Richard’s Pen Collection : Other Pens

Writing instruments on this page are part of my personal collection and are not for sale. Click the magnifying-glass symbol () next to any pen to view a zoomed image for more detail.

What pens am I carrying today?

A discussion over dinner in 2003 led to the creation of Columbia, The Gem of the Ocean. Columbia is a vintage-inspired pen that I designed for Filcao of Settimo Torinese, Italy. Capped, this classic is 5¹/₂"; posted, it is 6¹/₂". Many of the pen’s design features are borrowed directly from, or closely inspired by, features of pens from the 1920s and 1930s. Columbia was conceived to look and feel like a vintage button filler of the Golden Age, to be a true “writer’s pen,” not just collectible eye candy. The nib in my personal Columbia is not the standard (excellent) steel nib; it’s a 14K nib that I adapted to the pen, and it is remarkably smooth and adjusted as a M/XF duo-point.

In a way, part of the excitement of doing Columbia came after the pen was already in production. When Columbia proved a success, Filcao decided to do scaled-up “magnum” versions of the design, and thus were born Nobile, Atlantica, and the 2004 Pentrace LE. I guess Franco Grisolia liked the button filler; he’s since used it in several other Filcao pens.

Retractable fountain pens mostly disappeared in the 1920s, but you can’t keep a good idea down, and in 1963 the Pilot Capless hit the market like a slap upside the head. It came initially in a twist version, but very soon there appeared a pushbutton version as convenient as a ballpoint — but it was a real pen, not just a penlike object. The pen’s unusual shape features a clip at the nib end, and that took some getting used to; but once past that I found this a surprisingly nice design.

A few model shakeouts later (March 1965, to be exact), Pilot introduced the rakish version shown here, which is 5⁹/₁₆" retracted and 5¹⁷/₆₄" extended.

In the 1970s, the Capless became the Vanishing Point. When Pilot set up an American distributor for its higher-end pens, that company took the name Namiki, after the founder of Pilot. The Namiki Vanishing Point became the Pilot Vanishing Point again in about 2000, and that’s where I got out. The new pen was fatter and, with a metal barrel, heavier. At least, that’s the way it was in the U.S.A. In Japan, Pilot introduced a new model, the décimo, that is thinner and lighter than the U.S. version. I liked it, and when a Japanese dealer started selling it on eBay, I plumped. At 5¹/₂" retracted and 5¹³/₃₂" extended, it has that great slender feel and lightness in the hand. The one problem I‘ve had with the Vanishing Point is the location of the clip, and with this new pen I took steps to solve it. The pen now has a custom 15° left-foot oblique stub nib, 0.6 mm in width; and the clip falls perfectly between my thumb and index finger..

The Aurora Talentum demonstrates that it’s certainly still possible in these latter days to build a reliable pen that uses a 14K nib and a hard rubber feed and then wrap it up in a very presentable Italian package. My particular Talentum is engraved to indicate that it was once a repair loaner (also known as a service pen) — a delightful aspect of pen-shop service, a leftover relic of a better, kinder, more trusting time. It is 5¹¹/₃₂" capped and 6¹³/₃₂" posted, a trifle larger than I normally find pleasing, but for all that it’s built like a Russian tank, and — you know, I can use it unposted quite happily. The fact that it spent its “working life” as part of the loaner stable for my long-time friend Jim Rouse also makes it more than a little cool in my eyes.

X Marks the Spot

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In 1957, Waterman, then in its death throes in the U.S.A., looked to JiF Waterman, its French licensee, for a pen to compete with the Parker 61, and and the result was the X-Pen. My bottom-line X-Pen is 5¹³/₃₂" capped and 5³/₄" posted, and it’s fitted with a real 18K gold fine nib. It was made for the French market and was priced at 2,000 francs. That's old francs; in 1960, France swapped out old francs for new, at a rate of 100 to 1. Thus, this pen went for a price that was roughly equivalent to $4.00 at the time.

After the U.S. Waterman company was gone, JiF Waterman continued to evolve the X-Pen design. For European sales only, the company produced a modernized, less expensive version called the Wat. My Wat is 5¹/₄" capped and 5²¹/₃₂" posted, and its XF steel nib displays the excellent writing qualities that I have always associated with Waterman pens. For this pen Waterman copied the Parker 61’s excellent cap-clutch design, with spring fingers inside the cap to grip the shell.