The Apostrophe Blog
Unscrew the cap of the glass bottle of a beautiful black-blue ink. Submerge the barrel of the pen into the neck of the bottle. These days, the fanciest of pens have a plunger mechanism that makes them oh so easy to fill. Sometimes I find it takes me a few tries to get it right. Wipe the pen nib off with the soft, ink-stained linen dish towel scrap I keep in my desk drawer just for these occasions. Find a blank sheet of paper, bear down, wait for the line to flow. I find I like the Clairefontaine notebooks (made in France) the best for writing by hand with a fountain pen. They do force you to go a little more slowly, take more care with the formation of letters, of words.
I have a small collection of fountain pens acquired over the past thirty or forty years. The three in the photo are made by the Conklin Pen Company. Established in 1897 in Toledo, Ohio, Conklin is one of the most significant manufacturers from the golden age of fountain pens. From their website: “Conklin has been shaping the art of writing since 1897. From Roy Conklin’s groundbreaking Crescent Filler™, the first practical self-filling fountain pen, to modern re-imagined classics, the brand is built on innovation, craftsmanship, and timeless design. Celebrated authors like Mark Twain once endorsed Conklin pens for their reliability and elegance, a legacy that continues today.”
The three models of Conklin pens I have are the Nozac (white-and-blue uppermost in the photo), the Endura (orange and violet flecks in the middle), and the 1898 (in a color called Wisteria Walk). The first two were purchased from Fountain Pen Hospital in New York City; the newest, the commemorative 1898, from Atlas Stationers in downtown Chicago a few months back as a 70th birthday present to myself. Otheres in my collection include an Aurora, a Mont Blanc, a Pelikan, a fairly new Pilot, and a Waterman. It has been a while since I have had ink in more than one or two at a time I will admit. But it has been calming, these agitated January winter days, to return to an old-fashioned way of writing with pen and actual ink.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
- Acceptance News: wildscape literary journal - January 28, 2026
- To get the ink flowing again… - January 27, 2026
- Put ICE on ice! - January 26, 2026
