Wall Street Journal – The pens of Montblanc
An evening pause: I wonder if any of my readers use a fountain pen. I did, from junior high school through college and beyond, and only stopped when I got my first computer and could finally produce typed work quickly with no errors. The feel of writing with a fountain pen however cannot be matched.
Have a great weekend!
Hat tip Cotour.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I have a great love of pens of all kinds.
I adore the look of this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x7YJ8G73OS4&pp=ygUURHJhY3VsYSBmb3VudGFpbiBwZW4%3D
Japan has the best stationary, by and large:
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/55AnSQTA59k
I could never get my locker open, so I lugged around all my books–a spiral notebook for each textbook and a loose leaf binder–in one huge book satchel filled with many pens and pencils others had dropped.
Though I am right handed, my left arm is stronger to this day…since that was the arm I used to carry it with. I didn’t even need weights as I would curl the book satchel.
I feel fortunate that I get the best use out of the cheap Bic ball point pens that are around $1.99 for a dozen pack. Why spend dollars when a $0.20 pen gets the job done and lasts just as long.
Why?
Prestige, Image, next Level Quality, Obsession.
I used to think the same about pocketknives, then I bought a $300 Benchmade, then I bought a $100 flashlight.
Why do people drive a Porche instead of a VW Bug?
Both get the job done :)
What does President Trump sign everything with?
A FELT TIPPED SHRAPIE!
Its big, its bold and he works the other end of the spectrum.
Keep your prestige and I’ll keep my money. Impressing who exactly, and why should I care??
I gave fountain pens a go when I was in high school. It is a unique, and smooth, writing experience. Also, not cost-effective for the task at hand. Tech advances. Now, Zebra for writing tools.
Virgil Finlay
https://archive.org/details/finlay-v-06-amazing-stories/Finlay%20v01%20Weird%20Tales/
“A nearly complete collection of the commercial black and white science-fiction and fantasy art of Virgil Finlay (July 23, 1914 – January 18, 1971) containing over 1,800 illustrations. He perfected a painstaking, nearly photo-realistic technique using scratchboard and stipple work, which was especially suited for reproduction by pulp magazines.”
Gosh, that brings back memories. Finlay’s art was class, and always striking.
Never heard of Virgil Finlay before, but I spent a good amount of time flipping through that book. Fascinating. Thanks for that.
I understand being painstaking and methodical, but I scratch my head at how he came up with techniques to make some of those artworks. There’s one picture in particular, page 173, with some kind of mesmerizing dude and tightly-spaced rings of thin white concentric circles. I look at it and think “that’s pretty neat” and then wonder “how on earth did he do that?” .
Waterhouse–
The saying is, “You’ve seen his Art, but you don’t know his Name.”
Finlay was to science-fiction/fantasy illustration what Norman Rockwell was to the Saturday Evening Post.
Illustration on page 173– looks to be done via “scratch board,” or “scraper board” technique; using cardboard covered in white china clay and india black ink, and the artist removes the black parts to create the illustration.
————————————————-
“To Virgil Finlay”
H.P. Lovecraft
As printed in “Weird Tales” Volume 30, Issue 1 (1937)
https://youtu.be/diooQfgnX4s
1:11
If you’re left-handed and not writing Hebrew (which goes from left-to-right) a fountain pen isn’t even a possibility.
I am left handed and used a fountain pen for years with no problem. Modern ink dries almost instantly, so I never experienced any issues with smearing.
I’ve been using fountain pens for a decade, buy my budget can’t support +1k for pens, so I’m happy with my collection of twisbi ecco pens, a plus is they are colored so I can match the ink color with the body color.
I do think they have improved my handwriting a lot, which was my goal. Also, they are rare enough that I still get oohs when I pull one out.
The last time I used ink was a dip pen in high school art class.
Three of us made a comic book for two years in art class.
We would write it over a weekend and then our first artist would draw it out then our second would water color the drawings and the third would irk the cells with wide dip pens and wide black markers.
Calligraphy was fun.
For math, many swear by Pentel’s mechanical pencils in .5 or .7 2B lead, but ensso has a new fountain pen called BOLT that has a retractable nib which lends itself to the writing of equations.
I still use a fountain pen, and enjoy them. I find them good for grading because ink flow is unlike anything students are likely to use. I also just like the refilling them you get a sense that you have done something or pile of something when it comes to grading.