May 2026’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

It’s been a while since I’ve inked up new fountain pens, and this month’s pen roster is both much larger than usual and has some rarely inked pens and new inks.

The list totals 16 pens, which is the most that I’ve had inked since the Inkvent days. It’s split into three major categories: leftover pens from previous months, pocket pens filled with cartridges, and full sized newly inked pens. The last category has a small sub-category of pens in it – the “use the good china” pens. I’ll explain it when we get there.

Leftover Pens

These pens were inked in the end of February (Kanilea, Lamy 2000) or the end of March (Leonardo).

Kanilea Haleakala Silhoutte – fine nib – Sailor Ink Studio 224. I bought this pen secondhand on the Pen Addict slack channel, and it’s a gorgeous pen that is absolutely not worth its retail price. Am I glad that I got it? Yes. Would I ever purchase a Kanilea pen again? No. There are better pens to be had for much less money. The Sailor Studio ink is also overpriced, but in this case the price difference isn’t such that it would hurt to buy it. 224 and 123 are my favourites of the series, but you can get a similar enough experience for less money with Diamine Earl Grey.

Lamy 2000 – medium nib – Sailor Black – workhorse pen, workhorse ink.

Leonard Officina Italiana Bohemian Twilight Momento Zero – fine nib – Robert Oster Fire and Ice – a gorgeous pen that’s one of my favourites. Robert Oster Fire and Ice is a good teal ink, and this bottle dates from the days that Robert Oster was new to the ink scene and all the rage. It’s a good ink but again, the hype was overblown. It’s taken me a long time, but I’m less and less interested in following the latest pen or ink craze. It has rarely been worth it. That being said Robert Oster makes good inks at decent prices, it’s just that they may be harder to obtain depending on where you live. Don’t feel like you’re missing out if you don’t get to try one of their inks.

Leftover pens from left to right – Leonardo, Kanilea, Lamy 2000

Pocket Pens

I bought a good amount of ink cartridges when I was in Paris and I wanted to test a few of them out. I don’t usually ink up pocket fountain pens as I find them inconvenient to use (they require posting and unposting every time you use them), so it’s been a while since I’ve used these (with the exception of the Franklin Christoph).

Schon Design Multi-color Pocket Six w/ Matching Grip, 3D Teal x Matte Black – fine nib – J. Herbin Bleu des profondeurs – my first Schon Design pen (I only have two) and the only one that I bought full price directly from Schon Design. The ink is a relatively new offering from J. Herbin (released in 2018) and wasn’t part of their offering when I started collecting pens and got into J. Herbin inks. It’s a good blue-black with a tiny bit of shading, and it’s a “wet” ink, which means that with more generous or wider nibs it’s likely to feather on the page.

Schon Design Faceted Multi-color Anodized Aluminum “Pocket Six” – Patina – medium nib – J. Herbin Orange Indien – my favourite pocket pen in terms of looks, but still overpriced for me, so I bought this one second hand. This ink is a hard, hard starter, and I’ve had a lot of trouble with it before. I don’t know how it behaves in bottle form, but I really don’t recommend these cartridges as there’s clearly a flow issue with this ink.

Kaweco Collection Sport Iridescent Pearl – medium nib – J. Herbin Rose Cyclamen – a really nice Kaweco Sport with a magenta ink. There’s some nice shading with this ink.

Franklin Christoph 45 Sage – Fine nib – J. Herbin Lierre Sauvage – the most comfortable and ergonomic pocket pen of the four that I have inked. Lierre Sauvage is the perfect green for spring and summer.

Writing Sample – Leftover pens and pocket pens

Full Sized Newly Inked Pens

I’m dividing this category into two – the “use the good china pens” and just pens that I wanted to use.

Just Pens

Edison Nouveau Premiere Macassar Ebonite – 1.5 stub italic – Pilot Iroshizuku Yu-Yake – I had managed to misplace this pen and so for years it hasn’t seen use. It’s a 2013 limited edition Edison pen made in collaboration with Goulet Pens. I love the shape of this pen, and the ebonite feels warm and light and just right in the hand. The nib is wide and generous, and felt suitable for the Iroshizuku Yu-Yake orange ink that I just bought. This combination will be used for titles, highlighting and journaling.

