Yesterday was the 2025 Pelikan Hubs event. Pelikan is so wonderful to organize these events, so generous and thoughtful with their gifts, and I love the company and their pens so much that I’m really heartbroken that this isn’t just a glowingly happy post.
This isn’t Pelikan’s fault. Their organization was as usual, impeccable. Their gift was tremendous – a beautiful box, with the Edelstein’s ink of the year Apricot Achat, a postcard and a notepad. Everything was so well designed it was breathtaking to open the box and see it all laid out perfectly.
Here’s the open box and the postcard:
Here’s the notepad. You can see the design on the cover better in the next photo, but the paper is smooth, thick and perfectly fountain pen friendly.
I love the design of the cover of the box, the postcard and the cover of the notepad. It’s playful but elegant, and it works well together and ties in well with the typography and the design of the Edelstein box. That’s a 10/10 for design and quality.
The that we received is the Edelstein Apricot Achat, which is the ink of the year 2025. The bottle is gorgeous, and the ink is non-shimmer this year, so it should be easy to clean out of pens.
The ink itself is indeed an apricot ink, with a hint of shading. It’s bright but light – a tad too light for me if I’m honest. I think that this exact ink just slightly more saturated would have been the perfect orange for people who like their orange right in the middle of the orange spectrum – not too yellow or too red.
I filled a Pelikan M215 Rechteck (rectangle) with this ink, but I chose poorly, forgetting that it has an EF nib. Pelikan EF are on the wide side, but this ink would fare better in a medium or even a broad nib. I will still enjoy it as it works well with the other inks I currently have in rotation, but if you are looking to use this ink I’d suggest wide and generous nibs for it.
I tried it on the Postcard. The paper isn’t coated but is still rather sleek:
So thank you very much Pelikan for organizing this worldwide event and for your wonderful gift! I am actually considering buying the matching M200 because I like the look of the ink.
Now for the sad and ugly part:
Pen collection has a misogyny problem. I have experienced it during the previous Pelikan Hubs, I have experienced it when I tried to buy pens in brick and mortar shops, in flea markets, from pen makers. I experienced it during this year’s Pelikan Hubs and I’m tired of it, and kind of tired of all the talk about how wonderful and welcoming the pen community is. It’s wonderful and welcoming if you’re a guy, and time and again I have seen it close ranks and snarl if you’re a gal.
Just during yesterday’s event, where I stayed on for less than an hour (and even that was just to be at the edge of the group photo), I was told several times that:
- Women don’t collect pens.
- Only men collect pens.
- I am not a real pen collector.
- I can’t possibly be a pen collector.
- I can’t possibly have enrolled to the Pelikan hub.
- I am there as someone’s plus one.
- Women don’t understand pen collecting.
- I am a rare bird, the exception to the rule.
They had facts to back it up, they said. Their closed pen collectors group only had three women in it. That proved the point. I eye-rolled so hard. I had met and talked to one of the other female collectors at last year’s event and I fully understand why she didn’t brave this treatment to collect her gift this year. It’s because nobody wants to go out of their way to spend their precious free time with a bunch of *holes.
There are women collectors, they have every right to enjoy this hobby, and if you’re a guy and you don’t see women in your group, it’s not because they don’t collect pens. It’s because you’ve created a group that women don’t want to join.
Do better.
End of rant – and to end on a more positive note, I did manage to do a few 2-3 minute sketches while I was waiting for the group photo:
Thank you again Pelikan for the wonderful event. I intend to return next year even if the menfolk find my presence abhorrent. There were a few nice fellows that were willing to talk to me, and I will not let the trolls dissuade me from participating in a hobby that I have been enjoying for close to 20 years.
Writing at Large 
akapulko2020
Eh, guess I don’t exist either , then… I THINK I have about 2-3 Pelikan pens and those are really entry-level, and don’t really own any expensive pens at all, but I indeed am a female AND a user-collector of fountain pens ( with less than zero interest in joining the Pelikan hub, what a (not) surprise…
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writingatlarge
I don’t like the strong gatekeeping aspect of these sort of communities – you have to have X amount of pens of Y price to count. Most of the talk amongst the participants was on the size and price of their collections. One wonders why we find this sort of measuring contest off-putting…
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paulparkinson370713805
I’m so so sorry you had this experience. It shouldn’t be like that and I apologise for the low-life examples of my sex who made you feel so unwelcome and unwanted. It was wrong of them and it’s not what this community is about.
I attended the London event and it was a beautiful evening of pen-sharing, ink swapping, karma-table exchanging, enthusiasm about all types of pens and inks. I tried out several pens brought along by others (Sailors, Pilots, Jinhao, WingSung, Parker, Asvine, several smaller, custom, makers and yes of course Pelikan) and several of these got added to my “one day Rodders” list.
Come to London next year and we’ll make you feel a proper London welcome.
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Quieter Elephant
So sad to read your personal experience!
Not to minimise the very real issues – despite it being well into the 21st Century now – but in my locality (BC, Canada), I’d say the smarter sex is more represented than my own. I attended our local Pelikan Hub last night and men were in the minority. All three “super-fans” were women, each holding many gorgeous examples of Pelikan’s output over the years.
Not sure if it’s been a global issue this year, but Pelikan, despite their continued generosity with gifts for registered attendees, seem to have struggled providing enough Apricot Achat (this year’s ink). Our hub master had to negotiate with other local hub masters to swap some of the inks we had been provided to at least offer a few registrants the ink of the year – we’d initially been allocated zero bottles of Apricot Achat!
