Live from the Washington Pen Show

So there is now a way for me to write posts live from my phone. My first thought on this new technology was … why in the world would I do that? And maybe that was the right way to think about it. This post is GUARANTEED to have about a million misspellings and grammatical crimes.

BUT, I am here at the Washington DC Pen Supershow, I am giddy about it, and I figured: Hey, maybe it would be fun to write this thing live, take some photos, talk to some folks and have you join me on this adventure.

Maybe that won’t be fun at all. But we will give it a go. Because, hey, why not? I mean, I’m here.

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The show is about to start here at the Marriott in Falls Church. You have all these pen people running around, they’re talking Italian and Japanese and German, it’s quite the scene. I have already been told by more than one person that I have made a terrible mistake making the DC Supershow my first one show because it’s like the Super Bowl of pen shows and I really should have started smaller and I will be overwhelmed.*

*Not that any of them used the “Super Bowl” as a comparison. My sense is that the intersection in the Venn Diagram between “pen fan” and “sports fan” is pretty pretty small. I guess we’ll know more by day’s end. I’m wearing a Satchel Paige T-shirt and an Alaska Goldpanners baseball cap so we will see if anyone comes up to me.

I should note that I have already purchased a pen. I went to check out the scene Thursday evening and a few vendors were set up, including a very nice man from St. Louis named Chris Stephens who makes pens for Grifos out of Italy. He spent like an hour explaining fountain pens and then showed me this beauty, which I could not pass up.

That is a limited edition Grifos Nero Miso “See Stars Again” pen. I don’t think the photo does justice to how beautiful it is AND it has the last line for Dante’s Divine Comedy inscribed on it: E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

Which loosely translates to mean: “And then we emerged to see the stars again.”

It’s not a great sign that I bought a pen BEFORE the show even opened but, you know, it’s not unexpected.

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OK, so the show just began … and look what I saw right away:

That’s right, it’s a limited edition Harry Houdini fountain pen with a magic box. Open the box and there is the pen. Close it and open it again and the box is empty. It’s awesome.

It is also SUPER pricy, like at least four times more than I’ve ever spent for a pen.

What do I do?

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Well, what do you know? I did find a sports crossover:

This is from Barry Gross. He makes super specialty, one-of-a-kind pens: The Yankees pen—it’s a ballpoint pen, not a fountain pen—for example, has a tiny sliver of Babe Ruth’s bat in it. The Mets pen has some of the wood from a seat at old Shea Stadium.

But I’m not sure he’s a huge fan based on him telling me that the Red Sox pen could double as a Phillies pen since they share colors. Maybe he was joking.

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The dealer with the Houdini pen is named Jimmy Dolive, and he’s crazy loaded with awesome pens like these Muhammad Ali pens from Montblanc:

I might not make it out of here.

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OK this is incredibly cool: There is a pen maker in Aiken, S.C., named Jonathan Brooks, who is, best I can tell, kind of the Elvis of fountain pens. And here is what he does: he puts out a whole mess of pens on his table and lets you pick the one that speaks to you:

I found one, a gorgeous blue one, and he put the fountain pen nib on it and I’m supposed to go to a nib grinder in a little bit for him to put what they call a custom nib on it.

I’ll take a photo when I’m done.

I literally have no idea what’s even happening but I’m so happy.

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I’m actually finding a lot more sports crossover here than I expected. I just spent a good while talking with this very nice couple from Ireland who have designed an unusual piston-filling pen. They created a company called Fifty4T. I’d explain what a piston-filling pen is except I’m not entirely sure — it’s a fun way to fill the pen with ink without ever disassembling the pen.

Anyway, we spent most of our time talking about hurling. Apparently, I HAVE to go to Ireland to see hurling for myself. I’ll do it. I’m working on a super secret (for now) project … and I told them I WILL come to Ireland for hurling.

Oh, wait, I’m up next to have my pen get a custom grind! Wish me luck.

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Here is Mark Bacas. He is a nibmeister and, I am told, another superstar in this world. He is grinding a nib for me that he calls a “specialty architect.” If you write with it on one side, it gives you a specialty writing experience where the down stroke is thin but the side stroke is thick. This is the architect grind. What makes this special is Mark smoothes it down so that if you turn the pen upside down, it gives you a fine point. It’s super cool.

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Hey, a Brilliant Reader came up! We talked some Phillies baseball, a little Washington football, it was great!

You could almost see the whole pen show inching away from us.

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This is Hugh Scher — no relation despite the similar spelling to Mike Schur — and he is a pen maker and owner of the much beloved Kanilea Pen Co, which has won seven prestigious Pen World Reader’s Choice Awards since he and his wife started the company in 2016. It also just so happens he grew up about 10 minutes from where I grew up in Cleveland.

Anyway, he does something really fun — he designs pens inspired by photos he and his wife have taken in Hawaii.

That’s how I ended up buying a Blue Moana. Here is the pen and the photo the inspired it. I love this stuff.

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Oh, I got back my Jonathan Brooks pen with the Mark Bacas ground nib. I’m not sure you can tell much from the writing sample but …

There is just a huge difference in the way the architect side writes and the fine side.

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OK, I’m a bit blurry-eyed now. All the pens are beginning to look alike. All the people definitely look alike. All the world is beginning to look alike. I think it’s time to go.

I bought some cool stuff that I haven’t mentioned here — maybe even a lot of cool stuff I haven’t mentioned — but I’m not going to get the Houdini pen. I spent an outrageous sum of money here, but even in my state of obsession, I just couldn’t justify spending THAT much on a pen, even if the box was really cool.

I will mention one more thing I got: I got a glass dip pen. I mention it only for this reason…

What do you see there? Yeah, that’s right, it doesn’t fit in the box it came in. I’ve tried to put it corner to corner, it’s no use. It doesn’t fit. It fit when the woman who sold it put it in there. But it doesn’t for me, and it’s made of glass so I can’t exactly jam it in there

The endless mysteries of pens.

OK, time to go.

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.