Posts filed under Meet Your Maker

Meet Your Maker: Pierre Miller, Desiderata 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.)

Pierre Miller says, “I wanted to make things I couldn’t buy.” The word Desiderata means “desired things,” and in this case the first desired thing was: a writing instrument that used a commonly available dip nib, had an ink reservoir, and offered a pleasant purchase experience.

“I bought lots of flex pens that didn’t work the way I really wanted. The vintage ones that did, were not replaceable in case of any damage or failure. Dip nib holders with reservoirs didn’t quite give me what I was looking for.” What’s a writer to do?

“I started thinking, if I could solve this problem to my satisfaction, others might like the result too.”

Miller was working as a chemist at the time and teaching piano, and one of his students was a tool and die maker who taught him how to use lathes and other machine tools. He began with a pen turned from wood, with a feed he machined from ebonite, and then began to iterate to improve the design. The iterating began in late 2012, and it was 2014 before he had a product he felt he could sell to another person.

A few years into his penmaking career, a friend suggested adapting the nib housings he makes to be compatible with other industry standard nib housings. So in addition to accepting a collar for a Zebra-G flex nib, his pens also are set up for screw-in Jowo nib housings. Study with Richard Binder trained him to properly tune those nibs.

Miller wanted an ink reservoir larger than a cartridge or converter to cope with the amount of ink that flex writing lays down. Therefore, he tried designing lots of filling systems that didn’t entirely pan out in practice, on the way to the pump and screw piston fillers he uses now. Perhaps it’s no surprise that one of his past hobbies was building scale models of spacecraft. Nowadays, “the workshop of my childhood dreams” and his young family take up all his time.

In addition to wood, he also uses ebonite, acrylic, cellulose acetate, galalith, and titanium in his shop. Despite making every part of his pens himself, making the materials themselves is not a step Miller plans to take. “There are so many other people who have a better eye for color, there’s no need for me to do that.”

His most complex pen is his Chiaroscuro model, a small diameter fountain pen with twelve curved, contoured facets. “I chose this model to solve a problem that often happens with dark, patterned ebonite: you can’t see the pattern. I went with the facets to bring out the pattern. They were contoured because I like a challenge: the hand finishing process is laborious, but there’s nothing like it.” The first run of the Chiaroscuro included a 0.4mm italic nib ground in-house.

People who make things cite all kinds of inspiration when asked about what they do. For Miller, even beyond his problem-solving approach to his craft, inspiration is everywhere. “I’m so impressed by the world around me I don’t need to go looking farther for inspiration.” At the same time, the search for something he couldn’t find was the spur to his creativity. “The reason my pens exist is that I was after a very specific sort of writing instrument. I wanted to make pens that no market force has driven into existence.” The rewards of the work come directly from those who use the pens. “What I like best about making pens is when people tell me they appreciate the work I do.”

What’s a favorite pen you didn’t make yourself? “The Parker 51.” Why? “That’s the best fountain pen ever made, and I’m a perfectionist!” To him, the Parker 51 offered a host of design choices focused on achieving a good user experience, along with a bauhaus design and a hooded nib that was unique at the time it was made. “It is affordable, durable, reliable, and doesn’t call attention to itself.”

That could almost be an advertising slogan for Desiderata Pens.

When looking to the future, Miller sees himself “alternating between perfecting what I already do, and going to new places.” He is particularly drawn to working with interesting mechanisms that are no longer in production in pens today, and continuing to pursue excellence in his shop. “How you do anything is how you do everything.”

Pierre Miller’s work can be seen on Instagram, on his website, and at pen shows in St Louis, Washington DC, San Francisco, Ohio, and Chicago (his home show), and sometimes Baltimore, Boston, and Los Angeles.

An in-depth profile of Miller from a slightly different angle appears on the website Third Factor.

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Posted on June 15, 2023 by Caroline Foty and filed under Meet Your Maker.

Meet Your Maker: Jason Miller, Jason Neil Penworks

Jason Miller made his first pen as a teenager with equipment set up on the tailgate of a truck. His grandfather, an industrial technology teacher, learned to make kit pens and decided to bring all his equipment at Christmas and teach his grandchildren. They loved it so much that he went out and bought them all the required stuff as Christmas presents, and they started making kit pens in the living room.

