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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.

Ohio’s Bexley Pen Company sprang into existence in 1993, thanks to the enthusiasm of a group of collectors who lamented the disappearance of the grand old American pen companies and wanted to hark back to the Golden Age. They’ve been doing that with excellent classically styled pens ever since. One of their more appealing pens, produced before I knew about Bexley, was called the Cable Twist; and one of the colors used for it was a deep Blue Pearl. In 2005, Bexley introduced the Submariner Grande, a well-proportioned and very good looking pen. At 5³/4" capped and 6⁷/16" posted, it‘s a big pen, and the standard version with a metal section is a little too heavy for me. Howard Levy, Bexley’s president, was kind enough to make me this Grande in Blue Pearl, with a resin section for the lightweight writing freedom I prefer. I’ve tuned up its medium nib, and it’s a favorite in my collection. I took it to the Ohio Pen Show in November 2005, and David Broadwell suggested that it would look cool with Damascus steel instead of the standard Bexley furniture. In March 2006, David sent it back to me with the gorgeous furniture you see here, adding that it is now a “Bexwell.”

At 5³/8" capped and 7¹/32" posted, the Bexley Sleeve Filler, produced in 2001, is a good-sized pen, similar when posted to Waterman’s Ideal Nº 7. it is perhaps the most nostalgic of all Bexley’s designs; there were few sleeve fillers in the early years, and by the Golden Age the only one of note was LeBoeuf’s. This Sleeve Filler, which was given to me by a friend, is a nice lightweight pen, and its Bexley stub nib is delightful.

The Pharaoh! As soon as the dust had settled from the creation of my Bexwell (above), David Broadwell began lobbying for us to do a Limited Edition with Bexley. The idea of hooking my name up with David’s was obviously a good one, but the design I wanted to use hadn’t solidified in my mind. Then, the very next summer, Bexley’s gorgeous new America the Beautiful appeared on the scene, and in a heartbeat I knew. Emails began to fly, phone calls happened, and the upshot was that David and Howard Levy and I collaborated to create The Pharaoh in woodgrain ebonite with solid 10K gold furniture handcrafted by David. With its Equi-Poised shape and a vintage-style black resin section, it’s a real classy looker, and it’s also a surprisingly nice writer’s pen. The pen turned out to be every bit as good as we’d hoped it would be, and I’m just glad I had the good sense to order one extra for myself! The Pharaoh is 5⁹/16" capped and 6⁷/16" posted, and I’ve fitted my personal pen, marked Prototype instead of bearing a series number, with a boring — but very sweet — 14K Bexley medium nib.

At 5²⁵/32" capped and 6¹³/16" posted, the Americana is long! But it’s a respectful tribute to the Eversharp Doric without being a slavish copy, and it’s also a pen I’ve wanted ever since I first laid eyes on one, and I finally bit the bullet to buy this one in Sanibel Blue. It’s fitted with Bexley’s delicious broad stub, and it’s destined to knock the socks off who knows how many friends when I take it out to use!

For the 2008 Washington DC SuperShow, Bexley produced a short edition of what might just be one of the all-time best handlers, Waterman’s Ideal Nº 56. I borrowed a set of Bexley 56 prototypes to photograph and fell in love, and when Howard showed me this Chocolate hard rubber 56 I refused to give it back. (I requested an invoice instead.) It’s 5³/8" capped and 6²⁵/32" posted, just a tad shorter than the original 56, so that it’s a little more pocket friendly. I love this pen, and to further its vintage look I’ve fitted it with a 14K plain nib. For fun, I reshaped the new nib, giving it a Waverley profile — and boy does it write sweetly!

This pen isn’t vintage, and it’s not even American, but the British-made Parker 100 yet bears a grand old American name, and it seems to me that it lives up to the marque it bears. The 100 is as much a pen for its time as was its ancestor, the “51”. The styling of the 100 is clearly a nod to that of the “51”, but — in tune with the times — the 100 is heavier, broader, and a little more streamlined than its forebear. The resulting writing instrument feels solid and handles very nicely. Although Parker has not chosen to give the 100 an interchangeable nib, the nib and the feed bear a distinct resemblance to those of the venerable Parker 45, and the 100 writes very reliably. Capped, the 100 is 5¹⁹/32", a little longer than the “51”, while at 5¹⁵/16" it’s a tiny bit shorter posted than most “51”s.

My Black Cobalt 100 was made in the first quarter of 2004 and displays on its barrel the engraved word SAMPLE. The pen was given to a merchant as a display piece, and Parker tried to ensure that it would stay that way by filling the section with epoxy before installing the nib, feed, and converter. I took the pen in trade from a client, and after I had worked on enough 100s to be certain I liked the model, I went out and bought a second pen to cannibalize from in order to make the SAMPLE pen into a working unit. Now my 100 has a custom-tuned smooth and wet medium nib.

At some point along the way, I acquired a narrow-band Sonnet Flighter (with chrome furniture) that was made in the first quarter of 1998. I consider the Sonnet one of the landmark pens of the 20th century; it sometimes takes a little setting-up, but once it’s right it’s like the Energizer Bunny. My pen, 5³/16" capped and 5¹³/16" posted, originally carried an unplatead steel nib; but I’ve replaced that nib with a broad 18K nib that’s nice and wet. Is it “correct”? Nope. Do I care? Nope.

One of my friends, who lives in Paris, took it into his head to send me a little gift. It came with several Waterman X-Pens for repair. What it is, is a calligraphy pen sold by a shop called the Writing Table, in a corner of Paris that isn’t particularly hard to find, but the shop doesn’t normally see much of the tourist trade. (My friend says he thinks I’m the only person in the U.S.A. who has one of these pens.) It’s a cartridge-only pen, and it’s sold with a 1.1 or 1.5 or 2.0-mm nib. This one has a 1.5-mm nib, and the really cool part is that he took it from his personal collection to give it to me. The pen is 4³¹/32" capped and 5¹¹/16" posted. I tend not to like weighted pens, but the slight added weight in the barrel of this one produces an excellent balance, especially when the pen is posted. Made of ABS with a matte aluminum lacquer finish, it’s probably pretty much indestructible.

I keep saying that I don’t collect foreign pens, but — as with the Pelikan 100 — there is something so magical about the bulletlike, smoothly streamlined Aurora 88 that I had to have one. This is a 1947 model designed by the noted Italian architect and designer Marcello Nizzoli. It is 5³/8" capped and 5⁷/8" posted, a size that puts it in the same general class as the magnificent Parker ”51”. And, like its size, its superb design puts it into that class. The 88 is not a European “51”; but Aurora of Torino, which lays claim to having produced the first truly Italian fountain pen in 1919, designed and built a close competitor for the “51” and a remarkably desirable pen in its own right. The 88’s richly finned feed, as capacious as a modern collector-style feed, produces a very reliable flow through its delicious flexible nib, and the traditional European piston filler gives the pen a very large capacity. The cap slips smoothly on and off despite its lack of a Parker-style spring clutch, and once in place it stays there.

© 2008 Richard F. Binder

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