Posts filed under Meet Your Maker

Meet Your Maker: Bart Conner, Zodiac 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.)

If you ask Bart Conner the classic social question, What’s your sign? – the answer may depend upon the context. Under normal circumstances he’ll tell you he’s a Gemini, but if you’re a pen person the answer may be, “Cancer is next!” or even, “All of them!”

Bart recently celebrated his first anniversary as a pen company, but for quite awhile before that he specialized in bowls, having seen a YouTube video and thought it looked like fun. “At first I made some of the worst bowls you could even imagine, but I loved it.” Then, his father asked for a handmade pen to give as a gift to one of his doctors, and he got some nice wood and made a kit fountain pen.

While his father was satisfied, he himself wasn’t happy with the result, and he reached out to the president of his local turning club to ask if he had suggestions for how to create something better. The president knew a guy, right there in South Carolina, which is how he ended up spending a day in spring of 2022 with Jonathon Brooks.

That day Bart made a pen, and got a list of the tools and materials he’d need in addition to his wood lathe, to keep on making kitless pens. It took a couple of months to acquire it all, after which “I made some really bad pens!” Then he sent one to Lauren Elliott of Lucky Star Pens who recommended he focus on improving his threads. In the process, he fell in love with making pens. “It’s less physically demanding than bowls – I would harvest trees from landfills or from tree services. Blanks for those can weigh 80 pounds.”

In November of 2022, someone bought a pen off his Etsy shop, and loved it and told him to make more – that was his first sale to a “pen person” and he began to gain the attention of other “pen people.” The following April, he got a lucky break when he was offered a table for that year’s DC Pen Show. At first he added the pens to his Logs To Treasures website, but “pen people didn’t care about the bowls” so he set about creating a separate pen company presence.

“I’m a Gemini and I’ve always been drawn to how much you can learn about people from the stereotypes of the zodiac signs.” His first thought was to call the company Gemini, but “if I did Zodiac instead of Gemini I could have twelve models!” His company logo is the constellation Gemini, and the Gemini was his first pen model – “Gemini was the pen I wanted.” There are eight so far, with more in the works. Cancer is in development currently, and his customer base has been clamoring for Leo and Libra. Aquarius is the knottiest design problem, so it may be awhile for that one. “And there’s going to be a thirteenth. The modernized church calendar lost the thirteenth month and the thirteenth sign.” That one is still a long-term plan.

There are multiple factors that reduce the time for designing new models. Bart’s day job is for a paper manufacturer. (Before you get excited, he emphasizes that they make brown stock like the paper Amazon packs in its boxes as padding.) Demand for his existing pens also needs to be met, and has increased due to recent online attention – on Instagram, on Lori Tara and Vanessa Langton’s YouTube show Juicy Broads, and on The Pen Addict. “Once you start growing you have less time for creativity.” Because he still does all his work on a wood lathe, shaping is done one at a time by hand, which can mean that no two pens with complex curves will be completely identical. While he does take commissions, show season also means the need to build inventory, slow down acceptance of commissions, and keep pens he makes instead of adding them to his website.

With such a crowded schedule, Bart has no desire to cast his own materials. “Anything I can think of, I can call Bob Dupras or Tim Crowe and pitch the idea and they’ll have a sample in a week. I have no need to do that.” Like many makers, he has accumulated a supply of blanks. “To get blanks from Jonathon, I’d rather drive down. He has blanks in bins that you never see – test pours that companies didn’t like, for example. Anyone who has a chance to spend a few hours with Jonathon should do it!” Besides adding to his stash of blanks, he can pitch new ideas and get feedback on his latest pens.

Do you have a favorite pen you didn’t make? Despite having a collection of maker pens, he’s mostly never inked them, just has them to support his friends in the community. His favorite pen to write with is a Visconti Homo Sapiens Steel Age. For design, he particularly admires the pens by Ben Stewart of Mayfair Pens. “You see those pens and they’re immediately identifiable. But people who like conventional shapes may shy away from those. You have to think where you want to be in the market.” With a possibility of twelve (or thirteen) models, he’s been able to cover all the bases. “My niece is a Pisces and she helped me with that design. She said it needed a fish tail, how do I give a pen a fish tail??”

Family members provided inspiration for other pens in Bart’s repertoire. The Virgo model was designed for his daughter who has smaller hands and likes smaller pens. At the same time, “She’s like a mini-me,” so Virgo is a scaled down version of the Gemini. Capricorn was made with his son in mind. A common design theme is the flat finials. “I don’t like rounded finials, so my pens have flat finials – except for Sagittarius” the archer which called for something more tapered.

