How often do you see people using fountain pens?

[Ink Stained Wretch]

I have never, in real life, seen anyone else using a fountain pen -- except at a pen show! Kind of odd, as SOMEONE is buying all these fountain pens on ebay...

Actually, that would be me :roflmho: .

[fountainpenjunkie]

Hey, if you DO happen to run into someone with a FP, what do you think the chance is that the person is a member of FPN??

 

perhaps we should come up with a pin, or a hat, or a bumper sticker.

[DrPJM1]

Never, just me.

[pmsalty]

I belong to a local chapter of ASIS an organiztion of Security professionals and am the Treasureer. our Secretary isa lawyer who also uses an FP. We have been comparing pens and small talk about FP's at the last few meetings. I look now every where I go but have yet to see any one else using a FP.

PMS

[swarden43]

Just once - a charcoal Lamy Safari used by the author at her book signing.

[Cerebus]

If I had to guess, it is because people are too concerned with losing them. I am still eyeing my first big pen purchase (bit by my standards, not the board: a m605) and I won't be carrying it around with me. It will be for journaling etc at my desk. I am not willing to risk losing it. Then again, I don't mind lugging around my Pilot varsity because it would only be 2 bucks if I lost it.

[Ink Stained Wretch]

So, I am curious if you folks see a lot of others using or carrying fountain pens?

Well, discounting my youth, when fountain pens were ubiquitous, and looking at about the last 10 years or so, I'd say not a lot. I sometimes, rarely, see someone writing with a fountain pen on the subway. I can't think of where I might have seen anyone else writing with one in the last decade though. Maybe I'll remember an instance later on, but none is leaping to mind right now.

 

Haven't seen a single person yet. Whenever people find out I'm using a fountain pen, their faces tend to scrunch up like I just told them something gross.

I tend to get the opposite reaction. People like to see them. Some talk about remembering when they had levers on the side. I use only the C/C pens out in the big, wide world. I mostly just use those anyway. But I don't get bad reactions.

 

One waitress at a diner I go to now and again remembered fountain pens and kept repeating "What do you do when it runs out of ink?" She seemed to think that was the end of the pen or that there was no answer to this. When I replied that I just filled it with more ink she seemed nonplussed.

 

Not too long ago, I gave my mother a pack of Pilot Varsities to take with her to work (my parents run a high school tutoring center). She came back that same day, and told me a few of the kids swiped them from her desk. There's hope for the future yet!!

Uh oh, are you sure those kids are heading towards being fountain pen users and not master thieves :roflmho: ?!

 

I went many years at work and never saw another fountain pen until very recently. A coworker had a Carene looking cap sticking out of his pocket and I asked to see it. Turns out he has been a closet collector for a while. He has a couple of vintage pens also. Now the really weird part is that he also lives two houses down from me!

Hmmm, I wonder if it's a viral miasma, a chemical diffusion or some sort of radiation that's spreading out from your collection? I wonder if the inverse square law will obtain if it's the latter? Keep us posted !

[smarcus3]

I have only ever seen one other stranger with a fountain pen. It is a same to not see more fountain pens, because they are such a great writing instrument.

[runnjump]

In my 29 years, I've only had 2 FP users (both owned Lamys) among my acquaintances. One was a Brit; the other was a long-term resident of Germany. Certainly more evidence for the great Atlantic divide in pen usage.

[Opus104]

Just my daughter. Oh, and the manager at my local Paradise Pen.

[GnG]

I have only seen one two others using Fountain Pens. As an account exec for insurance benefits I work with one of the larger grocery store chains in the Midwest. At a meeting I saw the company president using a MB fp and the SVP or HR uses a Varsity Pilot fp.

 

What I find even stranger than the lack of fp use is the lack of quality pens period by people. I think someone had mentioned earlier that people are always so concerned with the right clothes, shoes, watch and us a throw away pen. I like to use my fountain pens most of the time but I also really enjoy rollerballs and I find my go to pen a lot of times is my LE yellow Monteverde Mega Ink Ball. I enjoy my Pelikan 600 rollerball and Visconti VanGogh rollerball. But to see professional people at out in the world using throw aways just blows my mind.

 

If only the whole world could find the joy of a fine writing instrument, how much better would things be?

 

By the way… this is my first post after enjoying the website for over a year.

 

[Kalessin]

Welcome to the FPN, GnG! Glad to have you with us. You might want to post a hello over in the New Members forum.

[fitypoundpdog]

Before I moved to Germany a couple years ago, I only ever saw my Father and one of my students using FPs (both of whom were recent converts!).

 

Now I see them every day. Usually Pelikanos or Safaris. It is quite refreshing and a bit irritating as well. Having been a lover of fountain pens in the US, I was always something of an oddity. When people noticed my pens they would oggle them and ask questions. Here, I'm just another person with a standard writing implement. Strange.

 

Kevin

[southpaw]

Other than my wife (whom I managed to convert), never seen an FP-user in the wild.

[dcjacobson]

Hi, I've been collecting for twelve years, and in all that time, I've seen just one other user, and he was using one of those disposable "Varsity" pens.

 

Also, in that time I have NEVER received any comment whatsoever from anyone seeing me use a fountain pen.

 

Good luck,

Don

[DrPJM1]

Hey, if you DO happen to run into someone with a FP, what do you think the chance is that the person is a member of FPN??

 

perhaps we should come up with a pin, or a hat, or a bumper sticker.

 

 

You mean to say that you do not know our double secret handshake?

 

I have never seen anyone using a FP in "the wild", but have seen many a birdsplat on people's pockets.

[richardandtracy]

For the last 10-15 years I've not seen anyone with an FP. Then 2 weeks ago I was at an international meeting about a container/contents problem (it'll go 'bang' quite spectacularly if someone drops it 36ft on to concrete). The meeting was attended by Spaniards, French, Germans and Brits. There were 2 French engineers there, both using Pelicano's. The senior of the two was very high up in a company employing 15-20000 people in France and the UK.

 

In the company I work for, only I use FP's at work. There is one fitter who is a very gifted artist who uses FP's at home, but then only as one instrument of many when creating his pictures. When doing watercolour painting, he prefers to do black shading or outlining with a fine fountain pen and black waterproof ink.

 

Regards

 

Richard.

[karcirate]

My English teacher in eighth grade always had at least three pens in his shirt pocket. Once in a while he'd take them out to impress us with their pretty gold nibs. Besides him, only the guy I saw at Fountain Pen Hospital at my recent visit - but that's no chance meeting.

[supermitch365]

i was at my local coffee house (i am a college student-dont judge :-) ) and there was only one other person in the place. My girlfriend said "Mitch, his pen looks like yours." Sure enough, he was using a fountain pen. He heard this, saw the safari that i was signing the credit card slip with, and we started chatting. He had a safari, and also a Phileas. This is the only other one that i have met

[LouisA]

Last month I was at a conference in Chicago. I had my Waterman Le Man 100 with me. I used it for taking notes during the various sessions. In one of the last sessions a lady seated next to me pulled out a Waterman Phileas and started taking notes. Quite the shock. However a good friend of mine, a doctor, uses fountain pens all the time like I do. He buys so many fountain pens the local shop gives him a discount! His favorite pen is a MB149 that he got in the late 60s early 70s. For some unknown reason the pen and nib are special and Montblanc has made offers to buy it from him which he has turned down.

Edited December 11, 2007 by LouisA