The Romance of Fountain Pens and Ink

There's something achingly romantic about fountain pens—selecting the color or creating your own color of ink to fill the reservoir, the scratch of nib against paper, the way ink pools and feathers into the grain. In our age of keyboards and touchscreens, choosing to write with a fountain pen is an act of deliberate slowness, a creative rebellion against efficiency.

Dear friend Judy Davies sharing her wooden chest of inherited fountain pens, nibs, and ink as well as a few pieces of WWII military insignia. What a treasured afternoon!!

Even ink-stained hands remind me of the youthful idealism and creativity of Jo March, the heroine of Little Women, hunched over her writing desk in the attic, fingers perpetually smudged with the evidence of her ambitions. There's honor in those stains, a badge of someone who creates rather than merely consumes.

It may be a messy desk, but every nick, stain, and blemish has a story rooted in creativity whether it be writing, painting or designing future workshops or sketching holidays.

The ink itself becomes part of the ritual. I've fallen hopelessly for Diamine's Oxblood—a color that conjures images of ancient British universities with their leather-bound volumes and wood-paneled libraries. It's the shade of autumn leaves pressed between pages, of pipe smoke curling through afternoon light, of centuries-old marginalia penned by scholars long gone. Writing with Oxblood feels like joining a conversation that spans generations.

Be still my beating heart!!

Then there's Aurora Borealis, which captures something else entirely. This shimmering teal ink seems to hold the cosmos in a bottle—star nurseries swirling with possibility, the Eagle Nebula's pillars of creation, the intricate dance of particles and light that suggests intelligent design in the universe's architecture. Each stroke becomes a meditation on the infinite, a reminder that we're made of love, spirit, and stardust trying to understand itself.

Collection of Judy's dip pens. I need these for my Ferris Wheel Press "Borrowed Blue" and "Sage Advice" professional calligraphy inks with flecks of metalic gold. I purchased these yummy colors not knowing they are too thick for use in fountain pens.

Fountain pens slow us down enough to notice these things, make us think deeper, enjoy the process more. They make writing a sensory experience: the feeling of ink flowing, the smell of paper, the visible trace of our thoughts taking shape. In a world that moves too fast, they offer us permission to linger, to savor, to leave our mark with intention and beauty.

When at my desk, I choose fountain pens every time.

Neatly stored to be explored again on another day.