Lamy AL Star Flamingo – fine nib – J. Herbin La Perle des Encres Rouge Amarante – A new Lamy AL Star. Do I need it? No. But I like Lamy pens and they’re solid enough yet not precious enough to be great for ink testing and as workhorses. The J. Herbin is a new ink, and I bought it mostly because it was the last bottle in this hue in the store. I love Diamine Amaranth and I’m curious to see how this ink measures up against it.

Platinum 3776 White – Ultra Extra Fine nib – Kuretake Ink Cafe Kujakuryoku – I haven’t used this fountain pen in a while. I love the nib but it does provide a lot of feedback when writing – not scratchy, but very close to it. I purchased four Kuretake Ink Cafe inks and wanted to use all of them – but I forgot to log this ink once I filled my Visconti Homo Sapiens. I then decided that I must have forgotten to use it, and so I inked up this pen. The result is two pens with the same ink in rotation at the same time – something that I don’t think I’ve ever done. At least it’s a colour that I love…

Use the Good China Pens

I recently filling in paperwork to get insurance for some of my most expensive pens – which made me realize that I haven’t used most of them in years. So I pulled some of them out and decided to “use the good china” because they’re meant to be used, not admired from afar.

Montblanc Meisterstuck Writers Edition Homage to Victor Hugo – medium nib – De Atramentis Archive Black – this is a relatively new addition to my “expensive pens” collection. I don’t buy limited edition Montblancs, and my other Montblancs are all vintage ones. I purchased this one at a discount on the last week that Mora Stylos in Paris was open, and even though it’s heavy and I don’t love the death mask on it, it commemorates the Notre Dame, and that’s one of my favourite spots in Paris. The ink is a new (to me) waterproof black from De Atramentis. I’m interested in seeing how it works for sketching.

Nakaya Cigar Piccolo Negoro Kise Hon Kataji – elastic flexible fine nib – Kuretake Ink Cafe Kuroganeiro – My one and only Nakaya, ordered from Mora Stylos and it was a whole thing to get it delivered. The price, the effort, and the fact that it was made to order makes it so, so special. It also has one of my favourite nibs – a bouncy flexible fine. The ink is a Kuretake Ink Cafe ink, this one a dark pine green.

Henry Simpole The Jasmine pen – medium nib – Kuretake Ink Cafe Shikon – A pen that is a work of art. I used to visit Henry the Pen Man’s stall every year in Portobello Road, and I always wanted one of his overlay pens. Eventually I purchased this one, and I regret not buying another one when I had the chance. It’s a Conway Stewart button giller with a fantastic gold nib and a wonderful sterling silver overlay designed and made by Henry. The ink is a lovely dark purple, one of the four Kuretake inks that I purchased.

Sailor Professional Gear Sapporo – Naginata Togi Cross Emperor – Kuretake Ink Cafe Ebicha – a nib that has a pen attached to it – that’s the story of this pen. I purchased this pen solely for the Naginata Togi Cross Emperor nib, which is a nib that behaves more like a brush than a standard fountain pen nib. The Ebicha ink is an interesting maroon colour that shows a lot of shading with this nib. It will be interesting using this pen after so many years, as the nib takes some getting used to in terms of writing angles.

Visconti Homo Sapiens – Extra Fine nib – Kuretake Ink Cafe Kujakuryoku – The original Visconti Homo Sapiens, bought at Mora Stylos the year that it was issued and took the pen world by storm. The lava like material, the brass, the nib, the weight – this is a pen with a presence. It will be interesting comparing it to the Platinum 3776 as they are both inked with the same turquoise/teal ink – Kujakuryoku.

Wahl Eversharp (Vintage) Sterling silver floral – fine nib – Waterman Mysterious Blue – I wanted to ink up a vintage pen, and this one is very “bling-y” and sports a truly flexible vintage nib. It’s also a lever filler, which I hate cleaning out, so Waterman Mysterious Blue (i.e. Blue Black) to the rescue. This ink is my benchmark, my desert island ink, the one ink that I can trust in any pen.

