The “Fountain Pen Press”

I created the “fountain Pen Press” sometime in the late 1970’s, during my college years. I like to make hand-written and hand-drawn birthday cards for close friends and family. Each card is completely unique, and is inspired by the moment I create it.

It occurred to me that as I use fountain pens to write and draw, one of the things that makes each card unique is the fountain pen. So I came up with the idea of the “fountain Pen Press” – the lower case in “fountain” is on purpose; the curl in the written lower case f is more aesthetic to my eye, and it rolls nicely with a fountain pen.

Obviously, “fountain Pen Press” is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. It was my sort of tongue in cheek way of saying “this is one of a kind”, this is anti-commercial, anti-corporate in its essence. I seem to recall that I also had a slogan at one time that said something like: “at the fountain Pen Press we are a person, not a corporation”.

Marshal McLuhan taught us that “the medium is the message”, and a fountain pen is a medium of expression.

Fountain pens are completely tactile, responsive, they both impart to the user and take on from the user a unique individual style. Fountain pens allow creativity, and you might even say they demand it.

Writing and drawing with fountain pens is not only tactile, it is actually sensual!

My first fountain pen was a gift from my Uncle Wilf, who was visiting Israel in the late 1960’s while we were still living there. I was 10 at the time, and he gave me a nice blue Staedtler fountain pen, the kind that has a built in piston pump for refilling the pen from an ink bottle. I was ruined for life! I have been writing almost exclusively with fountain pens ever since! I thoroughly enjoyed using that first blues pen, filling it, cleaning it, doodling with it, getting used to the angles that a fountain pen allows you to write and draw with…

Around that same time, my Dad gave me a classic Sheaffer Imperial Touchdown pen – a lovely black pen with gold trim and a gold nib. This model of Sheaffer featured a nib that is embedded in-line with the body of the pen – an innovative and very aesthetic design that was unique to Sheaffer and to this line of pens introduced in the early 1960’s. I still have that Sheaffer, and have since added a few more similar pens to my collection. The feel of that Sheaffer in my hand is still one of my all time favorites.

I never really considered myself a collector of pens in the past, having maybe a dozen or so pens, I considered myself as simply someone who appreciated fountain pens and used them daily. However, since discovering a group of local enthusiasts in the Israel Fountain Pen Society, I have learned to appreciate more kinds of fountain pens, to start using different colors and types of ink, and I guess I have suddenly become a collector too.

😉