Sunday, August 7, 2016

Vancouver Pen Club Summer Dinner 2016!

Many thanks to those 19 VPC members that attended our annual VPC Summer Dinner on July 21st at the Oakridge White Spot restaurant. Unlike a traditional VPC meeting, this casual dinner is just our small way of thanking Richard for his generous and ongoing support for our pen club by hosting our meetings at his great pen store on Cambie Street since November 2007.

There is no theme for these Summer Dinners, but if members have new pens to show, I always ask them to bring them along. The pen on the left is a new acquisition of mine, a Campo Marzio "Celluloid" model fountain pen (although the material is actually resin/acrylic ;) in a lively blue and yellow pattern. Next to it is another CM model, the Ambassador, a nice larger fountain pen in a tortoiseshell-type pattern

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White Spot has always been good at accommodating the size of our parties, and for allowing us to book their indoor "patio" for our annual dinner. A view from one end of the table:
...and a view from the other end:
Richard and myself with Barry looking in:
Many thanks to longtime VPC member Ralph for taking the next set of photos! Here's a shot of VPC newcomers June and Bart:
Clockwise: June, Bart, Jerred, Charles, Bruce and Marey.
That's me (Maja) talking to Charles:
VPC member and camera aficionado Barry K:
A pensive shot of VPCer Tony:
Clockwise from far left: my good friend Brian, Leo, Tony, new member Sophia, Stuart and Norm.
That's longtime VPC member Bruce talking to Marey:
That's me seated next to our Guest of Honour, Richard:
Me giving a little speech, thanking Richard for his generous support for our pen club. Richard has hosting our meetings for almost 9 years at no cost to the VPC, and has been an enthusiastic supporter and gracious host throughout the entire time.
That's Stuart on the far left talking to Norm and Louise (to Louise's left is Alejandra):
Lastly, I couldn't resist taking a selfie with Richard :)


Our next meeting will be held at our usual meeting location--Perks pen store at 5844 Cambie Street in Vancouver, BC on Thursday August 18th at 6:30pm, and the topic/theme will be "Your Favourite Lesser-Known Fountain Pen Brands" (for time reasons, please limit it to 3 brands maximum, and 1-2 examples per brand....ie. max 6 pens total). No RSVP necessary for meetings held at Perks. Hope to see you there!

June meeting photos ~ part two

Continuing with our June theme of "Limited Edition Fountain Pens"...here are some photos of a few of Bruce's amazing Visconti LEs. The one on the far left (in the photo below) is the gorgeous Visconti Mudejar Art LE, made of ivory-coloured resin and covered in scrimshaw engravings, released in 2007 (only 600 made), the one in the middle is the Visconti Istos Aracnis, released in 2012, made of black lucite and covered with a Sterling Silver overlay in a web pattern (only 888 made), and the far right one is a Visconti Ripple LE made for Chatterley Luxury. Excellent info on Visconti's Limited Edition Pens (they made a lot of them!) here on Fountain Pen Hospital's website.

