Which pen got you into fountain pens?
mine: fewer skulls than you'd expect
This is the Pelikan M205 Demonstrator. It’s the pen that got me into this hobby.
My wife got it for me as a Christmas gift many years ago as a “I hope he likes this” gift. I did, and she discovered an entire niche of gifts she can buy me for any holiday or event.
“Congratuations on the thing,” she will say. “Here is a weird pen I didn’t think you would buy for yourself, because it is Dracula-themed.” This will always go over well.
Now, note that this post is about the pen that got you into the hobby, not your first pen. That could be the same for many folks, but not for me. It took three tries for me.
My first-ever fountain pen was a LAMY Safari I bought when I was a kid based entirely on it looking cool.1 I had no idea how to fill it or use it. I have a memory of figuring out how to put the cartridge in after a lot of trial and error (“oh no what was that noise did I break it what if the goo spurts everywhere aiieeee”), but I don’t have a memory of actually using the pen that much. This was before the internet so I kinda gave up and probably pretended it was a sword.
My second-ever fountain pen was an extremely nice cigar-shaped pen that my father-in-law made me. He’s the sort of Renaissance man who, after retiring from being an engineering wizard, has decided to learn an astounding number of artisan skills. In addition to a fountain pen, he has made me a pocketknife, several bound books (including a hardcover version of my first novel where the lining paper is a bunch of cats), a jewelry/storage box, and an electric guitar. He also built himself a car. A full-size car.
All of these things are tremendous, but I didn’t appreciate the fountain pen at first because he put a stub nib it in it and I didn’t know how to use it. Plus I put Speedball India Ink in it at first because that’s what Amazon recommended when I searched for pen ink. (I cleaned it out quickly and it’s fine and gets plenty of use now.)
The M205, however, took. It was a combination of “oh wow look at the ink that’s neat,” a nib that had a very simple learning curve, and the internet providing me resources on how to use it. The steel nib is extremely smooth and writes with a crazy amount of flex on descenders. I can always tell when I’ve been writing with it because my handwriting is so distinctive.
I have no bad things to say about this pen. I think Pelikans are kind of expensive as a brand and so the ones I find most interesting tend to be these entry-level 200/205s and the goofball Twists that I apparently collect (review), but I understand why people get into them. It’s a great, uncomplicated, well-made pen.2
I’m curious. Which pen did it for you guys? Sound off in the comments.
OTHER STUFF
MORE TROGPOSTING: I’ve lived in the same neighborhood, on and off, for like twenty years. A couple weeks ago my wife noticed this in the sidewalk. I don’t know how long it’s been there, as this was kind of old even twenty years ago, but I love that this is the young-X/old-millennial version of a cave drawing.
SOME GOOD WRITING YOUTUBE: Prolific Fantasy/GameLit author Seth Ring makes the most criminally under-watched videos about the craft and business of writing on Youtube. I doubled my writing output within a couple days by applying his organizational tips. Watch his videos here.
I GOT THE DIPLOMATS: The XO and Aero Rhom I exchanged for the jacked-up Stipula have arrived! They are terrific writers and the XO is the most hilariously literal take on a “cigar-shaped pen” you can imagine. Full reviews forthcoming, but three cheers for Dromgooles and Yafa for how smooth this interaction was.
This has not changed—I still think they look cool and I still buy pens based entirely on this reason.
And sturdy, too. The M205 is the pen that I took to jury duty, and therefore also the pen that survived a curious security guard at the courthouse picking up the sleeve it was in, turning it upside down, and dropping the pen straight into the rollers on the x-ray machine where it got stuck.
As a goth teen, my dad's elderly, scratchy Pilot demonstrator pen from his 1960s Catholic school got me started - and a Waterman I could barely afford with an incredibly scratchy nib ended my love affair a couple of years later. Jump to my mid-20s, I found a Rotring Art Pen at Pearl Art Supply in Chicago and figured that for $12 I could give it a try. for the next 15 years I only used Rotring Art Pens, and only (grudgingly) branched out into the Lamy Safari after the Art Pen got discontinued. I'm not much of a collector, so most of my pens are inexpensive workhorses, and the Lamy Cursive is a nib that seems tailor-made to how I naturally write (sob, bring it back, I only have two!).
I still have the original M Art Pen from that trip to Pearl, and I used it so much that the nib is worn down such that I don't know that any other hand could get it to write well.
The pen that started everything for me was the first edition of the blue marbled Parker Duofold Centennial. It also wasn’t my first pen, that was my dad’s Parker 45 (still have it) then a Vector (barrel cracked, but have another) for school. I was 14 when I was reading a copy of Architectural Digest and saw the full page ad. It was like Cupid struck me. I wanted nothing else. I received it as my debutante gift that May and still use it often, I had the nib reground from medium to italic a couple of years ago and love it even more now. 35 years and I still marvel over the beauty of this pen.