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

 

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