A little bit of history The original nineteenth-century Kaweco sold its wares from a shop adjacent to the University of Heidelberg, whose students had an unfortunate habit of slicing wedges out of each others’ cheeks to prove their prowess (or, presumably, lack of it) at fencing. The pen, as we all know, is mightier than the sword, and the Student is on sale still. QED.
How it looks As regards the shape, the pen looks much like any other Kaweco Student; a traditional form in good quality plastics, with the 060 (small #5) Bock nib already known to many writers from the Sport and Lilliput pens. But things go a little zany when it comes to the colour scheme, which in this case appears to have been inspired by the furnishings of a hotel lobby, circa 1976. It walked into the party, like it was walking onto a yacht, its hat strategically dipped below one eye, its scarf, it was apricot. You get the picture.
How it feels This is a comfortable pen to hold, and the slightly concave grip section helps with that. The cap is light enough to post when writing, although unlike the Sport the Student doesn’t require this for the pen to be usable. 
How it fills This is a straightforward cartridge filler, but there is space enough in the barrel for a standard push-fit converter if you prefer.
Crucially, how it writes…The ’70s Soul’ edition comes with a gold-plated steel nib which writes very nicely – indeed, the units we tested had one of the best small steel nibs that we’d encountered in a Kaweco.
Pen! What is it good for? Obviously it’s great for swanning onto a yacht with a floppy beret and an apricot scarf, but apart from that it seems just the thing for the more flamboyant sort of workplace, or possibly even the side of the catwalk. Perhaps not one to take to a duel, though…
VFM So-so. The usual Student is pretty sound value, usually at around £40 on the UK market. The 70s Soul adds a 50% up-lift to that, and £60 is a bit harder to justify unless this nostalgic costume strongly appeals; for that sort of money, you can obtain the aluminium or brass versions of the Sport, which use the same nib but are made from essentially indestructible materials.
If this isn’t quite your cup of tea, but almost… Then you have most individual tastes! For a colour scheme along these lines, the vintage market is probably the best place to look. But if you like the shape and just don’t consider the 1970s the decade of peak elegance, the main Student range is worth a look – our tip is the demonstrator version.
Our overall recommendation If you’re buying a present for someone who still owns some Fleetwood Mac on vinyl, or a hipster who is under the impression that a classic MGB is a viable means of transport, this is a winner. Unlike the old turntables and wheezing sports cars, it actually works rather well, too!
Where to get hold of one Kaweco has a good network of stockists throughout Europe, including the UK, and you’re unlikely to have any difficulty finding a retailer who can sell you a Student. If you particularly want this colour scheme, though, you may need to act sooner rather than later.
This meta-review references:
Thanks to Kaweco for sending us this interesting retro curiosity to try.
A little bit of history Every serious fountain pen fan has a Kaweco Sport somewhere; small, pocketable – and in their simple plastic form eminently affordable – they are often starter pens, and frequently stay in use as emergency back-up pens even when owners have developed more exotic tastes. For quite a while, though Kaweco has been developing a ‘premium’ line of robust, refined, reassuringly expensive Sports in interesting materials ranging from carbon fibre to industrial metals. The very first United Inkdom meta-review tested the 
Crucially, how it writes… As always, that depends on what nib you choose. Like all the more expensive Sport bodies (and indeed most of the Kaweco fountain pen range) this version uses screw-in small#5 Bock assemblies, which are available in a wide range of both round and italic tips. For the round tipped-nibs, many of us find that EF, F and M tend to be safest of the steel options, although any flow or smoothness issues, which can be variable in steel, vanish if you upgrade to gold. For this meta-review, though, we put the Steel Sport in the hands of two professional calligraphers (in Kent and Austria, respectively) who put the italic options through their paces – and found the narrower 1.1mm and 1.5mm nibs worked well even for fast writing, while a little more care was required for the wider tips where the same flow of ink has to stretch further. But as long as you choose the right nib for you and your own writing style, this is a reliable performer.