The brothers played around with pens off and on for years and then moved on. However, after graduating from architecture school and taking a high pressure job, Miller remembered the tools and retrieved them from his parents’ garage, looking for something therapeutic to relieve stress. When he started sharing pictures of his pens on Instagram, people wanted to buy them. “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a thing??’” When he set up as a business in 2016, he honored his grandfather, Neil Tucker, in his company name as well as the name of his flagship model, the Tucker.

Fountain pens came into his repertoire after about a year, when he began seeking out better kits, and that was when his business really took off; his first customer was located in Hong Kong. He began to find kit pens limiting – “There is a framework you have to work within, in terms of shape and size, so mixing it up with the wood is all you can do.” To add variety to his kit pens he did some wood inlay and layering. Then he came across a set of YouTube videos by Bob Blandford, who had started dabbling in kitless pens and produced a video outlining all the tools they require. Already having the major equipment, adding the tools for kitless pens was not a crazy investment, although his wife was skeptical – “Why is he doing this??” But once he got started, “there was no going back. I gave all my kit pen tools to a friend.”

Miller first tried to diversify his pens by buying a wider selection of blanks at the wood store. He quickly found that he hated working with acrylic, which can be brittle. Then he spotted some square resin blanks at Exotic Blanks and that was more to his liking, so he began following the work of more makers and took note of where they got their materials.

Instagram also led to another of Miller’s endeavors, the As The Pen Turns podcast, when he hit it off with Brad Owens of Mythic Pens. After sharing their work and the work of other makers, they did a joint livestream giveaway, and due to Brad’s radio-friendly voice they received several comments that they ought to do a podcast. After thinking about it for awhile, they jumped in. “We figured we’d maybe have enough to talk about for like ten episodes, but we’re almost fifty episodes in, and by now everyone should know we have ZERO issues talking for extended periods!”

For a number of years, Miller swore he would never make his own blanks. “I hate picking colors at work for clients’ buildings, but it turns out I love doing it with materials.” When Jonathon Brooks joined the podcast as a cohost, he felt able to ask him lots of questions, and his interest grew until he took the plunge. His inspiration for his blanks comes from nature – one particularly striking recipe was based on a colorful photograph of a luna moth. “I don’t like to be arbitrary in my colors, but to be inspired by things in nature.”

Miller is continuing to seek new horizons in his work. “I’m confident with kitless pens, what’s next? When I get the bug to experiment, what can I create?” He considered metal work – clips, finials, bands – but the cost of entry to that craft was relatively high. So he decided to narrow his focus to the Tucker model (as well as the Tucker 48, an eyedroppered variation on the theme), letting his five or six other models go to work on making the Tucker the best crafted pen it can be. “Many people say they follow the lead of the material when they make pens, my focus is on the technical accuracy.” Visiting pen shows for the first time, he felt pressed to find ways to make his work unique. This pressure has led him in a couple of new directions.

“I picked out the pens I’ve made that I really liked, and noticed that many of them are using multiple segments of colors.” Having both his own blanks and a bin of blanks he’s gotten from other makers lets him mix and match and see what colors he has that go together well. He also has a new blank recipe, called Damascus, that simulates the color and texture of forged steel, and is using that as a background for pops and spots of solid color, as well as experimenting with subtle variations in the recipe to achieve different effects.

Miller enjoys being challenged by the work of other makers in the community who are pushing the limits of pens in one direction or another. “I want to keep it interesting for myself. I’m trying to get back to the origin of this – it’s a side business, but I want to get back to the creativity and the fun of doing it.”

Part of the fun is pushing his own skills. “I’m an architect – how complicated can I make it?? Making intricate things that meet my standards for aesthetic quality, following something like that to completion, inspires me.”

What’s a favorite pen that you didn’t make yourself? There are a few. “My favorite is a Pilot Custom 823 with a custom architect grind by John Mottishaw. I use it at work all the time. Also I have five Pilot Metropolitans inked with different colors that I take to work every day to color code my work notes.”

Like many other makers, Miller draws satisfaction from the place of what he does in a larger context. “You start with nothing, put ingredients into a pot, take them out, and from that inanimate object create art that someone else can use to create art. It contributes to the community that keeps handwriting alive. It has an infinite life.”

