Meet Your Maker – Meg Blackburn, Black Robin Pens

(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)

“All the world’s a page/ And all the men and women merely writers…”

OK, maybe that isn’t what Shakespeare said. But you can do some journaling with Prospero, or write a letter with Juliet (or with Titus if you’re feeling angry,) if you’re using a pen made by Meg Blackburn of Black Robin Pens.

Blackburn wanted an identifiable theme for her pens, and “Den (of @denscustompens) had already taken gods and goddesses.” As a resident of Yorkshire in the UK, she found Shakespeare names to be a natural and evocative choice.

Blackburn’s making journey started with the gift of a hand-me-down wood lathe, and she made bowls and other decorative wood items at first. At a wood turning show she visited with her mother they saw some kit pens, and her mother asked her to make one.

Without the videos made by Bob Blanford, showing how to turn each component of a kit pen, she might not have gotten off the ground. However, the first lathe was quickly upgraded to a better wood lathe, and kit pens quickly began to feel too restrictive in terms of shape and design.

Just as the pandemic began in 2019, she began to make kitless pens, turning to Ashley Lawrence of Rockster Pens and Jason Miller of Jason Neil Penworks for advice on getting started. Her first pens, shared on Instagram, were well received, and soon she realized she could forego returning to the corporate world following her maternity leave and work part time as a pen maker and 'part time' as a mom to her now three year old daughter instead.

Blackburn gives some credit to the pandemic for allowing so many pen makers to get off the ground. “More people were writing letters, and since they couldn’t take holidays or go out, they had more money to spend.” She quickly distinguished herself for her innovative pen shapes. “I wanted to bring something new to the community, to come up with something other people aren’t doing.” Her most popular model, the Ophelia, resulted from working with a customer who asked for “something curvy,” and this led to further inspiration for models with curves. She now has ten or twelve different shapes available.

As more makers take the leap to making their own blanks, Blackburn is attracted by the idea and is looking into it. “It would let me offer a complete custom experience from the material to the pen.” However, upgrading her shop to a metal lathe is higher on the list of things to do.

Perhaps her most surprising pens are those made from recycled skateboards. She spotted a Canadian company making various kinds of things from skateboards, and thought here was something no one was doing with pens. Her first skateboard pens were built around kit components. The first year, she made two pens, ten the second year, sixteen this year, and she has twenty reservations for next year. Because the process is so labor-intensive, she limits the number she will make, and demand exceeds supply. She’s produced a series of Instagram reels showing all the steps. Broken skateboards are much easier to find in the US than the UK but a university skateboard club has helped keep her supplied.

When asked about her favorite pen she didn’t make, Blackburn first refers to pens by Eric Sands of Atelier Lusso – whenever she sees one of his pens she thinks, “I wish I’d made that!” The pen sent to her by Terry Tourngeau of Hogtown Pens in the As The Pen Turns podcast Secret Santa exchange of 2021, made with rosewood and diamondcast material, is a current favorite. A demonstrator version of her Iago model is one of her own that she can’t let go of, partly because of all the polishing work involved in making a clear pen.

While Blackburn would like to be a vendor at a pen show sometime, partly to support the community including the collectors who are not on Instagram, she says she can’t keep enough stock to actually do a show. With sixty percent of her work being commissions, she can make at most three or four stock pens a week, and her pens sell almost the minute they are posted on Instagram. This demand has also led her to decide not to support a website, as there is usually nothing to list as available.

She finds much to like about being a pen maker. “I find it very meditative and stress-relieving. It’s a methodical step by step process that is calming. And my work doesn’t rely on anybody else as it used to in the corporate world.”

In common with other makers, she cites the community spirit that prevails among pen makers, and how much she gains from them. “If I was in the shop and had a problem, there are about ten makers I could ask for help, and I try to pay that forward as well. If everybody is making a better product, that is good for all the makers.”

More than half of Black Robin’s sales are to repeat customers, and owning more than one Black Robin is the rule rather than the exception. “When someone comes back for another pen, I know I must be doing something right!”

Black Robin Pens can be found on Instagram, at Black Robin Pens.

Meet Your Maker – Tim Crowe, Turnt Pen Company

(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)

When a group of pen models are named Huxley, Grisham, Pynchon, Gaddis, and DeLillo, you might think there was something literary going on. You’d be right. Turnt Pen Company is the enterprise of Tim Crowe, whose day job is teaching English to eighth and twelfth graders in the Finger Lakes region of New York, south of Rochester.

Crowe started making handmade pens in late 2019. Prior to that, he’d been making electric guitar pedals and working on guitars, and making a few kit pens, as well as enjoying collecting and writing with fountain pens. Then he saw a kitless pen made by Greg Hardy of Hardy Penwrights, found that he lived about thirty minutes from Hardy, and called him up. During a long day in the Hardy shop, Crowe learned to make his first kitless pen, and also discovered that his father had student-taught in Hardy’s classroom years earlier. He sold some of his first “prototype” pens on Reddit before feeling confident enough to put his work out more seriously.

It wasn’t long before he decided he’d also like to try making his own materials, and got in touch with maker Bob Dupras, who gave him pointers and talked him through many iterations in the shop. Making materials is famously addicting, and he now has over 270 recipes in his books. Inspiration can come from anywhere – photos sent to him by customers, for example, or random things he sees around him. He also has help choosing colors from his sons Carson and Mikey – Carson’s blank choices are up to 25 and Mikey’s stand at 8.

“It’s like Christmas morning when you shoot that blank out of the mold and see what it looks like.” He hasn’t made pens out of a lot of those recipes, but “the coolest thing is making a pen out of material I also made, or making material to turn someone’s vision into a pen.” The entire process continues to inspire him, “working with my hands, turning a plastic rod into something useful.”

