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A Stylophile Is Born by Lori Lavallee, BA ‘93, BEd ‘96
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Most of us have received pens and pencils as gifts and sometimes they survive our inattention. I’ve had a set of Sheaffers for over ten years but they’ve lost their lustre and in some spots the lacquer has worn off all together. When I was in Belgium this past fall I decided to invest some tourist dollars in an upgrade. On a rainy afternoon in Ypres I found a beautiful pen and toted it home in its signature purple-blue box. The pencil arrived later through an independent stationer in Calgary. One might assume that my interest in writing instruments is motivated by excellent penmanship. Nothing could be further from the truth as my handwriting is barely legible under the best of circumstances. For this reason I immediately ruled out a fountain pen. Although they require less pressure to write, I knew that one day I’d end up snapping off the nib in frustration over my inability to improve my scrawl, fancy pen or not. I didn’t want it to look like a big cigar, complete with a gold band and obviously it couldn’t be too delicate either. Oh, and ideally it had to be around a hundred bucks with refills available at Staples or Office Depot, but how to chose? They say that there are a couple of ways to tell a great pen store apart from a not-so-great one. Staff should be knowledgeable and patient. There should be a good selection of price points available in different lines, and the store should have a “no rush, sure try them all again” attitude. The most basic information is that quality manufacturers usually offer three different types of pens: Ballpoints are of course fitted with a tiny ball bearing, use a fast-drying ink and are easily identifiable by a twisting or clicking action. Rollerballs and fountain pens on the other hand, are filled with liquid ink and come with caps. Fountain pens also have a wide variety of nibs mostly made with 14 or 18 karat gold. I concentrated on ballpoints and quickly eliminated anything that was either too cheap, ordinary, flashy or downright ugly. I also learned that women’s pens usually come without clips and that while European men generally carry theirs in a jacket pocket, North Americans prefer shirt pockets. I still had about twenty pens before me and was only marginally closer to making a decision. The elimination process continued until I was wavering between two or three, and finally just decided to take the most expensive one. When I got home I was amazed to learn of hundreds of additional choices on the internet. In fact, it came as a huge surprise to me that in today’s high tech environment, pen manufacturers are so absurdly successful. These companies are not only surviving, but are dominating the stationery industry! While the growth of home offices has helped move the product forward, innovative marketing has also helped: Rollerball gel pens are popular with kids, and ergonomic styling is a drawing card for many adults: Sanford has a pen with a rubberized grip dubbed the “PhD,” Preferred Handwriting Device. If I were in advertising, I would definitely be drawn to this category of products and would aspire to write polished ad copy such as this: Waterford Pens boast “beautifully designed suites of elegant pens with the manufacturer’s classic crystal designs reinterpreted in precious metal and lustrous lacquers.” Similarly, a line called Van Gogh, by Visconti was recently introduced and their signature statement is “art, yes; but more than that, it’s art that you can use every day of your life.” The writing would of course come after my crash-course in the history of pen manufacturing, which goes something like this: After using quill pens for a thousand years, a pen with self-filling ink was finally patented in 1800. As with a laptop computer, the writer was then joyfully freed from the constraints of sitting at her desk. Unfortunately, the ink from these pens tended to puddle on paper and create a tremendous mess, but in 1884 Lewis E. Waterman corrected the problem. He invented a way for air to move into internal reservoirs of ink, and his patent heralded the birth of the modern fountain pen. During the First World War American soldiers used his pen to write letters home from the trenches and for sixty years the Waterman remained the predominant writing instrument. Still there were problems. Fountain pens tended to leak at high altitudes and the invention of the first ballpoint pen in 1938, proved to be a huge advantage to Air Force pilots during the Second World War. Disposable pens became commonplace in the 1950s, and thirty years later “yuppies”, young urban professionals, began to adopt fountain pens as a status symbol. From here a popular collector’s market emerged. Vintage pens continue to be in demand as do special and limited edition pens. Montblanc has carried its Meisterstuck 4810 since 1928, for example. This number appears on the nib and represents the height of Mont Blanc in metres. Another company, Sheaffer, is reintroducing the art of calligraphy by re-releasing the line of pens that it built its business on, one hundred years earlier. Finally, Cartier, Dunhill and Montblanc offer jewellery-encrusted pens ranging from $155 to over $125,000 if you can imagine. While I will probably never join the ranks of fountain pen collectors worldwide, and will not be enrolling in the Pen Collectors of America society anytime soon, I am becoming a stylophile. For an in-depth look at the business check out www.penlovers.com or www.vintagepenscom and let yourself dream, however modestly: While I sign off with my Waterman Laureat ballpoint, I am lusting after the matching rollerball. |
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Van
Gogh by Visconti