In memoriam Greg Hardy, Hardy Penwrights, 1963-2024

(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.)

In early October, Hardy Penwrights announced a post-show-season sale of pens on their web shop. When I placed my order, in the order comments I wrote that I’d been thinking I needed another Hardy pen, and here in my inbox was a sale.

I only mention this because of the email I got back the next day: “Speak of the devil and he shall appear!” It’s an example of the wit for which Greg Hardy was well known.

Hardy passed away unexpectedly on October 26th. We talked about his artistry in the shop, and his sources of inspiration, in the Meet Your Maker series in February 2023. I reached out to his friends in the pen maker community for their stories about him as a colleague and fellow maker.

Greg Hardy, left, and Rich Paul.

Rich Paul (River City Pen Co.) said, “In early 2022 having been laid off the prior year I was struggling with things overall. Greg invited me to his home for a long weekend where he, Tim Crowe, Gavin Hardy (Greg’s son,) and I made pens from the first run of Turnt Pen Co. Allegheny River blanks. We made eight of them with each of us working on specific parts. We all kept one and gave one away over the course of the next year to a young person we hoped to penable or felt inspired by. Spending time with Greg away from shows was quite an experience. Greg loved his family and spoke highly of each one. He glowed with pride. Even more so when they weren’t around. He was a very insightful friend. A deep thinker, a comedian, a family man. And his friends were also his family. And he let that be known not so much in his words. But in his actions. I learned a lot of things that weekend. Both about pens. And about life.”

Back (L to R): Rich Paul, Jim Hinze, Jon Tello, Kirk Speer. Front (L to R): Greg Hardy, Elyse Longazelle.

Rich also included a pair of photos from a pen show that show Hardy’s sense of humor. In the first shot, you see Rich, Greg, Jim Hinze, and Braxton Frankenbery apparently just standing around together. In the second shot, you see how the first one was made.

L to R: Rich Paul, Greg Hardy, Jim Hinze, Braxton Frankenberry.

Jim Hinze (Hinze Pen Co.) said, apropos of that photo, “He would always call me ‘little buddy.’ He was one of the few people outside of immediate family that could get away with calling me Jimmy. From him it seemed natural. He was one of the kindest people I knew. He was ALWAYS willing to help anyone in the pen world whether it be a maker, a collector, an aspiring pen addict.” His way of helping me at a pen show was to always know the count of independent makers who were exhibiting there.

Tim Crowe (Turnt Pen Co.) remembered getting his start as a maker through connecting with Greg. “I came across an ad for Hardy Penwrights, a company I’d never heard of, and being interested in the pen, I messaged the maker. A fella named Greg responded and started talking to me as if we’d known each other for years. That night, l got another message from Greg. It turns out that he thought I was my dad (also Tim Crowe). Through that conversation, I found out that he lived right up the road in Scio, NY, and that my dad had student taught in Greg’s classroom. I told my dad about it and he lit up. He had so many hilarious stories from both student teaching and the ten years they worked together afterward.”

“A few months later, I had the idea that I wanted to try my hand at making pens. I posted in a random Facebook pen turning group asking if anyone could point me toward some resources to get started. Within an hour Greg had messaged me and invited me to his shop to teach me. On February 18, 2020, Greg stood next to me for about ten hours and guided me through the entire process, start to finish. He let me use his tools, his materials, and most importantly, his time. I left that night with the very first custom pen I’d made myself, but more importantly, I’d gotten to know the man who would act as my friend and mentor (I’d often call him pensei, my pentor, or Obi Wan Penobi). Every time I had a question, an idea, or needed some guidance, Greg was there. Whenever I ran into a problem, whether with pens or in education, Greg was happy to help. Ultimately, our friendship went way beyond pens. He and his wife Carlene opened their home not just to me, but to my entire family.”

Pierre Miller (Desiderata Pens) said that a couple of years ago at the Chicago pen show, he fell into conversation with Greg about the dish of candy he always kept on his table. It related to his background in education administration and was a tool for communicating with students: “He said even kids who were behaving poorly, if you gave them a piece of candy they’d shut up.” He didn’t say whether or not this was applicable to his pen show customers.

Cheers, my friend.

Greg’s influence on the pen community will be lasting, both in the qualities of his friendship and in the intriguing metalwork that led to his pens receiving multiple nominations in the Pen World Reader’s Choice Awards and one award for Best Metal Mastery. He will be missed by everyone who knew him, and his pens will call him to everyone’s mind whenever they are put to use.

Meet Your Maker: Patrick Ross, Relic 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.)

Patrick Ross became a pen maker because of his grandfather, but that didn’t happen the way you might think. His grandfather was a woodworker, who’d felled a tree, milled the wood from it, and made a bed headboard. Ross was already a woodworker, making displays for military awards and medals under the business name The Case Works, so when his grandfather passed away he was the only one who wanted the headboard – “it was a little crudely made.”