I was lucky and received a bottle, but when I eagerly got home to swatch it, I realised it’s a perfect match to Diamine’s “Wonderland” from 2021’s inkvent (£9.50 for 50ml at Cult Pens vs Apricot Achat at £20 for 50ml). I agree the saturation/hue mean it has pretty narrow utility, and that’s a large uplift for something that’s not even offering some unique feature…
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C Dyson
I’m so sad to hear that you experienced such poor behaviour, you’re right, it’s because they have created a group that is unwelcoming, not that women aren’t interested in pens! I’m a woman and have enjoyed this hobby for many years and have been lucky to encounter little of this patronising and excluding attitude. I have felt it – notably from older, so-called experts and vintage dealers but generally this has been the exception rather than the rule. I don’t mind being corrected by someone who knows more than me – but it’s galling to be treated differently to a man asking the same questions and this has happened.
I also attended a Pelikan Hub again this year and thoroughly enjoyed it. I agree, it’s great that Pelikan are generous with their gifts (though ours was a mix of inks from previous years rather than this years Apricot) but my main pleasure was seeing a group of like-minded individuals geeking out bout their pens and inks – myself included. (As to the “plus one” people there, one woman was visiting a (female) friend and had come along to see what the it was all about, and two were male partners of female pen enthusiasts.)
I think generally this IS a great community – but like all communities, there are some who feel threatened by people they perceive as less entitled to be part of it – but anyone with an interest should be welcome. It is right that we highlight when this doesn’t happen – and we should all make it our goal to make this community inclusive.
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Ulrike
I’m so sorry to hear that. We had a lively and excellent evening and while I didn’t count, the men to women ration was quite balanced. The participants also ranged from young students to seniors who showed of all their pens and accessories, not only Pelikans pens.
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weaktwos
Here’s another female pen collector eye-rolling with you in solidarity. I’m sorry your Pelikan Hub experience was soiled with that experience. The only facts those men had were the fact that women don’t like to be around them. Their grasp of the scientific method leaves much to be desired. They would do well to remember the space between “pen” and “is” in the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword”.
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jhstutzman
How terrible to hear about those comments. Like other commenters, my hub (Kansas City) saw women well represented. We had a man as hubmaster (and this is at least his second year), but there was also nothing but praise for the woman who runs the local pen club, including from the “senior” men. There was no gatekeeping that I could see; I think I saw all of three Pelikans at all, and while some people brought larger collections with them (this year and in previous years), they have been generous in allowing people to handle and test pens, with no comparison or demeaning behavior. Observationally, I’d agree that the vintage collectors skew heavily toward older, white men, both at the hubs and at shows, but I’ve never been in a pen space that has lacked women’s active and enthusiastic participation. They would all be the poorer were such participation missing. Hopefully a hubmaster or show director would call out such behavior if it was reported to them, but if not, that’s an opportunity to vote with your dollars/feet and be somewhere more welcoming.
I wonder too if Pelikan has any expectations for hubmasters for creating a welcoming and inclusive environment. Recognizing that they’re dealing with a global event, have relatively little hands-on control, and there’s not much benefit to serving as a hubmaster, there’s not likely much they could do to enforce it, but a values statement could be a start.
This is 100% true:
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Marjorie
What an awful experience! I hope that this doesn’t come across as patronizing, so please forgive if it does, but kudos to you for declaring your intention of attending again next year. Don’t let those bastards get you down. As others have said above, it sounds like there was both misogyny but also just general gatekeeping and snobbery happening, and I would not at all be surprised if you weren’t the only one to feel excluded. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were male attendees — perhaps younger, or newer to the profession, and/or brought pens who weren’t the “right kind” according to some rando in the crowd — who also felt left out. Not to minimize the misogyny, which I am 1000% sure was also the case!
I work in the tech industry and have managed to reach a respective position, and am grateful that for the most part, misogyny and sex discrimination at my workplace have not been as pervasive as in other companies. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that we’re a fully remote/distributed company, and to be clear, it has happened, and sometimes in a spectacularly bad and offensive way! But I’m stubborn and clever and sharp and old enough to have figured out how to navigate it without too much emotional fallout haha. The reality is that sexism is everywhere — literally everywhere — and while the responsibility for its eradication is and should be on those with the dominant power (i.e., the men), it’s also inspiring and life-affirming to hear that there are women out there who refuse to accept that and work to change it, little by little.
ANYWAY, long time reader here, thank you for sharing your experiences! I already have 3-4 orange-y inks so I probably won’t pick up the Apricot one (I’m not a fan of light inks) but you have inspired me to think about how I could start a Pelikan hub of some kind in my local community. I live in a very small town (pop: <13,000 pop) but I know for a fact that there are pen enthusiasts here as I’ve seen a couple of local farmers’ markets!
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Meriah
I’m sorry that you experienced that at your Pelikan Hub. I live in Colorado in the United States, this part of the country is usually called the inter-mountain west. I collect fountain pens, many of them are vintage. I have never once been told that it is weird or unacceptable that I am a woman with this hobby. All of my fellow pen collectors take each others approach to the hobby as a creative and faithful one. I do notice that we are not a strongly ethnically diverse community even though the Denver metro area is reasonably diverse. We try to remedy that by being open and welcoming to everyone who comes to our events. Hopefully things will get better where you are. You are always welcome if you are in Colorado.
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