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I’ve been meaning to write a review of the Romillopens Sil #9 for a long time. Why haven’t I? Well, partially because I've never written any pen review before, and am a little intimidated by the high standard set by many on this board. But, more than that, I'm intimidated by the task of writing about this particular pen. In the words of my favourite book review, “I find myself nervous…about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance.” If you like your pen reviews to attempt dispassionate objectivity, I entreat you to move along. There’s nothing satisfying for you to read here. This one may even offend you. To provide context, to set up why I think the Sil, and perhaps Romillo pens in general, are so special, I probably need to mention what I was looking for when I bought it. I don’t call myself a collector. I think it’s more accurate to say I have a lot of pens. Pens are a hobby, sure. Finding pens that delight me is a pleasure in which I love to indulge. But, I don’t get excited about having every colour of something, or completing a set, or acquiring a rare example of some pen or another with pristine imprints. I think all that’s great, and I love cooing over the collections of folks who do that. But that’s not what I do. I see a pen I like, and I buy it. And, over time, that’s meant that I have a lot of pens — depending on your standard. And while I don’t call myself a collector, I do call myself a writer. Not necessarily a good writer, mind you, but the point is that my pens aren’t for show. The point of my pens is to write. The point of my best pens is to write beautifully. So, when I set out a while back — last year, in fact — to find an epic “reward myself” pen, I didn’t have a target in mind. There was no holy grail. But I was looking for something that wasn’t mass-produced “limited edition” desk jewellery. I was looking for something that would be an epitomic manifestation of the writer’s tool. I have some really lovely pens, so for this pen to stand out, it needed to be something more than just another lovely pen. So, I thought I’d look at a few things that had long intrigued me but which had always been “way out there.” Hakase. Modern Onoto. Danitrio. Faggionato. Romillo. The Faggionato and the Danitrio dropped out fairly quickly. The Onoto faded because I became interested in a custom pen — one that would be uniquely mine. A writer’s tool hand-made by craftsmen. That left Romillo and Hakase. Two things decided in Romillo’s favour: nibs and time. Alvaro Romillo and his father make their own nibs — right in their workshop in Madrid. I know of no-one else manufacturing pens at less than industrial scale making nibs in-house. Even the famous pen crafters of Japan — Nakaya, Hakase, etc — don’t make their own nibs. They buy them in, and then tune them. Certainly, the craftsmanship applied to tuning the nibs can approach art. There can be no denying that a Nakaya nib, for example, writes differently than a Platinum nib. But nor can there be any denying that the nib was made by Platinum. In Hakase’s case, the nibs and feeds are from Pilot. Does the fact that Romillo makes its own nibs make them necessarily better nibs? No. Are they better nibs? Well… The second issue was time — or, rather, my own impatience. I was looking to reward myself, after all. I’m assured that all the relevant psychology research indicates that for a reward to be meaningful it has to come quickly proximate to the time of the event being recognised. With a Romillo, I would only have to wait a handful of weeks from the time of my order to receive my pen. For a Hakase, one may wait more than a year. So, the decision swung to Romillo. But as soon as I placed my order, I realised that the expectations of this pen would be almost impossible to meet. On the one hand, I expected it to be the unique, hand-crafted work of artisans. On the other hand, I’d be disappointed if it failed to best other first-rate fountain pens from the grand marques of the world. Somehow, buying a pen like this, you want it to be both, and that is a very high bar, indeed. Somehow, the Romillopens Sil #9 succeeds. As far as I can tell, the Sil hasn’t been reviewed, here, before. Other Romillos have, and the raves of many — though not all — were what got me serious about considering pens by Romillo in the first place. But what sealed it, in addition to the arguments above, was the elegance of the Sil’s design. All the Romillo pens are lovely, and all have in common a certain conservative, classy, simple subtlety. But, to me, the Sil leaves them all behind I have rarely seen a fountain pen as graceful. The design is both novel and understated in its elegance. I don’t know any other pen that looks like it, and yet, somehow, it seems the platonic ideal of the pen I’ve always wanted: The threadless, gripless, gentle taper of the section leaving a pen body that is