Writing sample – newly inked full-size pens part 1

Writing sample – newly inked full-size pens part 2

This was a long list of pens and a long post – I hope that you enjoyed it, and I hope that you have some nice pens inked up and ready to use.

Currently Inked Fountain Pens – Pelikan Hubs Edition

Tomorrow is the Pelikan Hubs 2025 event, and to prepare I have inked up a whole flock of Pelikan fountain pens.

Here’s my current lineup of fountain pens and ink:

The top four have been inked way back in the beginning of August, but because of my travel schedule I’ve yet to write all of them dry. You can read about the Radius 1934 and the Pelikan M205 here as well.

Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2.0 Galattica Universe – F nib – Montblanc The Beatles Psychedelic Purple – great pen and ink combination. I wrote this pen dry just after writing the sample above.

Parker 51 Plum – F nib – Sailor Jentle Peche – all vintage Parker 51 fountain pens are fabulous and this one is no different. The plum colour is very rare, but I decided to “use the good China”. The ink is a long discontinued Sailor Jentle Peche, a beautiful pink with great shading and outlining. Sailor used to make fantastic inks at great prices – in terrible bottles. It was a struggle to fill this pen, even with their internal ink reservoir dingus.

Pelikan M205 Petrol Marbled – EF nib – Pilot Iroshizuku Sui-gyoku – I was hoping that Sui-gyoku would be the green ink that I was looking for, but it’s more of a teal than a green. The Pelikan M2xx series is a solid workhorse kind of pen, and I highly recommend it.

Radius 1934 Settimo Cielo – F nib – Diamine 150th Anniversary Regency Blue – the ink has grown darker with time, to the point where it’s almost black. This isn’t surprising as it was a very saturated dark blue ink to begin with, and it’s had some time in the pen. I will likely write this pen dry today or tomorrow. The new Radius pens by Leonardo feel very much like Leonardo Momento Zeroes but with a slightly different design. That’s not a bad thing – they are gorgeous pens, and for now they’re slightly cheaper than the Momento Zeroes.

Last week I inked up a new Platinum Preppy 03 nib with De Atramentis Document Ink Black as part of a post that I am working on. It’s the first time I’ve used a Preppy with a converter and not the Platinum cartridge it comes with – and it works well.

I inked these pens today for the Pelikan Hubs event tomorrow:

Pelikan M605 Stresemann – M nib – Sailor Ink Studio 123 – a classic and elegant pen and ink combination. The Sailor 123 is really that good, and the generous medium nib shows off its dual shading properties.

Pelikan M320 Pearl – M nib – Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Brown – my rarest Pelikan, always a crowd pleaser at the hubs. This tiny pen came with a tiny brilliant brown bottle and so far I’ve filled it only with that. I bought it about a decade ago in Berlin on a whim, and I’m so glad that I did.

Pelikan M800 Blue O Blue – F nib – KWZ Exclusive for epiora.pl Błękit Warty Poznania – this pen was a very expensive birthday gift and my first M800 Pelikan. I bought it at a local pen store that no longer exists. The ink is even more special – it’s my first KWZ ink, gifted to me from the store that it was exclusively made for. I had purchase my M600 Glauco Cambon there just before they were closing for the day on the last day of the USK Symposium in Poznan. The name means Poznan Warta Blue – and it’s tied to the unique blue of the city and the Warta river. It’s a gorgeous blue and it reminds of Poznan, the store, the lovely seller and the nice symposium volunteers that saw me in the store and helped me out with my purchase.

Pelikan M400 White Tortoise – M nib – Sailor Ink Studio 767 – This is the green I was looking for! I purchased this ink last month at Choosing Keeping in London, and it’s the perfect bright and cheerful green that I was looking for, with some great shading to boot. The Pelikan Tortoise pens are gorgeous, and this one is a particularly nice one.

