PenHero Articles

Creating a limited edition pen line when you don’t make pens involves a lot of choices. First is what pen manufacturer to partner with, followed by selecting the right one of their models. Then comes the most important part: selecting the design and themes that will set it apart. It’s not enough to take a pen and simply put different colors or engravings on it. It needs to stand out from anything else based on that model. Have a look at the two initial phases of prototypes for the L …

Eight months after I photographed the LB2 Kimono Shinrin (森林 woodland / forest) and Daichi (大地 earth / vast land) artist proofs these two pens arrived in April 2007. Unlike the first two, they have no theme names. The dark green pen looks very much like number 10 on the Kimono colorways palette chart. I was not given a chart for any other colorways, including 1 through 9, so I’m do not know what number the dark brown pen represents, or whether it had one. These are the darkest Kimono pens …

Classic Pens introduced the LB2 Kimono in August, 2006, a limited edition maki-e decoration on the Parker Duofold Centennial. It is a quieter piece than the ornate LS-series maki-e pens. Maki-e Master Tatsuya Tōdō created a painted simple ring pattern to evoke calm and a feeling of being close to nature. The fundamental design decision was a stacked series of complimentary color bands on the cap, barrel and section with raised rings to enhance both the look and feel in the hand. The green theme …

This Vens fountain pen has puzzled me for years. I picked it up in the early 2000s in a large bag of pens on a hunt in Maine. The same bag held several Japanese pens, which suggested the original owner had spent time in Asia. After years of searching, I could find no primary or secondary information on the brand. Recently, before giving up, I tried an AI-assisted search. See what I found out! Read the story about this interesting pen here: https://www.penhero.com/PenGallery/Vens/VensFlighter.ht …

Pen hunting often turns up the unexpected. In this case it was a Plato 66, a brand I had not known, made in India by Mhatre Pen & Plastic Industries. Since this article first appeared in 2017, I have seen more of these pens, read about the range online, and bought two later Plato 66 eyedropper pens from a seller in India. Join me on a deeper dive on a line that began in the 1950s and was made into the 1980s. Read the story about these interesting pens here: https://www.penhero.com/PenGaller …

Classic Pens launched the LB4 Tahiti maki-e series in 2008 with a first run of 25 pens on the Parker Duofold, plus some additional pieces on the Classic Pens Legend. Master Tatsuya Tōdō created the artwork for every pen. I'm going to call these first edition pens Mark 1. The composition shows the island’s familiar sights: red hibiscus, tiare blossoms, palm fronds, clear sky, Pacific water, dolphins, and a turtle on the beach. The design was revised (Mark 2) in 2016 with a richer blue for …

Andreas Lambrou and Keith G. Brown founded Classic Pens Limited in England in 1987. Passionate about pens, they set out to create truly exclusive fountain pens by collaborating with leading pen companies on new limited edition models. Their first pen, developed with Sheaffer and France’s R. Murelli R.S.A.R.L., a specialty guilloché workshop in Domont (Val-d'Oise), France, was released in 1990 and was based on the sterling silver Sheaffer Targa. Read the story about these interestin …

In a gutsy move, Mentmore copied several design elements of the Waterman Patrician and introduced the Platignum Supreme in 1931 as a low cost competitor. A full-color December 1931 Platignum advertisement in the Strand Magazine and a page from the Waterman 1933 catalog reveal clear parallels. The most striking is the wide lattice cap band with its repeating vertical dot-dash-dot motif—the very pattern shown on Waterman’s design patent. But this Platignum Supreme is missing that visu …

The Imperial Pen and Pencil Company of Nassau, New York was founded by Frank Feldman, who ran the company until it closed in 1956. Not content to make merely ordinary fountain pens, the Imperial Pen and Pencil Company set out to solve a problem that may never have existed. How often did a fountain-pen user wish for a spare nib of a different grade so they could switch from medium-fine to medium-broad writing on the spot? Why not store a spare nib unit in a chamber at the end of the barrel, alwa …

There are three versions of the Venus President, each featuring a 14-karat gold nib. The second version (Mark 2, the focus of this article) first appeared in a retailer advertisement using Venus company graphics in the December 11, 1945 San Antonio Light (San Antonio, Texas). The main change from the Mark 1 was that now both the cap and barrel were striped celluloid in green, blue, red, or brown. Read the story about these interesting pens here: https://www.penhero.com/PenGallery/Venus/VenusPre …