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- New Day, New Ink
New day, new ink.
To many, that might sound like something to do with tattoos. Not to me! When I have fresh ink on my sleeve, I usually mean that I smudged my page.
I am a recent convert to fountain pens, and have started playing around with new and different inks. I’m branching out from my basic black Parker Quink and discovering the prismatic worlds of Noodler’s and Diamine.
But first, how do I love thee, Fountain Pens? Let me count the ways…
First and foremost, fountain pens are a pure joy to write with. The nib glides across the page so smoothly, I can write for an hour, completely run out of things to write about, and still crave the feeling of pen on paper. At this point, my daily journal probably has more paragraphs of “I love using this fountain pen” than actual thoughts by now. My hand doesn’t tire the way it used to with ballpoint pens because I don’t need to press into the paper like I did before.
I started using fountain pens in 2017, when I was deep into a frustrating search for a more eco-friendly, low-plastic writing tool. I found a few refillable pens, but they still had a nib unit, with the metal tip, spring, and ink reservoir… A little too involved to recycle consistently.
Then, I found fountain pens. I had played around with calligraphy pens as a kid, which I enjoyed, but did not understand or appreciate at the time. Fountain pens, I discovered, do not have to be used for calligraphy. The standard fountain pen nibs are stiff, stainless steel, and can have an even finer line than most ballpoint pens.
I was absolutely smitten. The feeling, the variety, the uniqueness, the history and engineering drew me in like a moth to a flame.
There are dozens of fountain pen manufacturers, tending to focus in Germany and Japan, though England/France, China, and the US certainly have their own brands. And of course, there are the show-off Mont Blancs and other luxury brands, but I’d take a good workhorse pen over a diamond-and-gold-whatever anyday.
And it turns out there are whole niche communities of fountain pen people. It’s a beautiful and persnickety world. And I’m just starting to explore it.
Anyway. Today, I pulled out my Kaweco Liliput in Fireblue (one of my all-time favorite birthday presents). It’s a pocket pen, so it’s super compact, and a fine specimen of German engineering.
It is perhaps the size of a thin finger when capped, and when opened, the cap seamlessly screws on to post, extending the pen to a normal, usable pen size. A true travel pen. This type of portability seems to be a specialty of Kaweco (they also have a super popular Sport model in both plastic and aluminum), but this model is a lilliputian dream.
But mostly, I love it because it’s so pretty. It has a truly unique finish. The hand torched steel creates an oil slick pattern, with subtle sheen of blue, brown, and purple.
I mean, come on.
Industrial chic. Luminous and one of a kind.
And today, I filled it with the Kaweco Summer Purple. (I usually favor glass bottles of ink, but I do have a handful of plastic cartridges that I use to test an ink or new color, or keep as a back-up when traveling. You know. Before.)
Summer Purple is a muted violet, what the folks at The Well Appointed Desk called “a color that is not too fussy but still adds a little pizazz to your writing. If you’re just dipping inky toes into colors beyond blue, black or blue-black, Summer Purple is a good option.”
That sounds about right!
My ink is not quite as deep or vibrant as the image shows, since ink swatches tend to lay down more ink than my Extra Fine point nib. It’s a hazy sort of lilac shade, reminiscent of a warm summer dawns, when the earth is still radiating heat from the day before. The purple of the Rocky Mountains at sunset. The kind of shade that, when washed across the sky, makes you realize the world is a small, lone marble, floating through a deeper, darker space. An expansive and ethereal, yet welcoming warm shade.
The summer heat has laid a layer of primordial haze over the mountains outside my windows this week. Last month, I was able to see the hills and windmills on the horizon, but now my view is truncated by the blurriness of midsummer days.
I tend not to think of purple hues as warm. Usually purple gets classified as a “cool” color regardless of undertone, lumped together with blue and green, as if none of those shades can present as warm.
I did not plan to have a perfect summer haze moment align with my ink choices, but serendipity struck.
So far, I’m enjoying this new shade of ink that happens to fit so well within this time and place.
Sources & Photo Credits
The Goulet Pen Co., Kaweco Liliput
Well Appointed Desk, Ink Review: Kaweco Summer Purple (February 14, 2015)