Pelikan M805 Ocean Swirl – F nib – Montblanc Maya Blue – I have been priced out of Montblanc inks (there’s only so much I’m willing to pay for ink) but this ink was heavily discounted at the Montblanc boutique in Heathrow. It’s a lovely bright turquoise with great shading, and it works well coupled with this pen.

Pelikan M600 Art Collection Glauco Cambon – F nib – Pilot Iroshizuku Ajisai – this is the pen that I purchased at Epiora in Poznan, and while I saw it online and loved the concept, I never thought that I’d buy it because of the price. Seeing it in person changed my mind because no photos can do this pen justice – the pattern on it glows! It’s beyond vibrant, and the pen body itself feels different than other Pelikans – heavier and cooler to the touch. The ink is also a Choosing Keeping purchase, and I love the colour very much.

Pelikan M620 Place De La Concorde – M nib – Sailor Ink Studio 162 – this is one of my rarer Pelikans, one that I bought a year or two after the series had been complete and no longer for sale. If ever there was a series of pens that I wish that I owned it was the Pelikan M620 City series, and for years I searched for an Athens pen before giving up – it was just too expensive.

The Pelikans left to right – Place de la Concorde, Glauco Cambon, Ocean Swirl, White Tortoise, Blue O Blue, Pearl

Apart from my inked Pelikans, I’m also taking three uninked Pelikans with me – one to fill with the ink that we’ll be getting, and the others just to share.

Pelikan Flock – left to right – Stresemann, M215 Rectangle (uninked), vintage M400 Tortoise (uninked), Stormtrooper (uninked)

Left to right: Parker 61 Plum, M205 Petrol Marbled, Radius 1934 Settimo Cielo, Platinum Preppy

Are you going to a Pelikan Hub? If so, what pens did you bring with you?

July’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

This month features a few new inks, and a lot of old favourites that I haven’t used for a while.

Big Idea Design’s Fountain EDC is far from perfect, and yet I’ve inked it up again. It’s the ultem and the ease of capping an uncapping it – it makes it a great EDC fountain pen even though it still has infuriating flow issues. This, however, is the last time I’m inking it for a while (after filling it three times in a row) as I have lost patience with getting it to work properly when I’m journalling. The Schneider Cognac is a new ink for me, a cartridge packet that I bought in London for a pretty steep discount. The colour is a nice orange brown with a good amount of shading and good flow.

Kanilea Pen Co Haleakala Silhouette is gorgeous and overpriced pen that I haven’t used in a while. Sailor studio 123 ink was also in my previous rotation, but I now have two bottles of this most gorgeous of grey inks, so I feel like I should give it more use.

Omas Bibliotheque Nationale is a pen that I bought about a decade ago at Mora Stylos in Paris. The nib is extraordinary, and I decided that I wanted to use it again. It lays a thick, juicy line of ink that works well with Diamine Earl Grey. Diamine Earl Grey is not only a great grey ink at a fraction of Sailor Studio 123’s cost, it also doesn’t bleed through to the other side of the paper in even the Omas’s generous ink. So I get a dark grey with plenty of shading and character, but I can also journal on the other side of the page.

Rotring Levenger 600 is a wonderful pen that Rotring needs to make more of, and Sailor Jentle Sky High is a discontinued ink that Sailor likely makes under a different name and a higher price now. I like the colour, even though it’s a blue and blue inks tend to be boring, and the Rotring works well in use for my office notes.

Sailor Pro Gear Slim Graphite Lighthouse is one of the last Sailor pens that I bought, and it’s one of my favourites. The H-EF nib is extremely fine, and not for everyone. Sailor Jentle Epinard is a great discontinued dark green ink from Sailor, and they likely make something similar under a different name and higher price (or you can find a parallel Diamine ink for much cheaper). The Sailor Jentle ink’s discontinuation was when I bought this and the other Jentle inks in use here, and I kind of regret my shopping rush. There’s no point in buying discontinued ink, as you’ll likely easily find something else similar to that (something that doesn’t use the Jentle ink’s terrible flat bottle design), or something better.

