(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)
Just got back from the 2025 St. Louis Pen Show and am ready for another show recap. The last time I attended was in 2023, so I don’t know how it compares to last year. I can only talk about how it compared to 2023, so take this recap with a grain of salt. For reference, you can check out the 2023 show recap.
The show continues to be held at the same location as prior years, the Sheraton Westport Chalet St. Louis hotel. One of the nice things about this hotel is that it has an airport shuttle, which makes traveling to shows much more convenient, not to mention economical. I’d rather spend that money on pens/ink/paper than a ride to/from the airport, amirite?
This year, I worked at the Piper Trading Company table solo, so I didn’t take as many pictures as I have at other shows, but don’t you worry, there are still plenty of photos and my wallet still managed to sustain some damage. Let’s check out the show, shall we?
Welcome to the St. Louis Pen Show! (Picture taken early Thursday morning before most people are awake, hence the empty hallway.)
Ava and Pen Addict slacker Alan were among the many friendly show volunteers. Here they are at the registration desk, checking people in, answering questions and selling pen show wares like inks, stickers, mugs and more.
There was a poster honoring several pen folks who passed away, including Jim Birchers, Greg Hardy, Don Lamkin, Ed Lipic, and Dan Reppert. Condolences to their families and to friends and customers who knew them.
Near the registration desk were several tables’ worth of items for their silent auction. I spy with my little eye, a Nock A5 Seed!!
I like that there was a map on display so folks could look up where the different vendors were located. This map was downstairs between the hallway and main ballroom. (I will be using the term hallway & corridor interchangeably.)
Vendor list organized by category, like vintage, hand-made pens, nib grinders, and other (to cover stationery, journals, clothing, etc.). Not all of the vendors listed were in attendance (it’s pretty common at all shows for folks to cancel last minute or for changes to be missed.)
There was also a large sign for each day’s classes.
This show always has a good number of classes/seminars, and this year was no exception. I loved seeing the variety of classes too - “Your Name - Your Signature”, Back to Basics Bullet Journaling, Celtic Knots, as well as American Cursive Handwriting, Vintage Pen Buying for Beginners, and more – there really was a lot to choose from.
After you get through registration, you have to go downstairs either via stairs or elevator to get to the show, unless you were taking classes which were upstairs. Let’s start with some of the folks that were in the corridor.
Entering the corridor - one of the few times it wasn’t packed because it was a few minutes before the show closed on Friday.
Lemur Ink had several tables at the entrance of the show. It was pretty busy there all weekend.
I love that the Pen Collectors of America often has a scavenger hunt for kids, where they can redeem their completed cards for a starter fountain pen! It makes it more enjoyable for them, as well as gives them an opportunity to learn about pens, while giving their parents a little break from the “can we go home yet?”
I was so happy to see Akhila (right) and Nirmal Sheth of Smruti Pens after a bit of a hiatus from shows. Welcome back!
Joe Cortner of Florida Fountain Pen drove all the way from Florida with his crew to attend his first St. Louis Show!
Look at all the stuff Joe brought with him!
When I last attended in 2023, there were 5 nib workers and that was way too many. At that time, I felt that 2 nib workers should be more than enough. This year, there were 3 - Matthew Chen, Kirk Speer, and Linda Kennedy. From what I gather based on my trips to the restroom, by way of the corridor where the nib workers were, they seemed busy on Friday, but not as much on Saturday and even less busy on Sunday. As I said before, and I think it still applies, I think 2 nib workers for this show is enough because the relative newness of its audience means that they don’t know what a nib worker does, let alone want to spend the money on getting a pen tuned or ground, or they think it only applies if you have pricier pens.
Kirk Speer, of Pen Realm, was the first of the nib workers. He was at the front end of the Pen Realm tables, so it was always busy there.
Another shot of Kirk, along with Crystal, Josiah, and Tori.
Next to Pen Realm was Matthew Chen of Matt’s Nibworks along with his always helpful and kind helper & mom, Nina.
Linda and Mike Kennedy of Indy-Pen-Dance - Linda does the nib work while Mike does restorations and repairs. If you need supplies for restoring/fixing or just cleaning/maintaining your pens, Indy-Pen-Dance can help!
I love that the show set made space for a journaling nook, where folks could take a break to do some journaling, meet some like-minded folks, destash or rehome stationery.
Super love this journaling nook!
Moving on to the ballroom, the aisles were wide and there was space to move around. I heard that the space behind the tables was a bit crowded though, so it was harder for vendors to look for products or get in/out of their table.
