Pen World v27.2

The Universe of Writing Culture

the LB5 from

Classic Pens celebrates Sailor始s King Profit a brand new

Wahl-Eversharp blends past and present

your choice!

PW Readers始 Choice Awards ballot inside!

FEBRUARY 2014 $6.95US $7.95CAN

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LABAN PEN CORPORATION 1310 E. Orangethorpe Avenue Fullerton, CA 92831 TEL: 714.992. 2468 EMAIL: sales@labanusa.com labanusa@yahoo.com

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FEBRUARY VOLUME 27, NUMBER 2

ON OUR COVER: LB5 by Classic Pens Photo by Jim Mamoulides

31 It’s up to you!

Time to cast your ballots in PW’s 20th Annual Readers’ Choice Awards! Find everything you need to cast your ballot right here.

34 29 pens for kids

On a visit to Germany, our writer finds a plethora of choices for children.

34 the skinny on dip pens

These superbly crafted wonders are an important part of our past and present.

42 the face behind the loupe

You’ve mostly seen the top of his head. Now meet Richard Binder face to face.

46 brother and sister act

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Joel Hamilton and Sherrell Tyree are pen lovers first, restoration specialists second.

54 Wahl-Eversharp lives again

Two entrepreneurs bring back the beloved, top-tier vintage brand.

58 making his mark

New to the pen community—but not new to pens—Ryan Krusac is creating buzz.

62 culmination of a dream

A twenty-year quest for Allen Gross produces the Never Again limited edition.

66 Faber-Castell POTY

St. Petersburg’s Agate Pavilion inspires Graf von Faber-Castell’s 2014 Pen of the Year.

72 it’s hump day!

And we don’t mean Wednesday. Learn all about the fascinating hump filler.

50 Classic Pens’ LB5

combines the best of Classic Pens and Sailor.

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departments WHAT’S HOT NOW

06 view

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go west!

08 mail

our readers speak

10 news 14 now 22 date

people, places and events

new pens and other products

mark your calendar

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26 note 38 strokes 69 shop 76 network 78 source

love letters

Linda Schneider

Flax Pen to Paper, L.A.

classified advertising

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customer service contact info

80 IMHO

small world; big heart

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view

Go

West!

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he best advice I can give you in February is, “Go West!” In other words, do whatever it takes to get to the Los Angeles International Pen Show. Those who do will get to see some of the new pens shown in this issue introduced to the public, including the vibrant new shades of Classic Pens’ LB5 seen on our cover. While you’re in LA, take some time to visit Flax Pen to Paper, which we profile in this issue.

We also introduce you to two brands “new” to the scene: WahlEversharp, which has been revived by Syd Saperstein and Emmanuel Caltagirone sixty years after it ceased production, and Ryan Krusac, who has been making pens and selling them online for some time but only recently connected with the pen community via pen shows. We also showcase an important new limited edition— Never Again: Liberation to Freedom, by Pens Plus and manufactured by Stipula. See all these brands in LA. (The LA show is held every year on Presidents’ Day weekend, which often overlaps with Valentines Day, as it does this year.

Make sure to see Cindy Zimmermann’s suggestion for an ultra-romantic Valentine’s Day!) You will also not want to miss our article about Graf von Faber-Castell’s

newest Pen of the Year, an important series that is known for its unusual and always visually arresting materials.

For vintage pen lovers, we offer a history of dip pens and an examination of the hump-filler. The latter is by Richard Binder as part of his series on noteworthy filling systems, and Binder himself, one of the most noteworthy nib specialists in the business, is profiled in this issue.

We continue our popular series on contemporary calligraphers with a profile of Linda Schneider and we introduce you to InkPen and the brothersister team behind it—the highly regarded pen repair specialists Joel Hamilton and Sherrell Tyree.

And, if you’ve read PW for any length of time, you probably know that each year in our February issue, we present nominees for our Readers’ Choice Awards. We change it up just a little each year, but one thing will never change: the awards are about YOUR favorite pens of the past calendar year as seen in PW. In this issue, we supply everything you’ll need to mark your ballot, including the ballot itself!

Happy reading, happy voting, and Happy New Year!

editor@penworld.com

Long

BY LAURA CHANDLER

Live the

King!

here is a story behind every pen, and sometimes even stories behind the stories. That is true of Classic Pens’ LB5 King Profit series.

Andreas “Andy” Lambrou, principal of Classic Pens, is well known for joining forces with other brands, which provide base pens that he customizes to create unique, highly limited editions.

His first such partnership was with

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Sheaffer and worked so well that other cooperative efforts followed, resulting in the CP series of limited editions— sterling silver pens with intricate guilloché done by Murelli SARL, a family business based near Paris that developed exclusive engraving patterns for the pens. The base for each of these pens was the flagship model of the respective brands.

With the CP series, Lambrou’s manner of cooperation became a pattern that has evolved but has not essentially changed over the years.

