Please know this: whether the pen you use is modern or vintage, a Pilot, Noodler’s or Montblanc, the fountain pen you love and use is the better pen.

In less than two short months, five pens found new homes and two pens were acquired. A radical shift has taken place in the pen stable. One Ragtime remains: the Visconti Caravel.

Danitrio Fellowship Fountain Pen

An unexpected opportunity arose to acquire a Danitrio Fellowship Pen. The Fellowship pen has been beautifully photographed and chronicled elsewhere (see links at bottom of post). Suffice to say back in 2009 when the pen was in development I did not think I could ever afford one. What did this pen cost me? Three Ragtimes and a tiny Omas.

Having fallen for urushi fountain pens, I contemplated a maki-e pen. Being consistently drawn to maki-e by the artist Kosetsu (Tatsuya Todo), the decision to say “yes” to a Fellowship pen was easy. I’m honored to have one because it also reflects my feelings about some of the great people met through FPN.

Danitrio fountain pens top to bottom: Tame-murasaki Short Octagon, Fellowship

My first urushi pen, a chocolate-y tame-murasaki Short Octagon Danitrio, is the same size, shape and urushi base as the Fellowship pen. The same artist signature flags both pens. The plain urushi pen has been a great friend yet I’m ambivalent about having two pens the same shape. However all thoughts of re-homing any more pens have been halted for the time being.

The other pen I added to my tiny collection was the small version of the Danitrio Cumlaude in brown marble. The pen came used and a little beaten up yet it satisfied the yearning for brown marble in a big way.

As the collection grows smaller, it becomes more intellectually easy and more emotionally difficult to re-home pens. Easy because I have a very good sense of what pens I like to use. Difficult because I love them all.

Of the Visconti Ragtimes, I kept the one most difficult to acquire and with the loveliest celluloid: the Caravel. The tiny Omas Extra Jr, in my coveted brown marble no less, had been usurped as my favorite pocket pen by the far sturdier Nakaya Piccolo (yet another pen in my favorite brown palette). The beautiful Visconti Pontevecchio remained too heavy for my liking. Alas, the last of my customized Deb Kinney stubs went with the re-homed Viscontis.

Top to bottom: eye dropper, Caravel, Pelikan, Edison, Bexley, Levenger, Wahl-Oxford, Nakaya, Danitrio (x 3), J. Herbin Glass Dip pen

The fountain pen count has been as high as 35. Currently the count is at 10 pens. There’s one more pen, a new Edison Mina, coming in February. Eleven pens remains well below the line drawn in 2009 at 20 pens. (If you care to, read my post Collecting Pens on the Small Side.) I’ve re-drawn my arbitrary line to be no more than 12 pens for the collection. That’s the maximum number my current pen storage box will hold.

Danitrio Fellowship Pen Reading List

• Making of the Danitrio Fellowship Pen
• Flickr Photos (type in “Danitrio Fellowship” in Flickr’s search box for many gorgeous views)
• FPN Review by Doug C
• Only 60 made: FPN discussion
• Pen World, August 2009, “A Fellowship of Pen Friends”
• Penna Magazine, November 2010, “Danitrio FPN Haiku”

Some resources about Japanese Pens in general

• A wonderful resource about vintage Japanese pens is Ryojusen Pens. Here Stan Klemanowicz writes about Collecting Japanese Pens.
• On FPN there is pinned list of books. The FPN forum “Pens from the Land of the Rising Sun” has a wealth of information about Danitrio and Nakaya, among other pens.
• Kamakura Pens
• From Writing without Rhythm, an English-language translation of MONO article, The True Mettle of Japanese Pens.

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