Vintage materials, though difficult to obtain, are on Crowe’s radar, as one of his favorite pens he didn’t make is a Mythic Pen Company pen made from a snakeskin blue cellulose acetate. An Eowyn model from Mayfair Pens is another favorite recent acquisition.

Pen companies are beginning to embrace the appeal of handmade alumilite resins, and some have taken note of Crowe’s materials. He has provided blanks to Leonardo Officina Italiana and Nahvalur, in batches of fifty to a hundred, for exclusive pens sold through the retailer Limited Pens Korea – several have already been released and there are more in the pipeline.

Crowe chooses words similar to Shawn Newton’s in describing his feelings about what he does. “I’m so lucky. I love my day job, and it gives me time to do this.” He wonders about the reasons there seem to be many educators in pen making. Is it because they write a lot? Because they have time in the summer to work more on their pens? He uses July to prepare for his one pen show, in DC – “three years ago, I didn’t know pen shows were a thing!”

Spare time is at a premium, with a demanding day job, service as a class advisor, and family life. When there is a little extra time, Crowe dabbles in music, not having entirely left guitars behind.

Choosing a name for his company let Crowe have a little fun with words. Not wanting to use his own name, he settled on the word “turnt” for a number of reasons. First, it’s an obsolete past tense form of “turn,” which speaks to the process of hand making a pen. Then, the word passed out of use and came back again with a different meaning, just as fountain pens were superseded by ballpoints and then came back with new appeal. According to the Urban Dictionary, “turnt” or “turnt up” means excessively excited or wound up, which seems appropriate for the amount of excitement fountain pens can generate today.

Crowe’s story sounds a theme mentioned by almost any pen maker you might talk to: the time and support given by other makers. “This is unlike anything I’ve ever been a part of.”

In addition to his website, Tim Crowe’s work can be seen at the DC Pen Show every August, and on Instagram @turntpenco. He plans to do a new blank and pen drop on Instagram at 1pm Sundays, letting followers vote the day before on which blank it will be. And this weekend's pen was kind of breathtaking so here it is:

Thank you Tim for sharing your story!

Meet Your Maker - Shawn Newton, Newton Pens

(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)

Shawn Newton is one of the “Old Guard.” While teaching art in a high school near his home in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Newton set out to become a maker of pens in early 2012, at a time when there were few independent pen makers in the country. “I’ve always liked making things,” he said, not to mention fixing all kinds of things around the house. As an artist he drew with pen and ink, and collected pens for some time before he saw his first handmade pen. A Kickstarter grant, as well as the sale of most his pens, provided him the funding to get off the ground.

Newton’s website lists about ten different pen styles. He creates pens from hand-poured resins made by Jonathon Brooks, Bob Dupras, and other resin artists, as well as ebonite and acrylics. His most distinctive design, the sculpted Prospector, requires much handwork and has a triangular-prism shape.

“I wanted to make pens that were comfortable to hold and use. That's why some of my dimensions are what they are. For example, the distance from the front of a barrel to the step behind the threads (if there is a step) is because the step can very often make a pen uncomfortable to use for more than a few minutes. Putting the step farther back gives most hands plenty of room to find the sweet spot and not bump into it. The size of the step up is also the smallest it can be and allow for the cap to still have thick walls.”

He finds inspiration in many sources – in vintage pens, in the first pens he made on a wood lathe, and in nature and art. “I get a LOT of inspiration from flowers and things in nature for blank ideas. I don't make my own blanks, but I've had lots of custom blanks made for me over the years, especially from Bob Dupras. Some inspiration has come from looking at artwork - right now I'm working on a sort of Halloween themed pen based on a friend's art. There are skulls and tombstones and ghosts on it.”

What do you like most about being a pen maker? Although being self-employed can be stressful, “I’m my own boss, it’s awesome!” Despite this independent attitude, he is not tempted to learn to make his own materials. “With two people here in Arkansas that will custom pour for me, and several more around the country if I asked, I'm at no loss for materials.”

“My biggest fear is that I'll have to get a ‘real’ job once day, if people just quit buying fountain pens! There are parts that aren't fun, like the paperwork and taxes and sanding and buffing (because they hurt my arm, neck, and shoulder so much) but really, it's all pretty enjoyable. I love going from a plain round blank through the shaping and threading and having a finished pen in the end. I especially love when people request color and material combos I've never done before. Those are always a ton of fun to see finished. And when I get that note or email telling me they love the pen? I love my job.”

One unique aspect of Newton’s work is the modification and rebuilding of pens by major makers. A few years into his pen making career, someone sent him a couple of Pelikan M800s and some materials and asked him to modify the pens. Sometimes he will repair and replace parts; other times he extracts the nib, clip, and trim and builds a new pen around them, builds a new pen for an orphaned cap or barrel, or puts a new colorful barrel on an existing section.

Pen makers do buy pens! Newton’s favorite pen at the moment that he did not make is from a maker called Kasama, based in the Philippines. The pen is turned from the extremely hard Ultem high-strength plastic, and has a fude nib.

Although he no longer works as a teacher, Newton has remained engaged in ways to help students succeed, and draws inspiration from his own experience. “I’ve had so many people over the years say, ‘Hey, here’s some money,’” whether it was for furthering his education, dealing with a medical crisis, or establishing his business. The Newton Pens Scholarships program was founded to provide a leg up to students who need a little help to move their educations forward. Newton raises funds year-round for this program, including through auctioning donated pens on eBay. As word of this work has spread, he has been speaking to philanthropy groups in his area about the success of his program.

Besides his website and Instagram, Shawn Newton’s work can be seen in person at pen shows in Arkansas, DC, Chicago, and Dallas.

Thank you Shawn for sharing your story!