This was a view of the main ballroom at noon on Saturday.
Danny Fudge of The Write Pen is a well-known and well-respected fixer/restorer of pens! He was one of my table neighbors and was busy on Friday and Saturday as folks were looking for vintage pens or repair work.
Love this picture of the ladies from Itoya US as they were setting up on Friday! (Lupe is on the right and darned if I can remember the lady on the left whom I had just met.). They were here representing Sailor US, and Penlux.
Logan and Emily Merrill of Little Hollow Customs were nearby and it was so nice to chat with Logan about what he wants to create for his company. And they have the cutest little girls who were playing under the table when this picture was taken. :-)
Some of Little Hollow Customs’ offerings.
I love that they have vendors who sell other things besides “pens & inks” and some vendors that don’t sell anything at all (like the calligraphy guild or the STL meetup group)!
Crafty Corbin had lots of handmade stationery products…
Like this Beginning DIY Bookbinding Kit, which looked really neat (and is another rabbit hole I’m trying to avoid, lol.)
The folks from Letter Writer Social have everything for your snail mail needs.
Danielle Kindsfater of Happiness Handmade had so many beautiful sticker sheets - definitely made me happy to see them!
Always love to see Erick Gama of Amarillo Stationery! I would’ve bought more stuff at this show if I didn’t already buy everything at Chicago recently, lol!
Jaclyn Myers (right) and fiancée Laura Fogt of Kaleidocraft blew my mind with all the new stuff they brought to the show!
I loved all the postcards and cute things from Jillian Schlegel of Jillian Kaye Art!
I absolutely could not resist these two postcards from Jillian - super cute and tongue-in-cheek!
Slap U? Slap Me? How about both? The St Louis Area Pen Users (SLAPU) has regular meetups named St Louis Area Pen Meet & Eat (SLAPME)! I’m pretty sure no actual slapping happens, but don’t quote me on that, lol! Just follow the St. Louis Pen Show IG to find out about the next meetup.
Members of the St. Louis Guild of Calligraphers were present to write your name in calligraphy (for free!) and to talk about all things calligraphy!
While we’re on the subject of calligraphy, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the kindest, sweetest, master penman, Michael Sull, who was busy making and embellishing his gorgeous calligraphy prints!
Jeanne Florini of Jeanne’s Ohana Designs was swamped all weekend so I never got the chance to take a proper picture, but I did look at these two super cool stationery/snail mail kits! Kicking myself for forgetting to go back and buy them.
Spotted at the show, this AWESOME shirt, given to the wearer by his daughter. That shirt is 1000% me!
As always, I had a good time after hours at the show. They seemed to have enough staff to handle food and drink orders at the bar/restaurant. I like that there are a lot of places to sit and eat/drink and hang out with pen friends. There was also some seating in the lobby area as well.
The bar/restaurant is a great place to chill out and hang with pen friends. Their salmon was delicious (both their salmon salad and salmon entree, yum.)
A bunch of us hung out at one of the tall tables at the bar and bust out all sorts of pens, including a Montegrappa Chaos (no, not from me). We had newer folks to the hobby as well as seasoned veterans and we all have fun passing around binders and chatting about pens.
Feel good story: Craig was one of the hotel bartenders/servers and had been serving us all weekend. On Saturday night, he asked us for suggestions for a retractable pen that he could use to write orders/tickets. I offered to give him one of my Pilot G-2s but he wanted a ballpoint because the G-2s would smear on their paper. I then had him try my Rotring Newton that had a Parker BP refill in it and he really liked that. So I suggested that he come down to the show the next day and find one of us so we could find him a Parker Jotter. We (this was very much a group effort) asked one of the folks on the board for the STL Show if we could get him into the show for free (answer: of course!). Craig came down the next day, found Marty Henderson, and the rest, as they say, is history!
Craig was so excited to show this to me on Sunday night! He bought a Retro 51, Queen of Spades, from Marty Henderson!
A few of us crazy die-hards were still hanging out into the late hours of Sunday night, or was that Monday morning?
