I have often said that I just write about what I see. And then I publish my texts and wait to see how readers react to them. Not many comments do I receive on this blog, but the information stays here and anyone can come back to check it. And at some point someone sees it and continues writing the story. That is what Joshua Danley, author of The Pelikan Perch, just did. He now tells the story ..read more

To my friend Michel. I won't speak about pens today, but about notebooks and paper. Although I use notebooks to write these texts, this one comes as a reaction to some recent news. This is the story: The so-called Oscars of the stationery world, officially named The Stationery Awards (::1::, ::2::), are announced in February each year. On this occasion, 2024, the Grand Price was for the ..read more

Regular commenter Saltire Turquoise posed a very interesting question to my initial description of Sakai Eisuke's prototypes made for Pilot in early 1980s: Why can't Pilot make pens like those? Although probably intended as rhetorical, it does trigger some reflections on the current situation of the pen market. The first and easy answer to that question is a series of economic concerns—is ..read more

So, these prototypes were made by Sakai Eisuke. Then, how are they compared to other pens made by this master? Needless to say, Mr. Sakai made pens in many shapes, some of which I have shown on these pages. However, balance models in a number of sizes and decorations were a very common canvas that came out of Sakai's lathe. Four Ban-ei balance pens in four different sizes. On the ..read more

On the previous text I spoke about a couple of Pilot prototypes made by Sakai Eisuke in the early 1980s. These pens are urushi-coated balance units with Japanese eyedropper filling system. The bigger of them implements a well-known size 10 nib, and I will go back to it on another text. Today I want to speak about the other pen, that with a size 3 nib: about what it is and about what it is not ..read more

The world of prototypes is an uncharted one. And that despite the fact that we certainly know that they existed and how the final result –the marketed model– looked like. But what we do not know far exceeds those basic facts: who made them? How many of them were made? How many iterations did the idea go before settling on the final design? Why and how were those prototypes released into the ..read more

Mitsubishi Pencil Co (::1::, ::2::) has just announced the acquisition of Lamy, the German pen company based in Heidelberg. The announcement of the acquisition. Surprising as this might be, there are very good reasons behind this movement: The first of them is strongly related to the very low birth rate and population decrease in Japan. One of the obvious side effects of those is the ..read more

We know of the existence of Sailor nibs labeled as S –particularly in the 1990s- instead of as H, as is more common. The obvious understanding of these two letters were soft and hard, although there is hardly any difference in their flexibility. S-M and H-M nibs. Soft and hard? Different alloys? Some further investigation, including some input from Sailor personnel, pointed out that S ..read more

During the weekend between November 10th and 12th, the 19th edition of the Madrid Pen Show took place at the Meliá Castilla hotel. And as it is already customary (::1::, ::2::, ::3::, etc.) I will offer my reflections on the event. This 2023 edition was celebrated one weekend before the usual schedule –the 3rd weekend in November— because of a chronic problem—the difficulties to find a ..read more

A ..read more