Jason Miller’s work can be seen on Instagram, his website Jason Neil Penworks, and maybe a pen show or two in the future.

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Posted on May 30, 2023 by Caroline Foty and filed under Meet Your Maker.

Meet Your Maker: Renée Meeks, Scriptorium Pens

A thousand years ago, almost the only writing done in western Europe was done in the scriptoria housed at monasteries and religious communities. Nowadays, when we have access to more ways of recording words than ever before, it’s easy to forget that the ability to write was once not only rare, but in some places forbidden for some people.

When Renée Meeks needed a name for her pen making business, based in her home in Jackson, Mississippi, she drew upon things she was fascinated by – “literature, medieval calligraphy, forms of writing. The scriptorium was where the writing was done. They made their own pens and ink.”

When Meeks retired from teaching English in 2012, she received a retirement gift from her brother: a mini lathe. He knew she liked making things, and encouraged her to give it a try. Having always loved pens – “I always wanted to use my mother’s Lady Sheaffer and she wouldn’t let me … I have it now.” – making pens was the thing she instantly wanted to do. She watched Youtube videos and followed International Pen Maker’s Forum tutorials, and “I ordered too many materials!” Another retired English teacher helped her learn the craft, and she soon posted some pens on the makers’ forum on the Fountain Pen Network. They took off, and within a year she was receiving four or five orders a month, and added a metal lathe to her shop setup.

In 2013, Pendleton Brown, of Pendleton’s Pens in Georgia, asked her for some pens to sell in his shop on commission, and said she needed a website and a company name, and Scriptorium Pens was born. The names of her numerous models are almost all forms of writing and types of writers.

Having so many models necessitates keeping good records, and Meeks has a large looseleaf binder in her shop with the specifications and diagrams of all of them. About a third of them are based on specific designs customers requested, that she chose to continue making. She has both standard traditional shapes, and shapes that are subtly modified to make them original.

One striking and unique aspect of her work is the variety of clip and roll stop designs that are available, and she works with a metal artist who will cast whatever she asks for. “I like roll stops better than clips, they add a little flair without taking up the whole cap.” Constructing a pen order on her site is like choosing what to eat at a well-stocked buffet, and the fact that Mark Bacas tunes all Scriptorium nibs before they go out is the perfect dessert.

Meeks draws inspiration from the ever-growing range of available materials, and she herself contributes to that variety. If she sees colors on websites, in photographs, on the endpapers of old books, or around her in the world, she thinks, “That would make a nice pen,” and will often ask Bob Dupras or Jonathon Brooks to create a material based on the source of inspiration. With the ability to see her inspirations made into materials by premier artists, Meeks is not tempted to make her own. Beyond the simple issue of time, “I’d end up with alumilite in my hair!”

There have not been any pen shows on Meeks’ schedule, because it has been very difficult to build up a stash of stock pens. “I don’t work as fast as some, so I have to work every day.” However, after ten years of not attending shows, she plans to be at the Dallas pen show in September, and will spend the summer stocking up to fill her table.

Meeks’ favorite pen that she did not make is an Edison Huron from approximately 2010, which is a shape similar to the Glenmont and was her first custom maker pen. She also enjoys her celluloid Delta Dolce Vita with a big nib, but she has listed it for sale on her Instagram to raise some money to add some dogs to her life. She has two Australian shepherds who are fourteen and aging out of guard dog duty, so she would like to bring home a German shepherd or two. A committed pet lover, she bought a bigger desk a few years ago so that there would be room for her to work in addition to accommodating all three of her cats.

In her limited free time, Meeks loves to read. Work in the shop has pre-empted other activities like gardening, but while working she listens to podcasts about history or pens, as well as some ambient soundscape apps that promote focus.

The freedom of being a penmaker is her favorite aspect of her life, the independence of being able to plan her time to suit herself. “When you’re teaching, you get up before dawn and are going, going, going all day.” All the time in the shop presents no problem. “Penmaking is a delight. I never get bored, every pen is a little different.”

Renée Meeks’ work can be seen at @scriptoriumpens on Instagram, her website ScriptoriumPens.com, and at the Dallas Pen Show. A 2022 profile in Pen World magazine can be read here.