Sarah McNally Pledges to Use This Fountain Pen for the Rest of Her Life
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Welcome to Stationery Week on the Strategist, where we’ve been obsessively researching and testing office supplies — everything from pens, pencils, and paper to task chairs. For more, head to ourStationery Week hub.
I’ve had two loves at first touch: cigarettes andfountain pens. I know who gave me my first cigarette — a boy at a for-profit party in Winnipeg thrown by a couple raising money for their wedding. There is a genetic marker for nicotine addiction, unlike fountain pens. Love of fountain pens is a rational response to something wonderful, like ice cream or flowers. I don’t understand why they aren’t more popular in the United States: A decent entry-level fountain pen can be had for $25, and it will last forever and improve your life. I use mine in paper planners for the pleasant illusion of elegance and control.
My mother admired images of romantic, old-timey girlhood, à la Norman Rockwell, and she gave me my first fountain pen — a Parker — steel-nibbed with blue cartridges. I loved it from the jump, although I was not a particularly writerly child. My first gold-nibbed fountain pen was a gift from a college boyfriend. (He was from France, where fountain pens are as commonplace in schools as arithmetic and social anxiety.) All through college, I wore it hooked into a nimbus of long, cheap necklaces. That pen lasted decades — until I dropped it, straight as a missile, directly on its nib, and it bent back, snub-nosed. The Fountain Pen Hospital in the Financial District repaired it, but it ever after skipped on the upstroke, which defeats the purpose of a fountain pen: effortless, steady flow.
If you walk into a stationery store, you’ll notice that fountain pens are priced first by their nib, then by their body. There are nibs of different sizes and materials, but the most common are steel and gold. No fountain pen below $200 has a gold nib, and after you make the leap to gold, there is no limit to what people will pay for pens. At a certain point, the pricing becomes disconnected from anything but status, like handbags. Breaking in a gold-nibbed fountain pen can take time. At first, the nib might scratch a little and draw attention to itself in a way it never will again. This is the courtship phase. Soon, the gold will mold itself to your script like a pair of well-made shoes to your feet. A steel-nibbed fountain pen, while to my hand still better than any roller ball, ballpoint, or felt tip, can’t mold. Steel holds up bridges and towers for a reason. It is unyielding. I prefer the softness of gold. Others prefer the firmness of steel.
My passion for fountain pens didn’t take me far up the price ladder. Today, my pen is a limited-edition Sailor, made in Japan, and it costs $236. Barring mishap, it will last the rest of my life. It has a gold nib and a perfect converter for inks that I use in monthslong flings with colors like hunter green and mahogany brown. My pen is not garish or boring; it’s an object of beauty I get to use every day. For a year or more, I didn’t know to look for the subtle sparks of iridescence in its robin’s-egg blue, and then one day I was gazing lovingly at it in the sun, and it shimmered at me.
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