Penman for Tuesday, July 28, 2009
(This piece was commissioned by the STAR for its special anniversary "collectors" issue.)
PEOPLE ask me what it is about fountain pens that I find so obsessively fascinating. I’m a writer, so I have a natural affinity with writing instruments, but I tell them that fountain pens, to me, represent the perfect marriage between art and engineering. Fountain pens produce written words, and thus have been the handmaiden of countless works of literature, both public and private; but they’re also art objects in themselves, the product of thoughtful and often ingenious design and meticulous craftsmanship.
Fountain pens have been around since the early 1800s, but it was during the early to mid-20th century—the Golden Age of fountain pens—that the best and loveliest pens were made, in a swirl of materials, colors, and mechanisms that remain unsurpassed, even as modern penmakers strive to revive the fountain pen industry by reviving classic designs.
These are the pens that I’ve been collecting for the past 20 years, from all over the world, wherever I’ve been privileged to travel—the United States, England, Scotland, France, and Vietnam, among others. Today, I get most of my pens online, off eBay, although now and then I still get lucky and stumble on a prize pen in the unlikeliest of places.
Two of my favorite pen-collecting stories took place thousands of miles apart.
In 1994, on a writing fellowship in Scotland, I visited the Thistle Pen Shop in downtown Edinburgh, whose address I had found in the phone book. (Every time I travel to a new city, I look over the yellow-page listings for pen shops, resale shops, and antique stores.) On a lark, I asked the lady behind the counter, “Would you happen to have a 1934 Parker Vacumatic Oversize in burgundy red?” That pen, at that time, was my “Holy Grail” pen, something I had been fantasizing about since seeing its picture in a catalog. The lady beamed at me and said, “As a matter of fact, we do!” And then she whipped the pen out from under the counter, much to my great surprise, disbelief, and grief—grief, because I was sure I couldn’t possibly afford it, unless I went deep in debt via my credit card.
And that, of course, was what happened. I carried that pen home with as much care and wonderment as I would have accorded a newborn baby, but I was almost immediately stricken with buyer’s remorse. “Oh, my God,” I thought, “how could I have spent a whole month’s salary—the rent, the groceries, the bills, etc.—on a single pen?” To soothe my throbbing conscience, I resolved to write a story about—guess what—a fountain pen. That was the story “Penmanship,” which later won a prize that made up for my precious Parker’s purchase price.
The second story has to do with a 1926 Swan Eternal—a gorgeous pen in woodgrain with a huge gold nib—that I found, in all places, in a stall at the Greenhills tiangge six years later. I spotted the pen sticking out of a coffee mug in this stall among other bric-a-brac. I trembled as I held it—even more so when I realized that it was in perfect condition, despite being more than 70 years old—and asked the seller in a barely audible croak, “How much?” “Five hundred,” the man said—about a hundredth of what the pen would have sold for on the collector’s market. No faster sale was ever made; you could smell the leather burning as I whipped out my wallet.
Today my collection comprises almost 200 pens, about two-thirds of them vintage pens from as early as the 1890s, and one-third of them Parkers old and new. My favorite pen is the 1930s-1940s Parker Vacumatic, whose pearlescent stripes remind me of a city skyline at night. I have about 60 of these Vacs in various sizes, colors, and trims, making me a certified Vacumaniac. I can get bored talking about literature and politics, but never about Vacs.
I also enjoy collecting Pelikans and Montblancs (except the ultra-pricey and blingy “limited editions”, more a marketer’s rather than a writer’s dream). Other brands that collectors favor include Sheaffer, Wahl-Eversharp, and Waterman, as well as Esterbrook, Conklin, Swan, and Conway-Stewart, among others. After many years of trying all my pens out, I’ve settled on a rotation of five “daily users,” one or two of which you’ll be certain to find in my pocket at any given time, loaded with either blue-black or brown ink: a Pelikan M800, a Montblanc 149, a Montblanc 146, a 1935 Parker Vacumatic, and another Vac from the 1940s.
I try to bring most of my pens up to good working condition. I can do simple repairs myself, such as replacing the rubber sac or bladder that holds the ink, but I send away more difficult jobs to a
suki repairman in Arkansas in the US. I often have to remind people—especially those interested in showing or selling their old pens to me—not to try repairing or even polishing their pens, because they can be very fragile and easy to break. Also, their grandfather’s Wearever may have a lot of sentimental value and may even look priceless, but Wearevers were generally low-quality pens that few collectors would bother acquiring.
Few people actually write with fountain pens these days. I do most of my writing myself on a Mac, and use fountain pens only for signing letters, memos, cards, and books. Still, the few times a day that I scrawl something with my pen are always moments of pleasure—a very sensual pleasure, I must say, whenever the wet nib, or writing point, touches paper.
One of these days, try it yourself, in the stationery section of your local bookstore. But beware—fountain pens can become highly addictive, as the 20-plus active members of our local pen club, the
Fountain Pen Network-Philippines, have realized. If you want to see more of my pens, you can find pictures of them
here. Welcome back, we say, to writing in style, and writing with feeling, as only a good fountain pen can physically convey.