The St. Louis show continues to be a very well-run show. In fact, they do a lot of things for both vendors and attendees. I love the variety of vendors as well as all of the class and seminar offerings. There are events and meetups for attendees, and they have breakfast and lunch for vendors, as well as a break area (both of which I really appreciated as a solo vendor this year). They have a crew of volunteers who work shift throughout the weekend, either at the registration desk or on the show floor, asking vendors if they need help. In fact, they handed out little microfiber towels to each vendor to use as little flags if we needed someone to watch our table while we grabbed lunch, took a restroom break, or did a quick shopping lap. They have done more on social media to promote the show, as well as hosting more meetups throughout the year, though it’s hard to tell how much those efforts translated into show attendance (no one told me that they heard about the show from social media or from meetups, etc.). I think they are definitely moving in the right direction with respect to getting the word out in the community.
A few of the things that the show set up:
There were two of these ink testing stations in the middle of the ballroom - perfect for ink play while taking a rest break.
In between the two ink testing stations is a paper testing setup so you can try a variety of papers too!
The show set up a postcard station that you can address to future you, to remind you of next year’s St. Louis Pen Show!
I have mentioned this for the past couple of years - that all of the shows have been getting more folks who are newer to this hobby/rabbit, which is not only wonderful for making new pen friends, but also essential for this pen hobby’s continued growth and existence. In speaking with a variety of vendors (vintage, modern, new, second-hand, big ticket sellers, and more budget-friendly vendors alike), the consensus was that not only are there more newer folks overall, but more so at this show. Perhaps it’s the show’s proximity to many universities (nine, I believe), or that the show continues to work on getting the word out to bring more folks in, who tend to be newer. It often translates into lower dollar sales as folks are still learning about pens and what they’d like. The vendors that did the best were the ones who had a variety of items in the $50-150 range. And while I know of at least two friends who bought beautiful (and pricier) Taccia pens, or got Jimmy’d at Jimmy Dolive’s table, those sales were definitely in the minority.
Since I wasn’t there last year, I asked other vendors who were, how this year compared to last year, as well as their thoughts overall. Some had a great STL show this year, while others did ok, and still others did very poorly. Some didn’t love their locations because they didn’t get any traffic - it’s hard to please everyone with their location; every show gets complaints. Others felt that the attendee dollars weren’t there (as I’ve already mentioned). Everyone agreed that the show was very well-run, just that they wanted more attendees and that those attendees would eventually be higher-dollar spenders. One of the things that I think would help the flow, is to move some of the corridor vendors into the ballroom, to make the corridor less crowded, and to make it easier for people to get to the ballroom. It seemed that by the time people made it through the corridor, they’ve already spent most of their pen budget, leaving less for vendors in the ballroom.
I have said before, and will say again, that St. Louis Pen Show is a well-run show which has improved its attendee numbers from my experience two years ago, which makes me happy to see. There are great shows that are much smaller than STL (Colorado and Arkansas come to mind, but I’ve also heard great things about Orlando,) so I hope that realize that they can be a great show without being the biggest show. If they won’t want to have fewer vendors, maybe they could consider not adding more vendors until they have the attendees to make it worthwhile for them. I had a great time at the St. Louis Pen Show, and want to thank the organizers and volunteers for all their work in putting it on, and continue to wish them continued success.
Despite working solo this weekend, I was still able to find plenty of things that caught my eye and wallet.
My not-so-little haul: Clockwise from top left: Postcards and washi tape from Jillian Kaye Arts, cassette tape dual-washi tape holder (am I advertising my age?), colicky typewriter pop up sticky note holder, STL bird charm, coffee and cassette tape colicky keychains from Kaleidocraft, stickers, plushy keychain and Sarasa multi-pen from Sugar Turtle Studio, free lanyard and blotter from the pen show, InkyConverters-designed show sticker and silver show sticker, sticker from Little Hollow Customs. Center: 4 Colorverse inks from Darail Pens, STL 2025 show ink, and Sailor 2025 Pen Show ink. Pilot Vanishing Point Seashore from Jimmy Dolive (yeah, I got Jimmy’d, lol.) Platinum 3776 Jupiter and Aurora Alpha from Jeremy Savage, one of my table neighbors.
Sorry not sorry for being a broken record, but the best part of pen shows is the people. The real haul is getting to spend time with pen friends like Angela He (of InkyConverters), Erick Gama, and Tori Woods (of Stationery Universe)! That wasn’t our hotel (though we didn’t realize it til later, oops), but the rainbow was perfect!
A heartfelt Thank You to Piper Trading Company for giving me the opportunity to represent the brand at its first pen show!
Up next is the Pacific Northwest Show, and then the SF Pen Show. I’m still trying to figure out if I can make any other events in between those two. Until PNW or SF, stay safe, and stay inky!