Ross had recently met someone near his home in Texas who turned kit pens, so he gave him the wood from the bed and asked for it to become pens for his aunts and uncles in memory of their father. “I watched him and thought, ‘I can do that!’” That wood turner was a pastor whose first congregation turned out to have been the same church in Arkansas where Ross’s grandfather was buried - “small world!”

Because he’d been in the Navy and was already creating military-related items, Ross decided to work with historical wood, and one of his first sources for materials was a company in Philadelphia called Metro Machine that dismantled decommissioned ships. Although there isn’t much wood in ships anymore, he was able to get some wood from some well-known navy vessels, and he made pens, and then tie clips and cufflinks, from it. In tandem with receiving reclaimed wood, he enjoyed doing research on the history of the ships so that he was aware of where the wood had been in its career. At a craft show, a little girl looked over his booth and then told him, “You know, girls like history too.” He told her she was absolutely right, and he started making pendants, earrings, and bookmarks as well.

In 2015, he got his first triple-start taps and dies to make kitless pens, “and then I realized how much tooling was going to cost!” At first, he took a hybrid approach, making rollerball pens using kit-pen sections.

Two years later, Ross and his wife decided to sell their house and live in an RV traveling around the country, so he spent four and a half years in an RV with his turning supplies and made pens and gifts on the road. This fit well with his interest in military topics, as he was able to travel to different bases to show off his wares. However, COVID led them to drive the RV back to Texas and be locked down in it, so he rented a storage shed to work in, and he decided to learn to cast his own materials. At first he cast some of his historical pieces – relics - in clear tubes to be used for making kit pens.

With the easing of COVID restrictions, the Rosses decided to give up RVing and move to Virginia. “We’ve got four seasons here! What I missed about Texas was my 1500 square foot shop, but it turned out the new house had a nice basement.” At the same time, he finally finished acquiring the tooling to make kitless pens, and equipment to cast his own colored materials. “It was exciting. You can make your own designs and not be limited by kits.” He took an intentional approach to learning the kitless process. “I learn things in a segmented way. I learned the basics first, using Bock sleeves, concentrating on bodies and caps, then did sections.” He now prefers Jowo #6 nib units – “they give you freedom with section lengths.” Once he was confident of his skills, he began integrating historical materials into artisan pens.

At the 2014 Dallas pen show, he got an important piece of advice from Shawn Newton. “He said I needed to get on Instagram.” He didn’t actually get serious about Instagram until 2022; some of the early pens he posted there were made from wood from a poplar tree from Monticello and from York Minster in England (which had been renovated following a fire), and they were well received.

All pen makers come at some point think about how to set their own work apart from everyone else’s. Ross was already working with interesting historical materials and making his own blanks. He had a laser engraver for marking historical items and designing his display boxes, so he turned it to working on pens. He now makes a series of resin pens with designs engraved into them and filled with engraver’s color fill, which resemble Japanese chinkin. “A maker is like a doctor – once they learn the basics they figure out their specialty and what makes them get up and go to work. I enjoy making pens so much that I keep making all kinds of them. I don’t like being locked into making the same thing over and over.” Some of his more striking designs have used civil-war uniform buttons in cap finials, or bodies machined from parts of World War II airplanes – a B-17 fire extinguisher rack, a cast aluminum casing for a B-29 fuel gauge, part of a control housing for a B-52 tail gun. What he makes depends on what interesting materials he’s able to source at any given time.

Sometimes those pens find their way to people for whom they have true meaning. Ross has been attending the Dallas pen show for about ten years; one year at the show, a man walked up to his table who had been commanding officer on a ship whose wood was in a pen on that table, made from the white oak base of a weapons locker. The admiral bought the pen, and has since come back for others. “I get such a charge out of the in-person interaction – someone’s eyes light up over a color or a historic item.”

Ross’s favorite pen that he didn’t make himself is a Pelikan M800 he found at an estate sale, but he’d rather talk about how many amazingly talented makers there are. “It’s a great community – the support you get on Instagram, from other makers and pen buyers, is really appreciated. Otherwise you’re just a little maker, working alone in your shop.”

Patrick Ross’s work can be seen on his Instagram @relicpens, his Etsy shop, and at pen shows in Baltimore, DC, and Dallas.

Meet Your Maker: Brett Arnold, Walltown 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.)

Brett Arnold’s career as a pen maker began by “a complete accident – or maybe a tragedy.” In October 2016, several trees fell on the shed/shop where he kept his tools. Because he was recovering from knee surgery, he accepted help from a neighbor to assist in rebuilding the shed, and then he needed to replace his tools. When he and his wife were doing that shopping, they saw some lathes and agreed, “That looks like fun, let’s try it,” and he signed up for a woodturning class.

