If you are a Sailor Fountain Pen fan like I am then you need to make Anderson Pens your first stop when shopping for your new pen.
As one of the few Sailor Bespoke vendors in the country, they have nearly every Sailor barrel and nib combination available. Just look at these amazing nibs!
My thanks to Anderson Pens for sponsoring The Pen Addict this week.
(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)
The Visconti London Fog is another pen in the Homo Sapiens series that came out earlier this year. Originally, I had no plans to purchase one – I like the Crystal Swirls model better, but it is no longer available. Still, the more photographs I saw of the London Fog, the more it grew on me. So, I decided to pull the trigger.
The pen comes packaged in a large Visconti box. They are masters of ornate pens and flashy boxes. I never quite know what to do with such large, heavy boxes, so I just stow them in my office closet in case I decide to sell my pens later.
This pen is, to put it mildly, majestic. It is large (146mm capped, 130mm uncapped, 170mm posted) and weighty (40 grams), but I have come to love big pens. My right hand doesn't get cramps when I write with a pen like the London Fog.
The cap, grip, and piston knob are made of acrylic that is mostly silver/grey with dark blue swirls. The material sparkles in the sunshine.
The barrel is made of clear acrylic with celluloid ribbons of silver/grey and blue. Acryloid is Visconti's name for this special material that is a mix of acrylic and celluloid in microscopically thin strips. Whatever it's called, it really is fantastic. The layers swim like tropical fish through the clear acrylic. The combination of demonstrator with beautiful artistic swirls makes for a stunning pen.
The cap is quite heavy due to the sterling silver clip, rings, and finial. I do not recommend posting it because it throws the balance of the pen off, but to each his/her own. As with other Visconti pens, the finial is removable. You can replace it with the Visconti "My Pen" system. I think this pen would look gorgeous with a lapis lazuli stone, but that will have to wait for a day when I have money again.
The cap is also adorned with two silver rings and the iconic Visconti clip which is spring loaded.
Visconti's special "Hook Safe Lock" system is how the cap attaches to the barrel. I really like this system because the cap is so easy to get off and on. It is much easier than a thread system that requires multiple turns. The Visconti "hooks" are smooth and do not interfere with one's grip on the pen.
The barrel is adorned with a large silver ring engraved with "Homo Sapiens." It is simple and beautiful.
A plain silver ring connects the barrel to the piston knob. The piston unscrews to allow the user to pull the vacuum seal out to fill the pen. I haven't been able to get a complete fill on this pen, despite the "power filler" name. I don't know if I just need to practice more or if the system is not meant to fill the barrel completely with ink. I noticed that when the ink in the barrel got low, no ink went into the feed. I had to pull the piston out to let ink into the lower barrel. This got messy. I'll have to work with the system more to see if there's a problem with my pen or if you simply need to keep the barrel filled with ink for the feed to remain saturated.
I ordered my London Fog with a fine, 23K Palladium nib. The nib is springy and slightly flexible if you press into it. It is a joy to write with.
The nib is beautiful with Visconti's lovely scrolling and the moon-shaped breather hole.
When I ordered my London Fog, I requested two things. First, I wanted the pen to have lots of swirls. Some versions of these Visconti pens are mostly acrylic with just a few swirls. If you're going to pay this much for a pen, get as many swirls as you can! I strongly recommend that, if you can't purchase the London Fog at a physical store, you contact your online dealer and request photos of the pens in stock. That way you can choose the pen that has the look you want. The swirl factor was important to me.
Second, the other issue when ordering a Visconti is the nib. Almost every Visconti fountain pen I've purchased has had a bum nib. Maybe I've just been unlucky, but I have had to send all my Viscontis in for nib work. Not this time. When I placed my order with Bryant at Chatterly Luxuries, I asked him to make sure the nib was smooth and trouble-free. I am happy to say this is the first Visconti pen that I've received that has written well straight out of the box. Thank you, Bryant!
At a retail cost of $995, the London Fog is quite an investment. You can purchase this pen at a lower cost through Chatterly Luxuries (they can't advertise their price), but regardless, if you buy this pen, expect to pay a good amount for it. I am very happy with my purchase because this pen writes like a dream and is absolutely spectacular in appearance. Still, if I ever find a Crystal Swirls Visconti, I might just trade my London Fog for it.
Pros
Cons
(I purchased this pen with my own funds and was not compensated for this review.)
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(Everyone say hello to Sarah, the latest addition to the Pen Addict writing crew! Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter.)
My first impression of the Paper Mate Flair felt tip pens didn’t leave me with very high expectations. The packaging is a flimsy vinyl pouch in a cardboard sleeve and the pens themselves are very light plastic. They feel and look cheap, and they are, in fact, fairly inexpensive. They pretty much shattered this impression once I started to play, though.
These pens are fun little workhorses. The colors are bright and vibrant in acid-free water-based ink. The ultra fine tips are very precise. They performed well with doodling, coloring in, and plain writing, offering smooth feedback and no skipping. They remain well-balanced when posted, which they do very securely.
With such teeny tiny felt tips, I expected some dry-out after longer periods of being uncapped, but I had no issues, even when I felt like I was surely pushing the limits. I used this set to create an elaborate, color-coded chore chart for my family. With the UF tips, I was able to fit tyrannically long lists of chores into each square, and even then I could not stymie the pens. When I made the chart, I outlined it first with pencil, then retraced my lines with the Flairs. When I erased the pencil lines, there was no smudging of the ink at all. There was also no show-through on the Rhodia paper I used.
Next I tried coloring. So many of the new coloring books coming out have itty bitty spaces to fill in, so I thought I’d take these teeny tips for a spin on my art deco coloring postcards. The Flair’s UF tips definitely performed well for teeny coloring, though the cardstock I was working on isn’t the best paper for this sort of ink. There was a bit of feathering, and there are some over-saturated areas where too much ink soaked in. And here is also where the lighter weight became an advantage. I don’t know what your particular coloring practices are, but when I sit down to color, I’m planning on being there a while. The light pens never caused my hands to fatigue or cramp the way my beloved colored pencils sometimes do. Even when filling in the itty bittiest of teeny tiny spaces. As a disclaimer, the grip section is quite narrow. It suits my small hands very well, but may un-zen the zentangles for those with larger hands.
I think I’ll be getting a lot of use out of these pens. They’re perfect for doodles or zentangles, great for color coding planners and charts, and super useful for tiny coloring. I think they’d even be great for class notes. In the end, I have no real criticisms on their functionality. I think I’ll even be picking up a few more colors. And if the cheap-feeling plastic is what keeps these worker bees affordable enough for me to have lots of them, well maybe that’s more of a pro than a con, too.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