Schon Design faceted pocket six patina is a great pocket pen, and the Schneider Bermuda Blue is a great teal ink. The shading on this ink is excellent, and if I get a chance to buy another box of cartridges when this one is empty, I will.

The TWSBI ECO T isn’t as interesting to me as the ink inside it. I’ve been wanting to try out Diamine Ancient Copper for a long time, and when I was in Oxford I managed to get a bottle. It does not disappoint – great flow, great shading, great rich burnt sienna colour.

I haven’t used the Platinum 3776 in a while, and I almost forgot what a great workhorse of a pen it is. Sailor Jentle Ultramarine, a very bluish purple, long discontinued, is kind of on the boring side.

Here are the pens from top to bottom:

Big Idea Design Fountain EDC

Kanilea Pen Co Haleakala Silhouette

Omas Bibliotheque Nationale LE from 1999

Rotring Levenger 600

Sailor Pro Gear Slim Graphite Lighthouse

Schon Design Faceted Pocket Six Patina

TWSBI ECO T Saffron

Platinum 3776 Demonstrator

What have you got inked up this month?

February 2024 in Pens and Paper

I started the month ready to spend the first half of it in hospital, with my dad. So the fountain pens I chose were all expendable pocketable pens that I was willing to have stolen (apart from the Schon Design Pocket 6 which was a leftover from January and never left my desk). So that meant I inked 4 Kaweco Sport fountain pens using various ink cartridges that I had on hand.

The portable lineup:

Once my dad got out of hospital and back home, I decided to celebrate by “shopping” from my collection. I inked up a Parker 51 Plum (use the good china!), a Parker Vacumatic, a Franklin Christoph 45L Turqish (spelled like that on their site) Crush that I had purchased but hadn’t inked before, and a vintage Radius Comet (because I heard that the brand was being revived).

The Franklin Christoph EF nib isn’t the best companion to the Eau de Nil as the ink tends to dry in the nib, causing hard start issues. The Radius is a flexible nib of the vintage kind, which means it’s really flexible and not just springy. It also rattles, which makes me not carry it around with me — it stays at home at my desk. The Leonardo is a beautiful pen with a beautiful ink that I refilled immediately — the only Inkvent 2023 ink I did that with. The two vintage Parkers are phenomenal, as usual. The extra fine nib on the vacumatic somehow really well with Diamine Ash, though I was worried at first that the combination would be too light to be readable. The Parker 51 Aeromatic is a treat to use. It’s the rare Plum colour, and it’s got a fantastic nib (as all 51’s have) which pairs very nicely with the Monteblanc The Beatles Psychedelic Purple.

In terms of paper I’ve been using Kokuyo A4 KB paper which I cut to half size (so A5) to manage my daily to do list. The paper is relatively cheap and very fountain pen friendly. I’m also able to use both sides of the page despite there being some show through.

Kokuyo A4 KB paper cut in half to A5 size. This is why standards are great.

I’ve got a Field Notes Heavy duty on my desk at home and at work, and I just bought a new stock of them. These are where I jot down quick notes, phone call details, doodles during boring meetings. When they’re filled up they get tossed out as nothing in them is permanent — everything important in them moves to somewhere else as I work my way through them.

Field Notes Heavy Duty pocket spiral bound reporter notebooks

I have finally found a use for my Dingbats notebooks (beyond giving them away as gifts, as I have in the past): this lined purple hippo one is my blog notebook. I discovered that I have a much easier, much quicker time writing blog posts if I first draft them on paper, and this is where I do it in. I’ll likely write a dedicated post to this notebook soon.

Apart from them I still use the notebooks I used last month.

Pencils

I’ve been using the Drehgriffel Nr. 2 as my daily driver. I use pencils extensively to plan, as my plans tend to change, and there’s something about this solid little mechanical pencil that makes me want to use it.