Inspiration for Bart comes from an internal drive to perfect what he’s doing. “I want every pen to be more perfect than the last pen, to make a perfect product, to have a pen that everybody would love if that’s even possible.” He derives great satisfaction from seeing people using what he makes. “Bowls or charcuterie boards are décor pieces – you sell them and never see them again, there’s no bowl community! I can take a rod and shape it into a tool people are carrying with them and using every day.” That community that collects and shares is something for which he’s continually grateful. “I have to thank everybody for giving a new maker a chance and loving my pens. Every maker I’ve reached out to with questions or problems has been willing to help. It’s a positive place to be.”

Bart Conner’s work can be seen on his Instagram @zodiacpencompany, at his website, and at shows in Baltimore, Atlanta, Pacific-Northwest, DC, and Orlando.

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Posted on February 12, 2024 by Caroline Foty and filed under Meet Your Maker, Zodiac Pen Company.

Meet Your Maker: Rich Paul, River City Pen Company

Pens, you may know, are easier to haul around than serving trays and cutting boards.

Rich Paul was a woodworking hobbyist selling such ‘flat goods’ at craft shows in and around Pittsburgh, when a visiting friend insisted on bringing along a lathe and showing him how to make a pen. Despite having resisted the idea of adding another product to his portfolio, not to mention all the tools and materials it would require, Rich was immediately hooked by penmaking, even aside from the easier packing and hauling.

He started making kit pens, but found that craft shows were not a place many people bought pens, so he then tried vending them at shows for artists. When his friend Jim Hinze was teaching a kitless pen class at a pen turners association meeting, he watched a session and then “struggled through” making a first kitless pen. In 2019 he began selling his custom pens on Instagram, and was scheduled to go to the 2020 Atlanta Pen Show, which turned out to be the first show cancellation of the COVID lockdowns. In spite of these obstacles, the pens kept selling online.

Other than a short period during a temporary layoff, Rich is not a fulltime pen maker. He works for the local health department, managing a team of inspectors who review plans for food establishments. His intent is to do this until retirement and then just make pens. “Making pens is better than dealing with people all day, pens don’t talk back!” The way he relaxes at the end of the day is to eat dinner, take a nap in front of the TV, and then hit the shop.

Rich has evolved a core lineup of a few pen models, and prefers classic styles to some of the more unusual things other makers are doing. “I’m not an artist, I use my pens at work and at shows.” His biggest source of inspiration is in the materials and the colors available for use with those classic models. “Anytime I get some new blanks, I grab one right away and go make a pen.” He recently made a pen with Fordite from a Jeep factory. And he is one of the few makers who makes many pens in the jewel-like but pricey Oparex material. “It was hard to work with at first, it’s very delicate, and in the beginning I made some expensive mistakes.” It’s rare than any of his Oparex pens stay in stock long enough to be seen at a show.

Despite the inspiration he derives from materials, Rich is not going to take up casting blanks. “It seems like people who get really good at making blanks end up making fewer pens. I want to keep making pens.” His twenty-five-year-old daughter, however, is interested in taking up blank making, and he plans to take her to visit Tim Crowe of Turnt Pen Company to get a lesson.

Like most pen makers, Rich cites community as one of the best things about being a pen maker, and the relationships that are formed among makers and customers. “When I was an outsider, I was accepted. The people I’ve met and the places I’ve gotten to go… the best part of doing this is seeing everyone at shows.”

Favorite pens also come from the penmaking community. The first big pen he bought for himself was a Hinze Pens Evancio, with a #8 Bock nib. At his first pen show, he met Carrick Ryan (Champion Turnings), who was only 13 at the time, and when he got home after the show he ordered a Champion pen.

His love of the community doesn’t mean, however, that he will share his most proprietary bit of data: where he gets the inserts to make his unique dip nib holders. When the Kakimori nibs began to become popular, he looked at the nib holders sold to go with them and found them “very minimalistic and plain,” and thought maybe he could improve on that. He bought a couple of them and chiseled them apart to get the inserts out, to do a proof of concept, and then worked to find a source for them. They are not just for Kakimori nibs, and can take most modern calligraphy nibs.

Even while sticking with classic styles, Rich feels that his pen making has evolved in less visible ways, finding better and more efficient ways to do the same thing. Accepting individual commissions is a way to keep fresh, and he tries to keep his commission queue to less than two months. If a customer has something specific in mind in terms of colors and materials, he will send them to a blank maker to work out the right material for their pen. While he has done some collaborations that have necessitated making a large number of the same pen under the pressure of a deadline, and would do it again, his personal preference is to get quickly to a finished pen and go on to make something different.

Getting quickly to a finished pen lets him get quickly to the satisfaction that comes from “people being so happy with something that you’ve made and maybe take for granted.”

Rich Paul’s work can be seen on his Instagram @rivercitypencompany, his website RiverCityPenCompany.com, and at shows in Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, Orlando, San Francisco, Raleigh, and Ohio.

