tend to leak if you try an eye-dropper conversion, but the included converter isn’t bad, the nibs are decent and for a quid you certainly can’t complain. What’s so dubious about that? Not much, to be fair. But then Monteverde decided to rebrand the already, ahem, unoriginal design as the ‘Monza’, inexplicably suggesting a link with an Italian city. Other than replacing the Jinhao cap band engraving with a Monteverde logo, nothing appears to have changed – except the price. You can compare the simply  Chinese, and still-Chinese-but-despatched-from-the-US-with-an-Italian-name, versions in the composite photo below. Of course, if you really want to pay another £19 to get this cheap pen in a plastic box, rather than a plastic bag, then this is absolutely the badge-engineered product for you… but we’ll spare the blushes of the handful of retailers who fell for the hustle.

But there is more genius to rectify the sorry tale above, because one of our readers has been using dip pens and drawing inks to bring appalling puns to life on the page, and the book is now out! The Anomalous Animals Mostly Great Animals of History is a little tricky to describe in words, which is part of the reason you need to buy a copy really, but as a sneak preview of the format Emmy has prepared an exclusive companion to the likes of Amelia Bearheart and Isambard Kingdom Brunowl, in the shape of a hat-tip to, err, well we couldn’t possibly imagine.  Head to Etsy for your slice of majestically hand-tooled hilarity.

Finally, The Pen Shop has rootled around in their vaults and found a whole stash of limited edition pens, and they’re worth ogling even if not too many of us will be in a position to buy one – they all have four-figure price tags! There’s a surprisingly military note to several of these special editions, including pieces of melted-down AK47, recycled Spitfire parts, and both X-wings and TIE fighters for those cognoscenti who are aware that, all things being equal, a light sabre is nothing compared to a serious fountain pen. Have an admiring look for yourself here