A plenitude of pens
It’s been a while since I last wrote about my favorite object of “fancy” (as they used to call a hobby or interest in Victorian times — thus “cat fanciers” and “pen fanciers”), so I’m returning this week to fountain pens both old and new.
You wouldn’t think that pens would be newsworthy, except when someone comes out with the world’s most expensive signature scrawler (purportedly the Aurora Diamante, with 30 carats of diamonds and a price tag of $1.28 million). I have nothing so spectacular or ostentatious to report on, but I do want to take note of some local pen-related events, if only to show how this strange addiction has afflicted more souls hereabouts.
First of all, our group of fountain pen users, collectors, and enthusiasts, the Fountain Pen Network-Philippines (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fpn-p/), which we founded almost four years ago, now has over 200 members online, about 30 of whom regularly attend the monthly meetings (usually held on a Saturday at Amici in Ayala Triangle, Makati) to try out new pens, inks, and papers.
Our membership includes such people as Education Undersecretary and lawyer Albert Muyot, retired pharmaceuticals executive Chito Limson, advertising boss lady and master calligrapher Leigh Reyes, Ateneo chemistry guru Nestor Valera, horseracing journalist and prizewinning essayist Jenny Ortuoste, social science researcher Caloy Abad Santos, blogger Clem Dionglay, writer Mona Caccam, business consultant Karlo Tatad, poets Paolo Manalo and Issy Reyes, and magazine editor Carl Cunanan. We have members as young as 15 and 16, and also members based in Davao, Indonesia, the US, the UK, and Singapore. Anyone with an interest in fountain pens — no need for them to be encrusted with diamonds — is welcome to join FPN-P by signing up at the website above.
The group got together recently for two happy occasions. Last Feb. 21, the century-old line of Sheaffer pens had a Philippine launch in Greenbelt 5 under the auspices of National Book Store, which now carries the brand. The launch organizers sough the help of FPN-P (in this case, me and Clem) in mounting an exhibit of vintage and modern Sheaffers, and I was happy to oblige, trotting out an even dozen of my favorite Sheaffers, ranging from a huge Lifetime flattop from the late 1920s to a gorgeous sterling silver Targa from the mid-1970s, a gift from the gracious Puas of Luis Store on the Escolta (to those who don’t know, the oldest pen shop in the country, dating back to the 1940s).
Like I told Daphne Oseña Paez, who hosted the launch and interviewed us onstage, the great thing about Sheaffer is that it has always produced high-quality and technically innovative products (the lever filler that many people associate with fountain pens was designed and patented by jeweler Walter A. Sheaffer in 1908), and you can get a good Sheaffer at any price point, from limited editions to school pens.
Not to be outdone, the local distributors of Waterman and Parker pens attended our next meeting last March 24 to conduct a private sale of heavily discounted Watermans and Parkers. Along with Sheaffer (and a now-defunct company called Wahl-Eversharp), Parker and Waterman made up the “Big Four” of US pen companies in the early to mid-20th century, and some of the most collectible vintage pens in the world were produced by these companies. (If you want a quick education in vintage pen collecting, Google the terms “Waterman tree trunk” and “Parker snake pen.” You may not think that the pens in question are particularly beautiful — and I would agree with you — but it’s good to keep their images in mind just in case one turns up in a garage sale for a few pesos; and yes, it’s been known to happen.)
Indeed the focus of my personal collection is one particular Parker pen called the Vacumatic, produced between the mid-1930s and the early 1950s. It’s sickening to admit, but I have about 50 of these vintage beauties in every imaginable model and color, and I must be one of a dozen people in the world for whom the description “azure blue, 136mm capped, clear 1940 imprint, double-jeweled, with a Vac band” will induce severe heart palpitations, dizziness, and shortness of breath.
I’ve already told the story (but, heck, I’ll tell it again) of how, in 1994, while on a writing fellowship in Scotland, I walked into the Thistle Pen Shop in Edinburgh, and breezily asked the saleslady if they had my “grail”pen: “a 1936 Parker Vacumatic Oversize in burgundy red.” When she said, “As a matter of fact, we do!” and pulled the very pen I was describing out of a drawer, I nearly fainted with excitement. I recovered my composure well enough to croak “How much?”, and when she told me the price, I nearly fainted again, because it was a month’s pay of a lowly UP professor. But hallelujah (or should I exclaim alas!), I had a credit card, and walked out of that shop pen in hand — as James Joyce put it in Araby, “I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.”
Of course, as soon as I returned to my room in Hawthornden Castle, where I was supposed to be pecking away at a book project, I was overcome by buyer’s remorse. “Oh my Lord,” I muttered, “what have I done?” But it was then that I resolved to write a story about a man enamored of his Parker Vacumatic fountain pen, and I worked on that story for the next three days, and was pleased enough with the result to send it off, when I came home, to the Weekly Graphic, where “Penmanship” won first prize in a short story competition, and earned me my purchase money back. With such tales have I therefore justified the acquisition and accumulation of more pens (“My toys, my precious toys!” I gloat as I run my inky fingers through them).
Let me spread this disease to the innocent and uninitiated by announcing that a very fine and affordable fountain pen called the TWSBI 540 (don’t ask me what it means — it’s some Chinese voodoo that’s explained on www.twsbi.com) has arrived on our shores, specifically at the Scribe Writing Essentials shop at Eastwood Mall. If you know and like big Montblancs or Pelikans but can’t sell the family farm to get one, the TWSBI (twis-bee) is for you — large, wonderfully designed, with smooth, often springy nibs. It’s also what we call a “demonstrator” — a see-through pen that shows you the ink inside the barrel and whatever’s going on. If you want to get a starter fountain pen that you can enjoy writing with and will look good peeking out of your pocket, you could do worse than get a TWSBI. But don’t say you weren’t warned: it’s a steep, slippery slope, and we’ll see you at the bottom.
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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and check out my blog at www.penmanila.ph.
