First, the backstory to this one....
I'd owned a Taccia 'Doric' fountain pen before. It was a lovely, large modern fountain pen made of a beautiful striated blue resin...but I had an issue with its grip section. With its intricate engravings, the section looked great, but it was made of a thick metal which made the pen a lot heavier than I liked... so I traded it away to a really nice guy on Pentrace who, in turn, sent me a lovely fountain pen to add to my Think pen collection. I loved the Think pen but still thought about the Taccia once in a while, and wished that it had had a different section, because it was such a great pen otherwise.
Flash forward six and a half years later -- I see a Taccia 'Doric' fountain pen for sale on Pentrace in a colour I've never seen before...and it has a resin section....a matching resin section! Why I didn't jump on that sale right away, I'll never know (ok, it's because I really wanted to buy the seller's modern Parker 'Duofold' first) but a few months (!) later, I finally contacted the seller and asked if he still had the Taccia for sale. I didn't expect him to answer "Yes"...but he did! I quickly bought the pen from him and it arrived, safe and sound.
Meet my new Taccia 'Doric' "Swisher Pens" Special Edition fountain pen ...
(~please click on images to enlarge~)
It's a gorgeous flat-topped fountain pen in a creamy resin with coffee-coloured streaks. At 14.5 cm capped, it's fairly large but uncapped, it's about 12.8 cm long, which I find is the perfect size to use unposted (so I actually don't post this pen). If you do choose to post it, it comes in at a whopping 17.5 cm in length, but it's not heavy--according to my digital kitchen scale, it weighs 28 grams with no converter or cartridge in place. Its section diameter is 0.5 inches / 1.25 cm at its widest point, which makes for a comfy grip for my hand.
My special edition lacks the wide metal cap band which the non-SE pens had (and which also added to the weight of those pens). As mentioned earlier, the section on mine matches the rest of the pen--a design feature I really, really like :)
(above: the Swisher Pens imprint on the barrel)
Swisher Pens was a pen store (brick & mortar and online) located in Virginia Beach, VA that was known for its great selection, prices and customer service. Sadly, the business shut down in 2011. I'd bought several pens from Chuck Swisher over the years (starting from the earliest days of my pen-collecting hobby), but I never knew that he had a Taccia special edition made for his pen shop until I saw this one for sale last year. The fact that I wound up acquiring a pen made for a pen seller I liked and respected makes this pen even more special to me.
Like the regular-production Taccia 'Doric' pens, my Special Edition (SE) 'Doric' has a clip jewel that you could spot a mile away :) The clips on the non-SE pens were gunmetal in colour, whereas my pen has a polished chrome clip.
Its nib is an ordinary IPG (Iridium Point Germany) monotone steel nib in Medium that writes well, but I really wish it had the Taccia name engraved on it, especially with it being a special edition. I shouldn't complain too much, though, since I found this wonderful fountain pen purely by accident...and so many years after trading away its non-SE counterpart; I love using it and am proud to have it in my pen collection.
Many thanks to Doug Vicary (who posts as "Doug" on Pentrace's famous "green board" , its sales board) for selling me this great fountain pen, and for his excellent customer service over the years. And a belated congratulations to Pentrace (the first pen community I ever joined) on its 21st birthday last month; I met a lot of good pen friends there, and it's still a great place to talk (and buy ;) pens.
(~ photos & review by Maja ~)
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