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An assortment of wonderful Visconti LE's from their Opera range - from L to R: Opera Master LE, a Wall Street LE (2nd gen), the Aida LE, and the Visconti Opera Club Maple Leaf LE.
Bruce holding a Visconti Verona 'Rebecca Moss' LE:
A quick shot of Stuart's newest acquisition----a green-striped vintage Pelikan 140, a piston-filler made from 1952 to 1965. Those old Pelikan gold nibs usually write really nicely (as an aside, I have a 140 with a fantastic oblique medium nib that I absolutely love using).
Many thanks to Mark S for bringing in his extensive LE collection, which is shown in the three photos below. Mark brought in some Montblanc LEs that he'd shown us two years ago when we did Ltd Edition/Special Edition pens, but he also brought us some other lovely LE pens, including a Visconti Titanic LE (shown on the extreme right of his pen case below):
That's Mark holding the Stipula Casa Mila LE, made to honour visionary architect Antonio Gaudi (there's some interesting information on Stipula's Limited Editions --including the Casa Mila LE-- on this page of FPH's website)
A quick shot of my (Maja's) LEs: From L-R: Delta Vancouver Pen Club LE (#07/25), Waterman Carene David Ogilvy LE (not numbered, but the certificate says only 1700 were made, worldwide), Retro 51 Double Eight LE (#075/200), Retro 51 Abbondanza, made for Retro 51 by Stipula (#231/351), Stipula Duetto LE made for Seattle's World Lux pen store (#30/50), Stipula Casa Batilo LE (#147/193),the 2007 Bexley Simplicity LE made for FPN--Fountain Pen Network (not numbered but the production run was limited to 115 pieces, iirc). Top left: Pilot M90 LE (limited to 9,000 pieces). Top right: Stipula Passaporto LE made for FPN (#22/200, marked Moderator as I'm an Hon. Admin there)
Lastly, I asked Ben to take a photo of his two modern Sheaffer Balance LEs because I accidentally deleted a quick shot I took of them, and he sent me this great photo showing the Jungle Green LE on the left and the Aspen LE on the right. Both are stunning patterns!
Many thanks to those who brought in LEs I didn't photograph---Julienne (mentioned in part one of this two-part post), Bill K with his Stipula Passaporto FPN LE in blue marble (one of 200 pieces made for the Fountain Pen Network website in 2011) and Jerred for showing us his gorgeous Delta Dolce Vita Oro and Nemosine Singularity fountain pen in Blue Marble (only 500 made in this colour). Natasha brought her OMAS LE pens to the April meeting, so she didn't bring them to the June meeting but you can read about them in our April meeting report :)
And many thanks to those members who brought in their new aquistions (not photographed)----June with her Pelikan 400NN, Bart with his Pelikan M800 in Burnt Orange, Natasha with her Marlen Aleph, Lamy Safari in the Dark Lilac colour for 2016, Lamy 2000 in stainless steel and her Namisu Nova model, which I believe was part of a Kickstarter.com campaign. This is a simple but very elegant design, made from solid aluminum or titanium, which is now (unfortunately) sold out, but if you can get your hands on one, I'm sure you'll be impressed by the design. One of Bethany's two newest acquisitions brought in for us to see was a Tactile Turn 'Gist' fountain pen, another elegently designed pen that was also part of a Kickstarter campain (the other pen she brought was a very cool Franklin Christoph '65'). And last but not least, our generous door prize donor, Jerred brought in his newest pen purchases---a Stipula Etruria Magnifica, a Parker 180 and some Dollar 7171I fountain pens.
It's great when our members have items to bring in for our monthly theme or show us their newest pen-related purchases....but even if you *don't* have something for the theme or new stuff to show, please come to our meetings anyway. The point of our club is to have fun, learn and/or educate people about fountain... and we're not pen snobs, either ;)

June meeting photos ~ part one

We had excellent attendance for our June meeting; 26 members (including one new member, Sophia) showed up at Perks. Many thanks to Jerred for his donation of the door prizes---three Dollar piston-fillers, won by Stuart, Tony and Ralph!

Our theme for the meeting was "Limited Edition Fountain Pens", and we saw many beautiful examples brought in by our members. We actually did this topic back in July of 2014 but we've had so many new members since then, so when one of them asked me if we could do that as a topic, I said 'sure'!

Mido started off the meeting by showing us his Pilot Vanishing Point Limited Edition (LE for short) fountain pen in purple. The pen was released in August 2008, and only 2008 pens were made, 900 being released to the U.S. There is some excellent information on VPs on Carmen Rivera's extensive website devoted to this popular fountain pen model ( link ).

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Our secondary topic is always Newest Acquisitions, so Peter brought in his classy new fountain pen blotter (shown below), in addition to his Delta Vancouver Pen Club LE (#12/25).
Here are Julienne's newest acquisitions---a nice assortment of vintage fountain pens shown below. For the evening's primary theme, Julienne brought in her Delta Vancouver Pen Club LE, a Monteverde Fantasia LE, a Delta Capri Marina Grande LE & its counterpart, a Delta Marina Piccola LE (a sort of 'his & hers' set; I didn't photograph them, but there's some good info on them here ), as well as her OMAS 360 LE (#108/360).
This is Christopher's fountain pen that Julienne is trying out here; it's an exceptionally smooth-writing vintage Waterman Taperite that was a recent acquisition for him.
More new acquisitions! This is Ben's beautiful Sheaffer Legacy Sterling Silver fountain pen. The fountain pen is nicely balanced, and the metal has a very pleasant warmth to it due to the heat conductivity of the silver. Great buy, Ben!
One more new acquisition photo before we continue on with the Limited Edition theme---this is Aaron's fantastic new Montblanc Heritage Collection 1912 fountain pen. It's a very classy-looking modern pen that evokes Montblanc's early days in terms of looks *and* design---it has a very cool retractable nib mechanism, in addition to a piston-filling mechanism!