So someday in August, I went to the present, billed because the world’s largest. Display areas on the Marriott Fairview Park in Falls Church, Va., teemed as pen lovers made their methods alongside aisles, testing nibs with calligraphical thrives and holding the barrels of pens fastidiously of their fingers. Tables spilled out from the ballroom into surrounding hallways and onto a decrease flooring. Approximately 170 distributors occupied 250 tables, and about 2,000 folks attended over three days, in line with Barbara Johnson, who runs the present along with her son, Jeff Hancock.
T-shirts on the present learn, “My fountain pen scoffs at your subpar writing instrument,” and “Don’t touch my nibs.” Companies had names comparable to Pendemonium and Penquisition. The DC Metro Pen Crew, an roughly 575-member group that organizes pen buys, conferences and different occasions, hosted a desk to offer away new and used pens and equipment. There have been pen kimonos and pen pillows. Walking via such an area scrawling in a pocket book with a felt-tip earned glances filled with pity.
Vintage-pen collectors are a mainstay of pen reveals. Some of those individuals are extra all for pens as “a work of art rather than a writing instrument,” Ed Fingerman, a former president of Pen Collectors of America and the director of operations for Fountain Pen Hospital, in New York, instructed me earlier. They may accumulate artwork nouveau pens, or celluloid pens like Pelletier’s, which grew to become standard within the Nineteen Twenties. Not all are prohibitively costly; some will be had for lower than $200.
Vintage pens have which means, mentioned Baltimore resident and self-described “pen nerd” Yarelis Guzman, who was attending the present. When Guzman’s mom was rising up in Puerto Rico, she earned a Parker fountain pen as a member of an honors class. She misplaced it on her manner dwelling, and though she and her father regarded, they couldn’t discover it. A technology later, Guzman continued the search at pen reveals, and ultimately situated and purchased the identical model of Parker. She gave it to her mom for Christmas final yr. “She was so happy,” she instructed me.
Pen reveals additionally host new pen creators. “I am a one-woman shop,” mentioned Lauren Elliott, of Reston, Va. “I’m the CEO and the marketing manager and the shipping department.” She named her firm Lucky Star Pens as a result of she loves the night time sky, and on the present, she wore a black shirt coated with white stars. On her desk, she displayed Celestial Moon pens, on which she’d collaborated with different artisans. They have been gleaming and galactic-themed with a swirling purple-and-black design and a lunar white spherical barrel finial.
A mechanical, not disagreeable buzz ran beneath the fixed speak of vermilion ink and classic Watermans. The sound got here from grinding, as craftspeople formed fountain pen nibs for patrons. Individuality and customization matter to pen aficionados, mentioned nibmeister JC Ament of Arlington, Va., whose firm is known as Nib Tailor. “A fountain pen is obsolete technology,” he mentioned. “It’s not a necessity. You want it to be a very tactile thing. It’s a talisman.”
Social media, Fingerman mentioned, has been “huge” for the passion. There are YouTube channels, blogs, and Etsy, Instagram and Twitch accounts by so-called penfluencers for penthusiasts. “There’s no bottom to the rabbit hole,” mentioned Arielle Fragassi, of Houston. “It just goes deeper and deeper.”
The ever-mounting presence of digital know-how in day by day life has turned some towards the passion, mentioned Bryant Del Toro, a software program engineer who creates content material as ThatJournalingGuy. Digitally expressing creativity generally is a problem, he mentioned. That’s the place analog devices and significantly fountain pens are available in: “You pick up the pen, you’re more intentional with your thoughts, and it adds a whole bunch of personality.”
“If I sit down with a pen and an ink, I’ll try to pair a pen with a specific color ink,” mentioned Fragassi, a chemist and novelist who additionally maintains an Instagram web page with pen and stationery content material. “I love brainstorming pen to paper because I can jot stuff down and draw different conclusions and get all that information out of my head onto the page.”
At the present, an ink-testing station took up lengthy tables. Racks holding ink and containers of cotton swabs sat close to rectangular sheets of white paper swatched with rows of inks, donated by sellers, with names together with Blue-Ringed Octopus Blue and Gibson Les Paul Guitar Series Desert Burst. Showgoers may use the swabs to pattern completely different colours.
By early afternoon on the day I attended, distributors seated back-to-back turned to speak with one another. At a seminar, held away from the push of the ballroom and hallways, Geoffrey Parker, great-grandson of the founding father of Parker, gave a chat on the corporate’s archives. The buying and selling and promoting flooring saved churning. A excessive degree of pen-loving dialog carried on, the vigorous sound of an interactive group.
“What I write is pleasant to actually experience, and I think that there are a lot of people like me,” Pelletier had instructed me earlier. The crowded, bustling occasion bore this out. “You go to a pen show,” mentioned Fragassi, “and suddenly you’re surrounded by people and everyone’s enthusiastic about fountain pens. You’ve found your people.”
Eliza McGraw is a author in Washington.