Love in the long arc

I’ve been thinking lately about my collecting premise of staying close to 20 pens or under. As a curious and passionate person, I’ve pursued pens in a wide variety of price ranges, from the humble Kaweco Sports to the dazzling Scribos and Auroras; pens came and went as I rotated things in and out of the Gathering to achieve what I knew I wanted -- a sense of harmony in the pen tray, a lineup of pens so wonderful to me that it would make me happy just to look at them. I wanted to have within my reach the beauty of ink and line that would entice me to write on the many days when my work feels pointless. I wanted nibs so pleasant that the pure sensory delight of using them would tune out the everyday cacophony of demands and distractions. Material things are often fleeting, lost in times of crisis — and yet the Gathering has been and remains my remedy against the devouring world.

Conid Kingsize Wild Tiger, Scribo Piuma Impressione, and beadbird friend.

As my years in the hobby progressed and my likes and passions became more refined, I began to notice a reluctance to let go of certain pens — even when I used them less than I wanted to. I’ve been curious, and often frustrated, with the friction between wanting to keep these pens and my self-imposed 20-ish pen guardrail.

Notsu to-do list wth Edison Menlo and and Visconti Homo Sapiens Bronze Age.

In late June, I brought two such pens to St. Louis - the Homo Sapiens Bronze Age, and the Conid Wild Tiger. Both were grails acquired in different years. The HS was an early gift from my in-laws, and one of my first grails, back in 2021. I already knew that Visconti was notorious for bad QC. I ordered this pen at a discount from Appleboom, hoping that Anabelle would tune and smooth it. But I think Anabelle was out that month, and despite requesting a tune and smooth, the nib that arrived was awful. There was also an imperfection on the bridge-like clip - it was kind of peeled looking where the Visconti brand name goes. I debated sending it back, but I loved how it felt in the hand, and it was a gift, so I kept it.

Visconti Homo Sapiens in the tray. The imperfection on the bridge clip has been there from the get-go.

In 2022, I had a nibmeister tune it for me. and it wrote great for two years or so — then something changed again, and I no longer liked how it wrote. It did not skip exactly, but it was not a good writer anymore. In St. Louis, I asked Kirk Speer to put a cursive italic grind on the nib.

Cursive. Smooth. Italic.

I brought a whole bunch of inks to the St Louis pen show, some to put up for free on the pay it forward table, others to sell/swap. One of the inks I brought to give away was Pure Pens Saltire. I originally bought this ink in 2021 for my spouse - it is their color - but they never got into fountain pens. This ink had been on my letting-go list for years, so I added the ink to the box of other inks I was giving away. When I put the box of inks down at the pen show, I saw Saltire among the others. The bottle was almost half empty - I did not remember how that happened. My spouse did not use it. I must have used the ink myself over the years, even though I am not a fan of blues, not a fan of this particular blue - even though I thought I disliked the ink and wanted to let it go for years at that point. On a whim, I took Saltire out of the freebie box and put it back into my bag. Back in my hotel room, I inked the Homo Sapiens with it. I’ve been writing with this pairing all month, and I think it’s about to run out; I might reink it. Both the pen and the ink have been with me since 2021. It’s 2025. This is their year — and if I’d let them go, I’d never get to enjoy this moment. I’ve bought and sold many pens (and inks), so perhaps by this logic I should have kept them all - but I have no regrets. The pens that left the Gathering taught me things about myself, and about collecting; and keeping the money flowing helped make my budget work.

Pure Pens Saltire ink is almost half empty. I have no idea how that happened.

The Conid offers, perhaps, a similar story. It is a 2024 pen and my main purchase last year. I really wanted it, and someone in the pen community generously let me purchase their used one in like new condition. The nib was not good. I tried to make it work for a long time, but it kept skipping. A friend worked on the nib and made it better, but it was still not a pleasant writer. I knew I could sell the pen and recoup my expenses, and I almost did so on multiple occasions, but something stopped me every time. I wanted to enjoy this pen for at least a short while before I decided whether to let it go. In St. Louis, Kirk told me there were at least three things wrong with the nib, and he fixed the pen for me; he also swapped a Montblanc 149 nib into a Bock 380 housing for me. The Conid is great now, and I’m writing with it a lot. I don’t know if it will stay in the Gathering forever, but it was worth my patience.

Serious nibbage: Montblanc 149 nib with split ebonite feed in the Conid Bulkfiller Wild Tiger. Beadcat approves.

My Edison Menlo Fingerpaints is another pen I have been contemplating. It is one of the two remaining pens of 2020. I love the Fingerpaints acrylic, but I haven’t been sure about this pen for years. I have fancier and pricier pens, I wanted the acrylic mix to have more yellow, it’s my only American made pen at this time and I prefer Italian pens— but I kept it for five years, and used it. A few days ago, I swapped a Franklin Christoph 1.9 Music nib into this pen and inked it with J. Herbin Émeraude de Chivor. EoC was my first bottled ink purchase, also in 2020. It has not seen a lot of use lately, and I wondered whether to let it go as well, but I kept it. It’s a lovely pairing - the complexity of the ink benefits from the wide line of the music nib, and the Edison Menlo model allows for easy swaps of Jowo nib units.

Having taken some pictures of my Edison Menlo, I feel that less pricey pens often don’t look as good in these photos as the grails (unsurprisingly) — but I have enjoyed the Menlo over the years, and it often draws more attention. I don’t know if I would have missed the Menlo if I let it go, and I might still still swap it for a different pen. But maybe not.

Edison Menlo Fingerpaints with the FC Music nib; Amarillo Stationery pen sleeve in the background.

Some things are great from the get-go, and with others, love is in the long arc, I think. The long arc of use, of dithering, of imperfection, of almost letting go and keeping, of improvement, of traveling, of story. Sometimes the friction does not result in anything good. Sometimes it does. Life is complex that way.