(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 Faber-Castell Grip 2011 Calligraphy Gift Set comes in a silver metal tin.
Inside you'll find a pen with one nib installed, two other nib units, two plastic nib covers, and three boxes of ink cartridges in blue, black, and pink. No instructions are included with this set.
The pen is made of light silver-colored plastic with a metal clip and raised dots along the barrel (thus the "Grip" name).
The finial is concave with the Faber-Castell logo, and the cap sports the Faber-Castell name on the side. It is a snap-on cap.
The pen is medium-sized, measuring 5.4 inches/137mm capped, 5.1 inches/130mm uncapped, and 6.9 inches/175mm posted. It weighs only 15.19 grams capped/posted and 9.42 grams uncapped. It is comfortable in the hand, and the grip (made of textured black plastic) curves inward slightly, measuring 10.42mm.
Three interchangeable steel calligraphy nib units are included: 1.1mm, 1.4mm, and 1.8mm.
Three boxes of ink cartridges are also included. The ink is "erasable," but you have to purchase an ink eraser correction pen in order to correct mistakes. "Erasable" is bit misleading since the correction pen applies fluid over the ink rather than removing the ink.
I practiced my calligraphy alphabet with each of the nib units in my Endless Recorder Notebook. The 1.1mm nib (inked with black) wrote beautifully without any skips or hard starts.
I was impressed with the 1.4mm nib (inked with blue). It's wide enough to offer noticeable line variation, but not so wide to make writing awkward.
Unfortunately, the 1.8 nib (inked with pink) was horrible. I had to work hard to write two or three letters before the ink stopped flowing. It was scratchy, ink-stingy, and most unpleasant to use. A close up of the nib explains why: the tines are misaligned.
The writing samples below do not show the difficulties I had with the nib. To get one page of writing was an exercise in frustration.
Here's a comparison of the nibs writing normally:
The Faber-Castell pen is comfortable to write with, and the nib units are easy to switch. The nib caps insure that the nibs won't dry out. The three ink colors are vibrant and flow well, plus the cartridge system is simple to use. This set could make a good starter kit for a beginner.
However, the 1.8 nib in my set is unusable. In addition, there are no instructions--not even a basic alphabet exemplar. This makes the set less suitable for someone just starting out. The $40.00 price tag makes me question whether this set is a good choice for a beginner or anyone, for that matter. If it were around $20.00 I would be more comfortable recommending it. You can buy a Pilot Parallel set with four calligraphy pens for $25.00, for example.
The Faber-Castell Grip 2011 Calligraphy Gift Set is available at Goldspot Pens for $40.00.
(Goldspot Pens provided the Faber-Castell set at no charge to Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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