This post is my entry for Indie Web Carnival August 2024 hosted by Zacharay Kai, with the theme of Intersecting Interests.
I’ve gotten into fountain pens recently. At first just for the writing experience. I’d started taking much more notes on paper and found that after trying a number of digital note-taking tools and systems, writing physically was the first ‘system’ in which I actually made more and more useful notes, and more consistently at that.
So I decided to invest in making that activity more enjoyable by trying out a fountain pen. I know one or two people who swear by them and expected that I could also grow to like the tactile aspect of it, plus having a nice non-disposable writing instrument seemed like a nice idea.
I was right. So after enjoying my first fountain pen for a while – a Kaweco Sport – I wanted to try some other types and models. But I didn’t want to keep buying new stuff. So when I ran across a lot of six nice vintage pens at a local auction house for a reasonable price, and with non-one else interested, I decided that was a perfect way to play around and see whether and what about these pens I’d enjoy.
I now have more than two dozen pens…
The pens in that lot turned out to all have italic calligraphy nibs, which I enjoy playing around with. Another find got me into vintage plastic pens – cheap in their time but remarkably good quality sometimes and often fun, bright designs full of character.
Collecting fountain pens, trying calligraphy, improving my handwriting, and playing around with different color inks combines quite a few of my pre-existing interests in a surprising way.
I like vintage design. I’m interested in the history of everyday technology. I enjoy browsing through auctions and using second hand stuff (consumerism without the climate guilt! 😊). I used to work as a graphic designer. And i’ve always had the tendency to collect things.
All of that comes together in collecting and using vintage (80s and 90s) fountain pens. The only risk is that it can lead to a lot of online searching and browsing while one of the main motivations that got me into this was to have more physical and analog activity in my life – to get away from screens. So today I bought a set of calligraphy books and workbooks (again, a second hand find) to lean more into that side of things. And the draft of this post was written longhand with a nice green pen en matching green ink. So satisfying!