Hello and welcome to Issue#39.

I briefly share my thoughts about the hobby drama that has been going on in the world of fountain pens and conclude that we as a community need to do better. And then there are some nice pictures of ink and a fantastic vintage ad.

From mid-September, there has been the continuing saga surrounding the actions of a very well-known fountain pen retailer. See a detailed summary here. As with all such things, the fountain pen community has been divided about this as well. As is to be expected, the community on reddit was perhaps the most affected, least of all by the fact that said retailer was quite well-regarded and had worked in tandem with the community on occasion.

While many folks have their own takes on this, and they are obviously entitled to them, I feel compelled to share my thoughts on this matter.

I think that such events are important to the hobby community at large because it shines a light on the true nature of the folks that make up our communities. Hobby communities are where people go of their own volition, as opposed to pretty much all other communities where there is some element of choicelessness involved. The expectation that such spaces are safe to be your whole self is not an unreasonable one. The fountain pen community on reddit is easily one of the most welcoming and inclusive spaces I have been on, and it was shocking (for me) to see how many people thought it was okay to downplay the very real issue at the core of the drama.

It is really tempting to say that hobby groups should confine themselves to the hobby and nothing else. But such a statement is nothing but a reflection of the privilege of the speaker, that they are in a position to say so without having to compromise who they are.

As a community, we have to do better to make our common spaces, wherever they exist, welcoming of everyone as they are.

My fill of the Taccia Hokusai Benitsuchi finally ran out in my Santini, and it was time to select a successor ink. After a bit of rummaging through my ink collection, I settled on the Taccia Ebi, which claims to have been born in California, but made in Japan by Nakabayashi.

A beautiful purple red, this always brings me joy when I use it. Here are a few pictures for your viewing pleasure!

A couple of issues ago, we saw a vintage ad for Parker Quink. In today’s issue, we have an ad for the Parker Vacumatic.

The picture itself has the Vacumatic with an image of two businessmen looking at a pen that ran dry when they were trying to sign a contract. The issue here being that other pens don;t have a way to tell if you’re running out of ink.

The Vacumatic is shown as having a barrel that shows you how much ink is left. In fact, the ad calls it a ‘Full Television Ink Supply’ - probably because televisions were aspirational high technology gadgets at that time - and also how the ink level was visible as clearly as a television screen!

There is a heap of discarded fountain pens lying in the bottom right corner, with the exhortations to ‘Throw old pens here’. Clearly the expectation is for consumers to throw away their old pens and line up to buy a Vacumatic immediately upon seeing the ad! Clearly this seems to have worked, since the pen was in production from the early 1930s to the beginning of the 1950s.

If the image hasn’t convinced you, the ad copy goes the extra mile with superlatives, with a headline that screams, “Why millions have tossed aside their old-time pens - why they now carry Parker’s revolutionary invention”

It flogs the ‘Television Ink’ that lets you see days in advance that your ink level is low. It also tells you that the pen holds 102% more ink than before without increasing its size - and that’s because it’s a ‘sacless marvel’ that has no piston pump, lever filler or rubber ink sac.

Additional points in its favour are that it won a ‘Pen Beauty Contest’ by a large margin, how safely the Arrow clip holds it in your pocket, and how it has a third more gold than before without a price increase.

Check out an image of the full ad here.

And finally, literally as a footnote, they flog the ‘quick-drying, full-bodied ink that dissolves deposits left by ordinary inks,’ implying that Quink is no ordinary ink!

Share your take on fountain pens and related things in one (or more!) of our upcoming issues.

Any and all content you share will belong to you and will be credited to your name (or a pen name of your choice) and linked to any of your online profiles. Ideal content would be a write-up between 200 and 400 words with 1 to 5 images.

Here are a few things that can go in the Fountain Pen Weekly:

• Pen / ink / paper ownership experience

• Favorites in FP, ink, paper etc.

• Your social handles with your FP content - Insta, FB, Twitter, Reddit

• Any FP-related content you want to call out - articles, podcasts, videos.

If you have any other ideas as well, do share, and I will be happy to think about it.

That’s all from me this week.

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