completely unadorned but for its clean lines. The cap — a perfectly simple, perfectly fitted slip-cap that has both substance and delicacy at the same time. And overall proportions that seem to have been lifted from some inspired Art Deco interpretation of Vitruvian man. This picture is ripped from the Romillo website, and I’m using it without permission, hoping Señores Romillo don’t mind. This pictured pen is fashioned from the same material as mine: red and black veined ebonite. The photograph is far superior, however, to my terrible shots below. The process of buying a Romillo is a conversation. There are no prices on the website*. So, if you are seduced enough by what you see, you have to strike up a correspondence with Alvaro — the younger Señor Romillo. While his English isn’t perfect, Alvaro Romillo is a gentleman as well as a craftsman. I found interacting with him a delight. At no point did he press a sale. At all times, he embraced my questions with patience and generosity. That experience was unexpectedly deepened when, a few weeks after I placed my order, Alvaro sent me a note asking if we might meet in London, where I work. He was going to be there for other reasons, he said, and wondered if I’d take the trouble to put aside some time so that he could watch me write, and put a number of different nibs in my hand — in order to make sure that the one he crafted for my pen would be exactly right for my hand. The meeting, itself, was a delight. But that this is the way the Romillos do business, frankly, moves me. Another couple of weeks after our London rendezvous, and my pen arrived. Inside a simple brown cardboard box was another, equally simple white box. Upon opening it, this is what I found. A write-test from Alvaro Romillo. A hand-turned pen stand. A home-made 6-pen roll. Inside the box is a felt pen roll and an eye-dropper. Compared to a Montblanc 149. The pen itself is crafted beautifully. The finish on the ebonite is glossy without being slick. I find myself stroking it absent-mindedly, simply because the feeling is warm, silky and sensuous. The joins are seamless. All the internal workings are cast in brass. The eye-dropper feed has a built in breather tube that extends up into the barrel to ensure reliability. The fitting of the minimalist 18k gold hardware is as precise as I’d expect from a jeweller — which is to say, there is a kind of perfection that doesn’t seem possible from something handmade: no “artisanal” roughness, only an impression of something that your eye makes your hand want to caress. A few things to note: First: The gold “lentil” roll-stop is a customisation that I asked for. While I had fretted that it might ruin the ascetic grace of the pen’s lines, I think the bet paid off. To my eye, the contrast of the lentil only serves to amplify the elegance of the pen’s form, providing a small, glinting counterpoint to it.Second: You can see that the pen is very large. That’s a Montblanc 149 it’s sitting with, for comparison. Despite its size, it doesn’t feel large at all. I venture that even someone who rejected the 149 as too much of a beast would find the slightly larger Sil a deft tool. Somehow it offers the feeling of just the right of amount of substance, in the hand, while still being light, balanced and nimble. The exact size/weight/etc can be found here. Third: That nib. Holy crapoli, that’s a big nib! The “#9” in the name of the pen indicates that nib size. Exactly the same pen, in the same proportions, is available in a #7, which is a slightly smaller nib — although it’s still large by most standards. For those who like to grip their pen rather far down the section and have their fingers relatively close to the page, it would be advisable to consider the smaller nib. …because the #9 puts a lot of distance between the tip and the grip! So, how does it write? I can hardly do better than to say that this is the smoothest, most pleasing stub nib I own. It’s soft, rather than flexible — although the Romillos will be happy to make a flexible nib should you want one — so it has personality, and yet it demands nothing. The Sil is so well balanced and the nib is so delightful that this is one of my only pens that feels like a natural extension of my hand. In short, I’ve written a long review that raves about this pen because it’s not only a delight that lived up to my hopes, it’s that rare thing that redefined a fantasy by transcending it. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but the Romillo Sil is the most satisfying bit of fountain pen wish fulfilment I’ve ever experienced. For another take on a different Romillo, mongrelnomad has written a great review which is essentially a cage-fight among Hakase, Romillo and Nakaya — and he finds the Romillo a smidge wanting in comparison to Hakase. *Romillos will set you back (roughly) between 800-1500 euros — although they’ve added some new pens to their line that I haven’t priced.