Pen! What is it good for? With a round-tipped nib this is probably the pocket pen par excellence; it looks the business, works well and will probably outlast most owners. Our calligraphers thought it was good for having some fun with italic lettering too, even if not quite the thing for fee-earning studio work (which is not what it is really designed for, to be fair).
VFM This is not a cheap pen – indeed, apart from the carbon-fibre version this is the most expensive Sport so far. Retailing for either €85 or £84.99 (which says something interesting about current exchange rates), it’s a significant purchase, but still not in luxury price-tag territory in our view. It looks a lot more expensive, though, and it’s tough enough that you would have to try very hard before you damaged it – nothing short of a diamond-tipped angle grinder is going to break this!
If this isn’t quite your cup of tea, but almost… Then there’s the shinier, lighter and more affordable aluminium version, or the steampunk splendour of the Brass Sport, either of which are sound choices. We have also seen the prototype of the solid silver version – but expect that one to break the £100 barrier, as the materials alone are likely to add around £15 to production costs at current prices.
Where to get hold of one From all the usual sources. Some pens take lots of research to track down, but this shouldn’t be one of them, and it’s currently available from almost all the places you’d expect to look. At the time of publication, The Writing Desk were selling these for £5 less than most other UK retailers, but we don’t expect their stock to last too long!
This meta-review references:
A little bit more history Jonathan Swift was a rapier-sharp satirist in his time (see ‘
How it looks Oh alright, it’s still tiny – just not quite as tiny as that! This simple metal tube (well, simple in most versions, at least) is the smallest serious fountain pen currently in production. It looks small and, at least in basic black, inconspicuous. Unscrew the cap, screw it onto the back to extend to the pen’s full length, and it looks a bit more like the pen concept we’re all familiar with. Then different finishes separate the subtle from the unsubtle; the plain black aluminium gives way to flashy pink and purple versions, encounters with flame-throwers turn the stainless steel version into ‘fireblue’, and the rippled finish of the ‘brass wave’ turns a basic pipe into something which looks like it just fell out of a grandfather clock. There’s a lot of visual variety for such a small pen. Oddly, a typographical error misses the third ‘L’ in Lilliput from the barrel imprint, but Swift’s own spelling was so haphazard that he probably wouldn’t mind too much.
VFM Can be something of a challenge with this collection, to be honest. The bottles contain only 30ml, and are sold at ‘premium’ prices in the UK – although this is at least in part a self-inflicted exchange rate problem for us Brits to deal with. Price competition looks particularly tough when compared with our home-grown Diamine, who provide 80ml bottles of ink for little more than half the price. Few retailers stock both brands at present, but to cite the example of one with the lowest prices for both, at the time of publication The Writing Desk were charging a little over 7 pence per millilitre for Diamine, and 35p/ml for Kaweco ink. That effectively knocks Kaweco inks out of consideration for everyday colours like Royal Blue, which both brands provide; even if you like the look of that sheen, it’s unlikely that many fountain pen users would consider the Kaweco version five times better than the Diamine. But some of the highly distinctive shades such as Sunrise Orange, Paradise Blue and Smoky Grey have qualities which really make them worth seeking out, in our opinion – and they’re hardly going to break the bank!
Our overall recommendation is to choose carefully and invest in one or two of these which particularly take your fancy. If you like purple, Summer Purple is warm and user-friendly. If you’re a turquoise fan and can stand the ink sinking-in to the paper rather enthusiastically, Paradise Blue is a lovely colour. Ruby Red and Palm Green beat any teacher’s homework-marking ballpoint any day… and Sunrise Orange eats Apache Sunset for breakfast. If you just want a well-behaved Austrian everyday black or royal blue, you don’t really need to spend so much; even Montblanc will provide you with twice as much ink for the same money. But we like this collection; suffice it to say that there are several Sports, Lilliputs and at least one Supra which will now be filled with ink from the same stable for quite some time.
