Posts filed under Meet Your Maker

Meet Your Maker: Eric Sands, Atelier Lusso

(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.)

There was a moment when Eric Sands chose between playing the drums and making pens.

“I’ve always done something other than work, I worked to live, I didn’t live to work.” During a long career managing a furniture store, running a hobby shop, organizing international RC car tournaments, and working in IT, he pursued many interests: taking classes in interior design and art history, restoring, racing, and showing cars, and trying many different musical instruments. “I’ve been a frustrated musician my whole life – I just wasn’t very good at it.”

He had gotten out of involvement in showing cars, was trying to learn to play the drums, and was searching around for a new avocation that “maybe could pay for itself.” In 2016, when shopping for a nice razor, he found someone who made them from kits and also made kit pens, and his interest was piqued. After looking up lots of information and videos about making pens, he decided to sell his drum set to invest in a lathe and the other required tools. Sales of kit pens yielded money that he plowed into more equipment.

Sands quickly felt the constraints of making kit pens, and after about two years he had accumulated money for a metal lathe and the tools to make kitless pens. “I was never a fountain pen enthusiast, but I loved the idea of them. When I started making them and using them, I loved them.” He isn’t a collector, however – “When I see interesting pens I try to make them.” He is intrigued by the idea of casting his own materials, but “that would mean less pen making time!”

When naming his company, Sands chose words that reflect his intent about what he does. “Atelier” is a French word meaning an individual artist’s home studio or workshop, and “lusso” is an Italian word that means luxury. An Italian luxury car he saw at age sixteen, the Ferrari 250 Lusso Coupe, made such an impression that the word stayed with him forever after.

The pen style that is most distinctively his own combines abalone shell barrels with resins in coordinating colors. “We lived near the beach, and the incorporation of southern California beach culture into my work has become a nice niche for me.” Sheets of abalone veneer are cut and glued onto brass tubes then cast into clear resin, and lined with material that allows cutting of threads. Underneath the stunning appearance, this provides a little heft to the finished pen. He works closely with his supplier and the maker of the cast abalone tubes to source new colors and patterns of shell. There is a new one coming soon that is still in development to get the sheets thin enough.

Almost from the beginning, metal work has been part of his craft. At first, he bought brass washers and tried to make them work as trim. Then he ran across the work of John Albert Lawrence (formerly Romulus Pens) and got some pointers as well as direction to good sources of rod and sheet metal stock for making clips and trim. “He has a jewelry background. I learned a lot from him when I started making custom pens, he gave me a lot of advice. I don’t think I would have done as well without his help.”

This kind of support from the penmaker community at large is an ongoing source of friendship and assistance that Sands values highly. Through the Pen Maker’s Anonymous monthly Zoom meeting, makers discuss their process and share information and sources. “It’s a great family of people who like doing the same thing in different ways.”

Despite the beauty of the pens he makes, he hasn’t kept many of them. He still has the prototype of his Draco model, a large pen with a #8 nib. His favorite pen that he didn’t make is an Ironfeather Creative pen in a very simple ivory resin with a tooled clip. A customer sent him a Montblanc 149, and he was impressed with it, but “it’s a black pen. If I want that I should just make it!” If he were to buy a pen, he singles out Jacob Pawloski of Mad Science Pen Company as a maker whose work he would want to acquire. “He’s figured out new ways to do things and brought a unique style to his work.”

Sands sees the evolution of his craft as a process of focusing. “When I first started, I was all about trying all the things and learning how to do them. Now I’m concentrating on the styles people buy the most, trying to make them better – how do I make the threads smoother, refine the weight and size, make a better pen.” This process is not necessarily a straight line, however. “Almost every day I learn something to make a pen better; sometimes you have to learn it more than once…” He was struggling with the process of making good threads, and realized he was rushing the process. “I take more time now to cut them centered and make them smooth, it’s very satisfying that I can make that happen.” This focus on details earned him a 2022 Readers Choice Award for Best Artisan Pen from Pen World magazine.

His favorite moment in the pen making process is the very end, when all the pieces have been made and he puts them together. “Being able to make a pen and have people be excited about it filled a need for me – creativity, a mechanical process, a tangible result, and a pleasant experience.”

Eric Sands’ work can be seen at his website, Atelier Lusso, and on Instagram.


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Posted on July 18, 2023 and 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.


Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

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

Meet Your Maker: Jason Miller, Jason Neil Penworks

(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.)

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.


Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

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