Sunday, November 24, 2013

The Edison Pen Company

The secondary theme for our meetings is always "Newest Acquisitions", and on Thursday, one of our members (Greg) brought a lovely example of a new handcrafted fountain pen he recently acquired. The pen was made by Brian Gray of the Edison Pen Company in Ohio, and it's a stunner:
(click on image to enlarge photo)

Brian makes both customized fountain pens for customers (sold through his website), and non-customized pens (sold through authorized dealers). The one above is from his non-custom line and is the "Collier" model in the Persimmon Swirl pattern. It's a large fountain pen (5.9 inches capped) that does not post, although the length of the barrel (5.1 inches) and width of the pen (0.59 inch) makes it unlikely you'd even need to post it. It's one of the largest fountain pens I've tried, writes beautifully, and, weighing in at 30 grams, is very comfortable to hold. Many thanks to Greg for bringing it to our meeting for all of us to see. It's definitely on my Wish list!

Saturday, November 23, 2013

"The Pens You'd Never Sell" -- November 21st meeting

Many thanks to all who attended our November meeting to see "The Pens You'd Never Sell", an old VPC theme that we decided to reuse, as many of our members found the topic of interest. The examples seen on Thursday did not disappoint; we saw irreplaceable pens that were gifts or inheritances from close relatives, pens that were valued for their impeccable writing performance (i.e. their nibs), and treasured pens that commemorated special occasions....and we got to hear the stories behind each pen (something I always enjoy). One of our longtime members, Glenn Marcus, wrote a nice piece about it on his blog here.

I snapped a photo of some of these examples here:
(If you enlarge the image, you can see Graham's Pelikan M640 'Sahara' in muted yellow on one side of his 12-pen case, and his lovely Visconti Divina 'Desert Springs' fountain pen on the case's other side. Those are Glenn's hands---busy scribbling notes for his website article---on the far left of the photo).

Winnipeg pen maker, Dr. Ken Cavers, dropped by to say 'hi' and brought some fine examples of his work to show us. I snapped a couple of photos (see below), but you really have to see the results in person to appreciate the care and craftsmanship that he puts into his work:
(from left to right: two nice examples of bamboo fountain pens, a greenish-blue ebonite fountain pen and a celluloid fountain pen---all handcrafted)


Ken's work is in high demand, so his wait time is over a year for custom commissioned pens, but he does occasionally sell non-commissioned examples on his website- Ken Cavers Custom Pens.

After I posted the above, I realized I'd forgotten to mention that we had two other first-time attendees--Tim's niece Kjensmo (who lives in the U.S) and new VPC member Crispin! New members are always welcome to join our club. If you have any questions, please email me at vancouverpenclub@gmail.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Our November meeting is the last VPC meeting for 2013, as we don't meet in December. Fear not, though - our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday January 16, 2014 at Perks pen store on Cambie Street, so I hope you can make it! Theme/topic: to be announced.

Cheers,
~Maja