What pens am I carrying today? Find out here.

Pens 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.

A discussion over dinner 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.

The retractable safety pen disappeared in the 1920s, but you can’t keep a good idea down, and in 1964 Namiki of Japan introduced the Pilot Capless, a fountain pen that retracts like a ballpoint pen, with a click of a button.

The Pilot Capless became the Namiki Vanishing Point, and that’s where I came in. My burgundy Vanishing Point was made around 1995, and it’s a remarkable pen, attractive and reliable. 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 writing instrument, one that I keep despite its youth. It’s 5¹³/32" retracted and 5⁵/16" extended.

The Namiki Vanishing Point became the Pilot Vanishing Point, 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’s a skosh longer than the burgundy pen, but 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.

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. 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.

© 2008 Richard F. Binder

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