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Black Water Snake from David Oscarson catching up with pen lover

Bill Cosby Fall Preview our biggest ever!

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OCTOBER VOLUME 26, NUMBER 6

ON OUR COVER: Black Water Snake

by David Oscarson

38 85 85 21st Annual Fall Preview The biggest in PW history!

38 serious about pens

Funny man Bill Cosby talks about pens and his friends at Fountain Pen Hospital.

136

72 first pen

What to look for in a “first pen”—and how to get it.

78 “X” marks the spot

Israeli brand X-Pen is making its mark around the world.

136 get to know Itoya

Luxury retailer, distributor and manufacturer: Itoya does it all.

139 watch this pen!

TF Est. 1968 adds watchmaking details to fine pens made in Switzerland.

139

142 culture in the hand...

That’s how Urso Luxury principal Giuseppe Urso describes his work.

145 meet your match

Get to know the matchstick-fillers of the early twentieth century.

132 it’s the Year of the Snake David Oscarson’s newest pen salutes an event that comes around every sixty years.

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Fall Forward!

our readers speak

people, places and events

show Washington D.C. report

now new pens and other products

mark your calendar

note pass it on

pages Maki-e: A Story Waiting to be Written; Odd Type; Montblanc in Denmark

Rosemary Buczek

shop Point Plume, Paris Fook Hing Trading Co., Singapore Landolt-Arbenz, Zurich

149 network 150 source 152 imho

classified advertising

customer service contact guide

intimate companions

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Artus Storks Winner, Best Fine Art Pen PEN WORLD 2013 readers’ Choice Awards

view

Fall

Forward! hope my headline doesn’t mess you up if you are one of the many— myself included—who relies upon the saying “spring forward, fall back” in order to remember how to set the clock when daylight savings time begins and ends. Once you have perused this issue, however, I hope you’ll agree with me that “fall forward” is a perfect description of this edition of Pen World.

First of all, this issue contains our 21st Annual Fall Preview of pens, with a record-breaking number of participating brands. You are holding in your hands the largest-ever Pen World!

In addition to our Fall Preview, we celebrate the Year of the Snake with David Oscarson (and a cover pen to drool over), reconnect with longtime pen lover Bill Cosby, check in on the latest offerings from Urso Luxury, profile the Israeli pen company X-Pen, and meet the people who bring us the Swiss brand TF Est. 1968, makers of nifty rollerballs that incorporate features from timepieces. We also look into Itoya, a company with roots in Japan, and its freshening of the Taccia pen brand.

Deborah Basel and Richard Binder continue their respective series on cal-

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ligraphers and filling systems, and Julian Kreeger takes us shopping at Point Plume, an elegant Paris retail store he visited last summer. There’s more great shopping (in Zurich and Singapore) and we review three books of interest to pen folk.

In this issue, we also inaugurate a regular feature designed to offer basic information on pens and their care and feeding. This series is aimed at pen newcomers, but we believe it will be helpful for longtime readers as well. It is a perfect venue in which to address readers’ questions on use and care, so don’t be shy—send your questions or topic suggestions to editor@penworld.com.

The photo with this column is a much-younger me with Bill Cosby when he visited the Pen World offices in May 1995 when I was a new staffer. I treasure it because of my admiration for him and also because it represents the beginning of my exciting journey with Pen World.

editor@penworld.com

From David Oscarson

We for this

BY JIL MCINTOSH

he Chinese zodiac holds fascination for many people. Known as Sheng Xiao in Mandarin, it assigns various animals to twelve-year cycles, with 2013 being the Year of the Snake.

It fascinates David Oscarson, and pen collectors are the beneficiaries.

Following up on the Black Water Dragon pen that he created for 2012 to mark the Year of the Dragon, he commemorates this year with a corresponding Black Water Snake pen.

“Every twelve years, the zodiac animal repeats, but there is also an element associated with the animal,” Oscarson says. “There are five elements: of earth, metal, water, fire, and wood. We are currently in the element of water, and the color for the water element is always black. Thus we have the black water dragon, and the black water snake, which only repeat every sixty years.”

The Black Water Snake will be David Oscarson’s twentieth design release. “The dragon and snake are a collection unto themselves,” he says. “They’re not part of another grouping, such as a zodiac collection. I’ve wanted to do a dragon and a snake for a long time, but there are many such pens out there, and I needed a reason to do it.

