(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.)
Nathan Booth had never heard of individual people hand-making pens, until the day in late 2016 when he and his wife took his mother-in-law out for a birthday lunch. When they asked her half-jokingly what she’d gotten for her birthday, she pulled out a pen that had been made for her by the principal at the school where she worked. It was a kit pen made of a wood/resin hybrid material, and it struck him as so cool that he began browsing YouTube for information about people making pens.
He joined a few Facebook groups for people learning to make pens, seeing both absolute beginners and people doing high-quality work, and it inspired him to look further. “I’ve always worked in manufacturing for the oil and gas industry, always been around machines, I’ve always been mechanically inclined – so I set out to figure it out on my own.” He asked his mother-in-law’s principal if he could come visit his shop to see what was involved, and soon bought a small lathe.
Kit pens came first, and after awhile Booth took his pens to a craft show where he set up a card table and made a few hundred dollars; the success caught him by surprise. Even after making the move to kitless pens, he’ll still make a kit pen occasionally because “not every customer is going to be a fountain pen enthusiast. And I don’t want to give up the side I started on.” He’s found that on Instagram, he reaches the fountain pen lovers, and on Facebook (where he’s not very active) he reaches more of the craft-show clientele, so the two social media outlets complement each other for him.
Instagram played a part in his decision to try kitless pens, in 2020 – “I wanted the challenge of what I saw on Instagram. I wonder if I can do this?” Like most pen makers, Booth found help from other makers when he needed it. Jim Hinze at Hinze Pens helped with information about tooling, and he also turned often to Jason Miller of Jason Neil Penworks and Braxton Frankenberry of Divine Pens Plus.
It didn’t take long for Booth to be lured into casting materials. “There is an art form to casting – you have only so much time to get it mixed, and it has to be at a certain temperature to keep the colors from bleeding together.” He casts just for himself, with only one pot, and doesn’t want to expand into producing resins for others because he doesn’t want it to become his primary product. With a full-time job and a family, he tries to keep his shop time every evening to just a couple of hours. Such a limitation also helps avoid wasting time and materials. “You get tired and start missing little things. You can be experienced and that cap will still sometimes blow out. I will stop for the night if I get frustrated because it will affect everything I do. A rough day at work can trickle down.”
Inspiration can come from the ability to quickly realize a color idea in a cast, as well as from customer requests. “During COVID, everyone was so busy because people were on Instagram buying pens – there were so many commissions and makers were meeting that demand.” He still maintains an “average size” commission list, because it keeps the business steady and because “if a customer wants to talk to me, I want to have the time.” The customers provide the feedback that keeps the process rewarding: “I made this, and it’s worth it to someone to buy it.”
When it became inevitable that he needed a company name, Booth drew on his love of his lifelong home state: Texas became independent of Mexico in 1836. The CC stands for Custom Creations, which besides pens can still include “fun things” like duck calls and holders for razors or cigars. His wife makes the sleeves that protect his pens in shipping.
With the surge of independent pen makers over the past several years, like all of them Booth has given thought to how to stand out. “How do you make something unique enough, but that you can replicate efficiently – if you can’t do that, you have to charge a lot more for it.” His flagship Three Wishes model came out of playing with shapes to find something striking, and ended up with a cap that made him think of a genie’s bottle. “Either people say it’s for them or it’s not – you either love it or hate it.”
One of the most unusual pens he’s made went beyond uniqueness of shape. An artist named Toni Street worked with polymer clay to make flowers and the comedy/tragedy theater mask faces, and applied them to very thin brass tubes before curing them at high temperature. Booth turned pieces of Jonathon Brooks’ Fubuki Koi material to fit inside the brass tubes, created the internal and external threading, and epoxied the sleeves inside the tubes, to make a pen that would both showcase the clay and keep the nib from drying out. He then added Fubuki Koi finials on cap and body, built a CA finish in layers over the pen, and polished it. The result was one of a kind for the person who commissioned it.
Pen shows are not currently on the agenda for Booth. “Mostly I’m not going to have the inventory. Maybe Dallas or Arkansas … but I’m not really ready to make that investment, I’m not there yet. There’s some impostor syndrome involved too – a fear that people won’t like the work.” Attending craft shows where he’s the only pen maker relieves some of that pressure to be different from every other table. And keeping the size of his business small helps him to stay fresh. “I don’t want to get burned out and not enjoy it anymore.”
Booth does not have a large pen collection. “I enjoy making pens for the artistic side of it, I have no great interest in the big brands.” His favorite pens come from other makers. He picked up a Dragonslayer pen from Ryan Krusac at the Dallas pen show that he finds constantly a marvel because, as he points out, “the art is designed flat, but on the pen there is no seam, it’s a continuous design.” He has a pen made by John Albert that he received at a secret Santa exchange held by the As The Pen Turns podcast, with silver art deco accents on a vintage resin. And when Dromgooles in Houston hosted Jonathon Brooks, he couldn’t walk away from a pen with resin of gold and brown with small bits of red. “If I buy a pen it’s because I really appreciate the work.”
Booth has thoughts for people who buy maker pens. “It’s not just my time, a piece of me is going into that pen, and time I could have spent on other things. If a pen is so perfect you can’t distinguish it from something machine made or injection molded – why bother?” “If you’re into this world you’re buying into, if you’re invested into the maker side, then if you have access to someone near you who does it – reach out and ask if you can come see and understand their process and make a pen. It’s beneficial for people to see what it takes to make a pen that’s done well. If someone reaches out to you as a maker asking for that – it’s a compliment.”
Nathan Booth’s work can be seen on Instagram at @1836cc.
