Slow down and write: Rediscovering the analogue joy of fancy fountain pens

It’s said that in every German embassy there is kept a big fat Mont Blanc Meisterstuck 149 fountain pen, expressly for the signing of treaties, trade agreements and other Important Documents. And, according to Patrick Yandall, director of the Omas pen company, it’s easy to understand why a disposable Bic or any ballpoint wouldn't be right for the job.

“It’s like making a coffee by machine or just going out to get one - that loses all the ritual involved in making a coffee at home that we used to have," he says.

"It’s the same for a fountain pen - its use is a ritual, from first choosing the pen for its looks, its materials, its feel, through to the right ink, nib, even the paper on which you’ll write. A ballpoint decides all this for you. A ballpoint doesn’t bring a sense of occasion to what’s being written.”

Sales of fountain pens have been climbing steadily since Covid — when we had more time to put any pen to paper, or perhaps discovered the need for what Yandall calls the fountain pen’s “meditative” quality in use. As the author Graham Greene once noted: “My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. [But] my hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.”

But, Yandall argues, the fountain pen renaissance is also another example of our reaching for the analogue in an ever more digital age, the same impulse that sees us buying more tactile, more human paperback books and vinyl records (vinyl is now the biggest selling physical format for music), alongside the rise of journalling and hipster stationery lines.

Maybe it’s even akin to the appeal of mechanical watches, also among products that have long since been declared outmoded (and for which there are much, much cheaper and just as functional alternatives), and yet which still keep selling regardless. And while Yandall doesn’t see the fountain pen competing on that market’s scale, he says people are now considering fountain pens as accessories and style objects as much as tools.

The rise of the 'penfluencer'

Omas, for example, has its signature triangular barrel shape. The Japanese maker Namiki is known for its filigree and lacquer work, while a Montegrappa may be made from its proprietary resin, Montegrappite, or ceramic, titanium, carbon fibre or even mammoth ivory. The brand recently established a custom design service, online and in Harrods, so you can let rip with colour, materials and engravings. Or you might go for — or collect — one of the many options in limited-edition licensed models, or a replica of the Conway Stewart fountain pen that’s used to disarm a Nazi in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (cue quips about the pen being mightier than the sword).

As Alastair Adams, managing director of Conway Stewart puts it, in a meeting it’s the person who pulls out a fountain pen that gets noticed.

“There are only a few things that a man especially can carry that show his status - that’s his watch, his cufflinks and his pen,” he says. “So they want their pen to be different too”.

That’s also why, when Rolls-Royce asked the company to provide a pen for its glove compartments, it didn't want a ballpoint. And why you can go online and now find any number of ‘penfluencers’ espousing the virtues of the nib.

“The fountain pen has always appealed to certain professions - lawyers, doctors and so on,” adds Adams.

“That, in part, is about tradition, but also because a fountain pen does slow your writing down, and, it’s said, make your thinking clearer too. Yet it’s younger people, in their 20s an 30s, who seem to be getting into fountain pens now, which cuts against the stereotype of quite who an ‘archaic writing instrument’ might be expected to appeal to”.

From quill to high-tech jotter

The basic idea of the fountain pen is much the same as it was when it was invented almost 400 years ago, when a German by the name of Daniel Schwente came up with the idea of a pen carrying its own ink supply: he put a quill inside another quill and sealed the end with cork.

Something more familiar is attributable to insurance salesman Lewis Waterman, whose 1884 model, launched that year, introduced the insight of placing an air hole in the nib - this balanced air pressure inside and outside the pen, so kept the ink flowing - and supplying said ink to that through a grooved feed mechanism. That, in turn, was held by a barrel that held the ink. Simple, but also very clever.

That said, fountain pen mechanics have not stood still, ensuring the device is not the tricky, inconvenient one you once might have pictured: the one that runs dry unexpectedly or leaks all over your shirt. Ink compartments are capacious and filling them streamlined, with vacuum systems and shut-off valves. Nibs are stronger, finer, anti-clogging. The use of CNC machinery in their manufacture means tolerances are both much tighter and production more consistent.

“I don’t think I’ve heard about a pen exploding in someone’s pocket since the 90s,” Yandall laughs.

The fountain pen — like the mechanical watch — is still evolving, too. Injection moulded pen barrels may be the next frontier, and improvements in metallurgy. Yandall cites Omas’s ongoing attempts to launch a contemporary version with a super-flexible metal alloy (the precise ingredients of which, as with Coca-Cola, are secret) it originally developed around time of WW2, when more standard materials were needed for the war effort. If only it could persuade the metals industry, more used to working on huge-scale industrial projects, to make it for them. Still, there’s time to make this happen.

“We all seem to type everything now. But as practical writing gets ‘phased out’, I think the better it is for us,” says Omas’s Patrick Yandall.

“If you’re making the choice to write, then it’s inevitable you’ll end up with a fountain pen”.

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