“I could have done any number of dragons, but the Chinese dragon is so beautiful, and I waited until 2012 because of the connection to the culture. The snake was a natural follow-up because it was the following year, and we could make it specifically Chinese for the Year of the Snake.”

T

132

The Black Water Snake will be available in three color variations: translucent moss black, with twin black and gold vermeil snakes on the cap; in translucent gray with black and silver snakes; and in azure blue, also with black and silver snakes. A total of eighty-eight pens in each color will be produced, divided between fountain pens and rollerballs. The nibs will come in fine, medium and broad sizes, and the pen can be filled with a cartridge or converter, or with an optional O-ring seal that allows for eyedropper filling.

As with all David Oscarson pens, the Black Water Snake will be made of .925 silver, embellished with the company’s signature hard enamel over guilloché engraving.

Also known as hot enamel, this time-consuming process uses ground glass and metal oxides that are mixed with water and hand-applied as a paste, and then kiln-fired at temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to form

a layer of glass over the surface.

The pen gets its sparkle from the equally intensive guilloché process, which gives the translucent enamel over top of it a rich, deep, 3-D effect. “The diamond pattern is not cast or die-struck,” Oscarson says. “It is a machine engraving, but the machine is operated by hand.

“You turn a dial on the machine, and the diamond climbs the pen barrel and cuts the engraving. Then you turn another dial and it turns the pen, and the diamond cuts the other way coming down the barrel. These machines were used by Van Cleef and Cartier about a hundred years ago. They’re used a lot for making watch dials.”

Oscarson possibly put as much work into the research as he did into the pen itself, which brims with added symbols and details signifying the dual theme of river and reptile. It has two snakes because of the long history of twin serpents, best known to many through the pair that 133

wind around a rod in the caduceus. The guilloché engraving on the body and cap flows as a liquid wave, while the ancient Chinese character for water—a double-curved line with four dots—decorates the bands that wrap around the pen at top and bottom.

The modern Chinese character for water is inlaid at the bottom of the barrel, while the crown of the cap carries the elegant modern character for the snake. Even the number of 88 pens for each color was chosen for a reason: in Chinese numerology, eight is the luckiest single number, and 88 is especially good fortune.

The pen isn’t meant for posting and doesn’t have a clip, and Oscarson expects that most who buy it for writing will keep it as a desk pen. But he does want you to write with it!

“We go through a lot of trouble to make sure each pen writes well,” he says.

134

Those who buy the rollerball version are more likely to make their mark with it, but should they eventually want to upgrade to a fountain pen, Oscarson will change the writing unit for a few hundred dollars. “It’s so much prettier with the 18 karat nib,” he says.

That eye for beauty comes naturally for him, as he originally worked in jewelry and was headed for the diamond business. “I worked for a pen company for a while, and thought it was an opportunity to marry the two together,” he says. He opened his doors on March 1, 2000, and while it was a rough time to start a business, with 9/11 and its aftermath just around the corner, Oscarson built a following with each successive edition.

As with all of those, the exquisite Black Water Snake stays true to Oscarson’s vision that his pens are pieces of jewelry. “We’re not a household name like Parker, Sheaffer

or Cross, because we don’t have an entry-level product,” he says. “We can’t make a $300 pen in hot enamel over sterling silver, and I’m not going to get into resin. This is what we’re known for.

“We have to use a certain gauge of silver to withstand the heat of the kiln, and the threads are cut from solid sterling, and the pen is heavy. A lot of pens will oxidize and crumble as they age, but this is silver and glass and gold, and that’s all it is. It’s something to pass down to someone of another generation, and it will work just as well in fifty or sixty years as it does today.”

JIL MCINTOSH is a pen collector and freelance writer based in Canada. She writes frequently about pens and cars.

The S-s-symbolism of the S-s-snake David Oscarson explains: “Dating back to 3000

BCE,

the Chinese snake

represents rebirth; it rides on the glory of the dragon and can bring great achievements and success. The snake is associated with beauty and wisdom, esoteric knowledge and spiritual discovery; it is subtle yet refined, subdued yet shrewd, calculating but full of grace, reserved yet powerfully sensual. The Chinese Snake represents turmoil and transformation as well as opportunity and enthusiasm; Chinese mythology holds that a half-human snake was the father of the Chinese emperors.”

135

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