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Posted on January 22, 2024 by Caroline Foty and filed under Meet Your Maker.

Meet Your Maker – Tim Cullen, Hooligan Georgia

Sometimes when your friends ask you for things, it changes your life.

Tim Cullen was a police officer in California, with an interest in woodworking but limited space for a shop, when in 2009 a friend asked him for a kit pen. That seemed like the right size item to make in his space. In fulfilling that request, he was bitten by the penmaking bug and never recovered. He was soon making more pens than anything else, and giving them as gifts to friends or as donations to fundraising auctions at his daughter’s school.

Cullen quickly got bored with kit pens – “They’re limited to what can go on two tubes. I wanted to make things that were all my work.” At the end of the first year, he got a metal lathe and began to research how to make threads. After making basic pens for a year, “I was hungry to learn to do everything.” He can make everything necessary to create a pen – even filling systems and feeds, although those are so readily available and inexpensive that he finds the result not worth the time it takes.

Metal work has become a specialty in which Cullen is endlessly interested. He took classes in metalsmithing, hand engraving, casting, and jewelry making to expand the range of options he could make available on pens. “You can incorporate anything you can do into a pen.” He has worked on commission only for nearly ten years, after a pen he shared on Fountain Pen Network received an overwhelmingly positive response, and currently has a waiting list of about two years. The company he established is named after a dog he used to have. That dog is now immortal, and most of his customers are returning for multiple Hooligan pens.

Cullen finds the individualized hand-done processes to be the most satisfying. “The work I do, you could have done a hundred years ago.” He used taps and dies for his threads for several months, but then stopped, and uses internal and external threading tools to make threads by hand on the lathe. This lets him make a pen in whatever size the customer wants, instead of working within the limits of the tap and die sets on hand. The materials of his pens are frequently unusual items supplied by customers. One pen was made from pieces of wood and wrought iron from a textile mill destroyed by fire in Alabama. A pen in work for his mother-in-law honors her love of Hawaii by using koa wood and blue acrylic. Another customer provided leather which he layered onto a metal barrel, and one sent wood from a fire boat.

This design process with customers provides constant variety and artistic inspiration. “I have to think on the fly and be ready for changes, and give regular updates as the pen is made.” This customer-driven process means he doesn’t make a selection of “models” like many other makers do. Sometimes, Cullen will make an experimental pen, by way of research and development, and will offer such pens for sale if they work out. In addition to the wrought iron, he’s worked with meteorite, titanium, copper, stainless steel, nickel silver, and just about everything else you could think of.

Cullen’s preference for metal work does not mean that all his pens are heavy to hold. He has worked on making metal overlays on lighter weight materials, to make the overall pen lighter. His mentor in overlay making was Henry Simpole, who did overlay work for Conway Stewart and a few other major makers.

Does Cullen have a favorite pen he didn’t make? “No! I don’t have time to write with pens!” He has kept two of his own pens. In 2014 he made a limited edition of titanium and kingwood and kept one for himself, and he also made himself a pen in red acrylic (his favorite color) with a #8 nib for signing his authenticity paperwork. A favorite pen he made and didn’t keep was created for a fire chief in Florida, using red ebonite, with a badge engraved in the cap band and hand engraved flames on the clip.

Cullen’s constant quest to find new ways to add to his pens led him to make and engrave nibs. He’s been hand engraving designs into Bock and Jowo nibs for several years, and can make nibs from scratch as well, usually from continuum, which is an alloy of palladium and sterling silver. To improve the accuracy of cutting nibs, he is working with engineer Robert Sanchez (of Rob’s Pen Works) to design a nib slitting fixture instead of cutting them by hand, to avoid mistakes with the expensive materials.

This drive to make everything himself does not extend to making materials or casting blanks. “I’d never have time for anything else!” He usually uses solid color materials to set off the metal work that is his signature.

Having that signature is all-important for Cullen. When he began making pens, he was particularly inspired by Paul Rossi, Joe Cali, and David Broadwell. Broadwell advised him to set himself apart, to incorporate things other people aren’t using, to make his work unique. At the same time, he wishes more people were doing metal work, incorporating that art into pens, and he has been mentoring some makers who want to take up metal work, including Nick Pasquale of Pens by Pasquale.

Cullen sees this as a good time for pen makers. His customers are a constant source of inspiration and the push to expand his capabilities; he is about to start a class in repoussé and chasing, two different ways of embossing a design into a thin piece of metal, to have yet another technique for putting metal art into pens as well as into the jewelry he occasionally makes. “I’ve got to keep trying new things, so I can do more of what someone might want.”

Tim Cullen’s work can be seen on Instagram, and on his website Hooligan Georgia.

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Posted on December 19, 2023 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Meet Your Maker.