One of the things covered in his class was the making of kit pens, which he found appealing, and he began attending local markets to sell kit pens, because “if you’re going to keep making them, at some point you need to start selling them.” He was soon receiving requests from his customers for this thing called a “fountain pen” – “I knew what they were but didn’t own one” – and made some kit fountain pens before he became aware of kitless pens and began researching how to make them. In late 2019, he had a chance to take a class from Jim Hinze in making kitless pens and quickly began acquiring the supplies needed to make them.

In early 2020, a perfect storm of COVID lockdowns and shoulder surgery meant Brett was at home a lot. “My previous career had been in residential/commercial property management, but at the time I was working part time in a Sherwin Williams store after recovering from another knee surgery, and I was not an essential employee.” The ability to devote himself to working in his shop jump-started his kitless pen creation.

He began doing resin casting at the beginning of his kitless pen journey, “or even before – I was doing inlays in wooden bowls.” Tim McKenzie, maker of the DiamondCast materials, lives not too far away and provided some advice about the needed setup and how to vertically cast round materials. At the moment he casts mostly solid color pieces to serve as accents, and doesn’t sell his blanks, although he will give some away or swap them with other makers. Despite having three pressure pots, and a notebook of close to 400 blank recipes (“including the fails”), he keeps blank casting in perspective – “I have to either make pens or make blanks. I want to make pens.” Most of his pens use materials from Turnt Pen Company, Carolina Pen Company, Pourly Controlled and of course DiamondCast. His wife has made some blanks, helps with choosing colors for blanks, and keeps the company books, but she works fulltime, and is often called away to help her mother, leaving less time to be involved in the shop.

The accent resins are for his Onslow model, a resin pen with cap and barrel finials in coordinating colors, and ornamental rings. “I have a drawer full of blanks in a wide rainbow to match with for the Onslow. I worked in a frame shop as a young man and did a lot of color matching there, so I’m not new to coordinating colors.” Brett’s first trial of the Onslow design was completely clear to see how the parts worked together, but demonstrator pens are not really what he wants to focus on. “To do a demonstrator right, you’d have to charge double for all the polishing work.” He has evolved a way to make pens with parts that are not fully internally polished but still are clear.

He makes the metal parts for the Onslow, and has a preference for nickel silver, despite the expense and the waste – “you waste half the bar due to the size of the cut being about the same as the size of the ring. If you don’t want to make your own, it is hard to find someone who offers nickel silver.” Depending upon the color scheme he will also make rings in brass, bronze, or stainless steel.

Brett has lived in Durham, NC, all his life, and his pen models are all named after places in the area, such as his current residence in Walltown, as well as Catsburg, Onslow, and the former Watts Hospital where both he and his wife were born. His father was a builder, mechanic, and all-around handyman who taught him to enjoy working with his hands, so a craft like pen making is a great fit. He is a full-time pen maker, but he tries to keep the work within boundaries. “You get lonely in the shop by yourself. I work for myself, but I don’t press myself, or work on weekends or at night. I don’t try to kill myself doing it, so I continue to enjoy it.” Movies and podcasts in the shop help keep him entertained, and he has the flexibility to stop working to drive his mother or his mother-in-law to medical appointments. He also organizes the work so it doesn’t get monotonous. “I typically make four pens at a time, so I’m not doing fifty of everything at once – sanding and polishing too many at once will make your hand cramp.”

Participation in the pen makers’ Discord and the As The Pen Turns secret Santa exchange has resulted in the expansion of his collection of pens by other makers. “At first I was buying pens for ‘market research’” – a Vanishing Point, a Montblanc, a Pelikan 800 – “or if someone asked me, ‘How does your pen compare to X other pen’ I bought one.” But his priority is collecting pens by other makers he knows. His preference runs to broad nibs, and he is adding some Sig and architect grinds as well.

Although he’s enjoyed attending pen shows, Brett isn’t certain he wants to participate as a vendor. “I’ve thought about doing Raleigh, his local show, but I don’t want to get too much busier. Things have been a little slower this year but I never run out of commissions, and I can turn them around pretty fast.” The question of having enough inventory to do a show has been a concern in the past, but at the moment he has about fifty pens in his shop. (You know what to do!)

This year, Brett bought two laser engravers, and is using them to add to his bag of tricks. He engraves his Jowo nibs now (and will do a Bock compatible section on request), and he has added resin inlays to some of his pens. “It started as, ‘I could cut different shape ink windows...’” Now he will cut out a shape in the resin with the laser, and then cast new resin back into the shape in solid colors. His pen drops generally happen on Mondays, “a day that’s different” - one more way he makes his pens stand out.

Brett Arnold’s work can be seen on Instagram, and his Etsy store at Walltown Pens.

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