When it came to the LB5, Lambrou was extremely eager to customize Sailor’s oversize King Profit, a.k.a. the King of Pen, a model he had admired since its 2003 launch. But companies are not always quick to allow a flagship

Above—the Nagahara Cross Point nib is available on a select few pens in each color variation; all others come with Sailor’s 21 karat gold nib in medium or broad, left.

The LB5 in amethyst mauve (opposite) and marble white.

pen to be customized, preferring to reap the rewards of their hard work through its popularity. During the course of working on his book Fountain Pens of Japan, Lambrou discovered that his relationships with Japanese pen companies had grown stronger. When he proposed launching a customized King Profit in conjunction with the book, he explains, “the time was right, and Sailor was enthusiastic.” Over the past year, Classic Pens has been releasing the LB5 in diffusion-bonded acrylic. The colors are inspired by nature, more specifically by the five Japanese elements of earth, water, fire, wind and sky.

Lambrou says that we have Parker Pen to thank for diffusion-bonded materials suitable for penmaking. The first such material was made in the early 2000s for the Parker Mosaic special editions in blue and red, using high quality acrylic by Du Vergier, a British company that no longer makes these materials. Carville, another U.K. company (which incidentally makes the current pearl and black material for the Parker Duofold) produces diffusion-bonded materials for the Classic Pens LB5 King Profit series.

While an acrylic pen body can be made for $2, the diffusion bonding process helps to explain why certain

acrylic pens can be expensive indeed.

Originally developed for applications in the aerospace industry, the process joins layers of acrylic without the use of solvents or adhesives. The advantage is that the layers are joined on a molecular level, resulting in a highly stable material. Carville creates material to the customer’s specifications, so the acrylic for the LB5 is exclusive to Classic Pens. Achieving the look and properties envisioned by the customer can be very much a trial-and-error 51

The LB Collection The initials “LB” denote the founders of Classic Pens, Andreas Lambrou and Keith Brown. The goal of the collection is to customize flagship pen models in a diverse variety of designs and finishes, including maki-e. The LB5 is fifth in the series, and includes all the colors seen here: from left, Tensui, Tairiku marble white, Midorigi, Kaen, Kouseki and Tairiku amethyst mauve.

The LB5 King Profit is available as a set with a copy of the book Fountain Pens of Japan, published through Classic Pens’ in-house publishing company. A special edition of the book comprising 250 copies has been created especially for this purpose.

process, both time consuming and expensive, with each trial costing $2,000—and such was the case with the most recent LB5 finishes.

The first two pens in the LB5 collection, Kaen (violent flames) and Tensui (raindrops), were made with diffusion-bonded Du Vergier material that Classic Pens had used in previous models. But for the remaining three finishes, Classic Pens decided to use a different kind of richly pearlized material. They experimented first with Madreperlato, an acrylic made by the Italian company Sintetica. The semitransparent cast acrylic sheets in lustrous pearlized colors were diffusion bonded by Carville, using Classic Pens’ exclusive method. Although the finishes were attractive, says Lambrou, the prototypes made with them were so translucent that the pen’s black cap liner showed through the material, as did the black barrel liner with a threaded portion extending out of the barrel.

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To remedy this problem, Sailor replaced the black cap liner with a translucent one. The barrel liner was eliminated, and the barrel was instead produced from diffusion-bonded material as one piece that included the threaded part. This took care of the problem with show-through, but another problem arose—the material displayed a strong “side effect” normally associated with cast acrylic: two sides diametrically opposite are bright, while the other two sides are plain, almost dull, Lambrou explains.

Classic Pens worked with Carville and Sintetica on special productions of the Pietra range that were enhanced with a pearlescent material. Carville shaved off the “skin” at the top and bottom of the sheet—a process that eliminated nearly half of the material—leaving only the middle, the most beautiful part. Then, Carville worked its magic with diffusion bonding according to Classic Pens’ unique specifications.

Finally, everyone was pleased: the resulting material is beautifully suited to the nature theme, displays little or no side effect and is extremely stable. The names given to them are Kouseki (metal ore) in diamond brown, Midorigi (new green trees) in forest green and Tairiku (continent) in a choice of two finishes, amethyst mauve and marble white.

Lambrou is pleased with the results, not only aesthetically but practically: he requested that Sailor lengthen the barrel by 5 mm so that the pen would be comfortable for writing unposted, as is the preference of most of his Western customers. The nib comes in medium and broad, with a few Nagahara Cross Point nibs available at a premium price—“the icing on the cake,” says Lambrou.

“I believe the LB5 King Profit pens have all the qualities to enhance the writing pleasure of their owners for many years, and hopefully to become family heirlooms.”

The red (Kaen) and green (Midorigi) pens are shown with an early prototype on the left and the final verion on the right. The brown (Kouseki) pen below is shown with the final version above the prototype.

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