I picked up THE pen yesterday - the Pelikan M450, which I have coveted ever since I saw it online a couple of years ago. At a cost of around US$450 I was resigned to only admiring it from afar (it’s not even available here in Perth, Western Australia). What changed? The little windfall from selling our house!
I tried very hard to find someone local (or even Over East) to sell me this pen, but the only vendor who responded quoted a price of AU$1030, and that was minus postage and handling and insurance. After much investigation I ended up buying my pen from Richard Binder in the US. I chose Richard because:
- he has a good reputation among pen fanatics online
- his price was quite good (US$380). I also ordered a couple of nib inserts for my Namiki Vanishing Point pen, and the grand total, including insurance, was US$450 (around AU$576!)
- he tests each pen and adjusts it prior to delivery (he’s also a pen restorer and repairer)
The postie actually tried to deliver the pen on Wednesday, while I was at work. I didn’t have the time to go to the post office until Saturday morning (imagine the anticipation!).
The pen was very well wrapped - no rattling whatsoever in the box. Besides the pen and the nibs, Richard also included a blotter and some instructions on using the pen.
It’s a beautiful pen that feels right in my hand. The nib is very smooth and feels very good on paper.
I’m going to enjoy using this pen very much, assuming I can stop admiring it…
My scribble, using the Pelikan M450.
Just read that a whole treasure trove of Patrick White’s drafts, manuscripts and notes, some 24 boxes worth, have been bought by the National Library (Update: See press release). I love David Marr’s description of the collection: “literary treasure”, and “the El Dorado of Australian libraries since the 1960s. Many had asked for them. All had been rebuffed.”
I’d love to see these papers. There is something compelling (to me) about looking at the handwritten ruminations, the notes, the doodles of someone famous. (Left: Abraham Lincoln’s handwriting. The pen geek in me ponders the ink Lincoln would have used, what sort of nib, how often did he use a blotter?)
And then there’s handwriting in Chinese which is even more intriguing to me. Mainly because I find so much of it impossible to decipher! (Right: Mao Zedong’s handwriting.)
I can’t help but wonder, now that so much stuff is done online, how much of anything will remain for biographers, historians and researchers to find of people writing today.
Assuming we even retain the capacity to read material held on all sorts of disks and drives, what will we see?
This makes me a little sad.
I’ve said before, haven’t I, that I wish I could handwrite this blog and publish it in my handwriting? (Yes, I did, on 28 June 2005: “What would make blogging perfect for me would be if I could actually write, and post, my entries in fountain pen. Yeh, I know it’s completely illogical! “)
I picked up THE pen yesterday - the Pelikan M450, which I have coveted ever since I saw it online a couple of years ago. At a cost of around US$450 I was resigned to only admiring it from afar (it’s not even available here in Perth, Western Australia). What changed? The little windfall from selling our house!
The postie actually tried to deliver the pen on Wednesday, while I was at work. I didn’t have the time to go to the post office until Saturday morning (imagine the anticipation!).