Apart from that I brought two pencils into the rotation, to try to use. One is from my last purchase from the late and great C.W. Pencils Enterprise, and it’s the “Big Dipper” J.R. Moon Pencil Co 600. It’s an oversized pencil, the kind of pencil that kids who are learning to write are expected to use. I’ve been having pretty significant neuropathy in my hands lately and I thought that this would be nice and easy to use, as after all it’s designed for kids just learning to develop their fine motor skills. So far it’s been a disappointment – the eraser and ferrule make it very top heavy, and I’ve been having a hard time manipulating it. I can’t imagine kids using this pencil and having an easy time with it. I like the over the top red foil with gold writing look though, so I haven’t given up on it yet.

The second pencil is a Blackwing Volumes 56, the baseball themed one. The core is soft and dark, and I’ve been using it for quick and loose sketches. I’m trying to ease into one week 100 people by training myself to work faster than I normally would.

What did you use in February? Any planner changes? Pencil revelations? Pen preferences?

Inktober 2023 Day 2: Black Water Buffalo

It’s day 2 of Inktober, and it’s water buffalo time. These are big, impressive and pensive beasts that you don’t want to mess with. They were chewing their cud in the sun, keeping an eye on us as we admired them from a distance when we saw them at Animal Kingdom, Disney World.

I sketched them using a Lamy Safari fine nib and Platinum Carbon ink. Carbon ink lays down a shiny black line that takes forever to dry and so is my least favourite waterproof black fountain pen ink to sketch with (De Atramentis Document Ink is first place, with R&K Sketch Ink Lotte and Noodler’s Bulletproof Black in the middle of the pack). Since I was afraid of smudging the ink, it’s kind of a barebones sketch.

There was a delightful cast member standing nearby, ready to answer questions, and he was a massive Star Wars fan. He clocked my brother and I’s Star Wars Celebration shirts and we started talking Star Wars while standing in front of these guys and gals’ paddock. Of course he got a cast compliment from us (talking to him made our day), and we got to hear about past Star Wars events at the parks from behind the scenes.

The funny thing is that if we would have rushed past their paddock on the way to see the tigers (like everybody else did), we wouldn’t have had this moment and memory, and the tigers everyone was rushing to see decided to hide in the shade anyway.

Inktober Day 25: Waterlilies in Ramat Gan

There’s a waterlily pool near where I work, and it would be so easy to paint them with watercolours and so difficult to sketch them in pen and ink, so of course I sketched them in pen and ink. It is inktober after all.

Platinum 3776 UEF, Sailor Epinard, A4 Midori MD Cotton notebook.

Inktober Day 24: Our Friend Joe

This is a quick sketch of our family friend Joe during our weekly zoom meeting with him. Joe is one of the smartest, funniest and kindest people I know, he’s 97 years old, and he’s been a family friend since I can remember myself.
Do you have a similar inspiration in your life?

This was sketched using a Platinum Plaisir fountain pen on an A4 Midori MD Cotton notebook.

Inktober Day 22: Indian Motorcycle

A friend was at a local vintage Indian motorcycle meeting and she took a photo of a 1948 Indian chief, so this is today’s sketch, directly in pen and ink. 3776 Plantinum UEF fountain pen with Sailor Epinard ink on an A4 Midori MD Cotton notebook.

Inktober Day 8: Trash Beach Volleyball

Very, very quick sketch of an exhibit of people playing beach volleyball and lounging on the the beach – all made out of plastic trash recovered from the sea. It’s quite sobering to see it all displayed like that in the Tel Aviv port. We need to be much better stewards of our oceans and planet.
Drawn with a Platinum Plaisir fountain pen on a Midori MD Cotton A4 notebook.

Here is the full page spread together with the infamous Platinum Plaisir:

Inktober Day 7: Succah Exhibit

There’s a wild succah exhibit near the TLV mall in Tel Aviv, and it’s a lot of fun to walk around it and try and guess what everything was originally. This succah is made out of discarded bits of “junk”, you see, and the point is to make a point about recycling and sustainability. In any case it was challenging for a very quick little sketch (I’m working very fast and loose with these), and as I mentioned before, the Platinum Plaisir fountain pen I used here isn’t the most fun pen to use. The Midori MD Cotton paper deserves better.

Writing at Large

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