Welcome to Issue#37.

In this issue, we have fun with Monteverde Color Changing Inks, feature a vintage Parker ink ad from the 1930s and see what fountain pens you can get for under Rs 100 in India.

In the monthly meeting last week, we had a fun time playing with some inks that change colour when you write over them with a colour-changer. This was from a Monteverde Color Changing Ink set that Vikas was kind enough to bring for us to test. Harish was kind enough to volunteer to write - since his is easily the best handwriting of any of us. The way this worked was, there was a bottle of ink you wrote with and another bottle of a colour changer. Each ink represented a pair of colours - one it would write with initially, and the second one it would change to when you wrote over it with the colour changer.

There were three different inks we had to try out - blue and pink, green and black, and burgundy and orange. We started out just curious to see how it worked, and to make a video to share with all of you. But as we wrote and looked at the colours changing, it was so much fun that we were giggling like children. Check out the video and see for yourself!

I came across an ad for Parker ink in a 1937 issue of Time magazine, and I just had to share it with you folks. It had two image elements and some text between them. Here is the advertisement for your reading pleasure.

From the sheer bombast in the ad copy - “you’ll pour your old ink down the drain” to the little typographic tricks - italicising the ink in Quink, this is a classic advert from the 1930s. The claims made in the ad are interesting from two points of view. First are the claims themselves vis a vis our own experience with inks - both Parker’s and others’. Second, and more fascinating to me, are the aspects that Parker considered differentiators that made them stand out from the competition, and what they thought people cared about in their inks.

Finally, the thought that you could buy 50-gallon kegs of ink at some point in history makes me extremely and irrationally happy!

On many FP groups, there’s the constant search for a cheap pen that writes well. Now this means different things to a regular user versus a fountain pen enthusiast.

Here is a list drawn up by Raj Ahmed of the Hyderabad Fountain Pen Club. The specialty here is that they are fountain pens that write well straight out of the box (or blister pack!), easily available in neighbourhood stationery shops, or on a popular website in most parts of India, and they cost less than Rs 100 - that’s about 1.25 USD.

The target audience for these fountain pens are young school children between the ages of 8 and 14, who are mandated to use them for some types of school work. As a result, these pens are cheap, sturdy, and take a fair bit of abuse. They also write well out of the box, are mostly cartridge-driven, and have colourful and cheerful designs.

So, without much ado, let’s dive right in to the list, presented in no particular order:

1. Unomax Brio

Beautiful pen with a grip. Comes with 3 cartridges and a convertor.

Price : Rs 100

2. Hauser Grip-it

An ergonomic grip paired with a snap cap, as well as large-capacity cartridges (one included, along with a convertor) makes this incredible value for money. There is also a picture of an extremely bored-looking Ranbir Kapoor (a Bollywood actor who, as far as I know, doesn’t have anything to do with fountain pens) on the blister pack. I am including this piece of information just for the sake of completeness.

Price: Rs 70

3. Pierre Cardin Napoli (also known as PFE i.e., Pen for Everyone)

A chunky pen with a big clip, comes with a cartridge and convertor. The big clip is emblazoned with the signature of the designer whose name is the brand of the pen. The signature represents rather unappealing penmanship, presumably to reassure the young schoolchildren who use the pen that their scrawls are not so bad after all.

Price : Rs 80 (depending on how much your neighbourhood stationer is willing to discount, you might get this for anywhere between Rs 60 and Rs 80)

4. Hauser INX XO Liquid Ink Fountain Pen

Comes with 4 cartridges. Nothing more to say here.

Price: Rs 60

5. Classmate Octane

This is the VFM champion, coming with two long cartridges, and a consistently good writer.

This pen is recommended by Dr Sreekumar of Krishna Pens for use with aggressive inks as it can be completely dismantled and cleaned very easily.

Price: Rs 40

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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