Fountain Pen Review - Edison Pen Co. Collier in Persimmon Swirl

Edison Pen co. has 2 lines of pens they produce. 1 is a custom line where you just start with a shape and then browse through an immense array of different materials from stunning ebonite to bonkers acrylics. The other line is their production line which include a handfull of shapes in some amazingly looking materials which you can just go and pick up from your favourite reseller.

This one is part of the latter series of pens, so if you like the look of it you can just go out and get your own! But as stunning as this material is, I did take some warming up to it. I never understood these crazy materials since they looked a bit cheapish. But people always referred to the depth of the material but that just sounded a bit funny. But eventually my penny dropped when I got the chance to visit La Couronne Du Compte. In one of their displays they had a pair of these Colliers laying about and I couldn't keep my eyes of them, so naturally it ended up on my wishlist.

Now fastforward a few months to my birthday and I was the happy owner of my own Collier. At his moment of writing this review I've owned it for over a year,  and I still manage to drown in the material and be amazed by the actual depth some parts really have!

Now onto the pen. This pen really strikes a pose since on the outside it is completely made out of this Persimmon Swirl acrylic. The only thing present on the outside is the stiff  gold plated clip and the Edison Pen Co. Collier branding lazer engraved on the barrel. The engraving is not coloured in and due to the material doesn't really show up unless you're looking right at it. Shapewise the pen is rather unique. The bottom is more torpedo shape coming together into a point and the top of the cap has a subtle dome to it.

The cap screws of and then reveals even more of the same material on the section and a gorgeous #6 2 tone steel nib, mine is a medium. One thing I like is how, when you ink the pen from bottled ink, the ink immediatly rolls of the steel outside but it clings to the inside gold portion of the nib. So everytime you ink this up you get a really nice effect happening on the nib! And the nib-fun doens't stop there, when you put it to the paper you really notice how every nib leaving Edison gets tuned and tested in house. So it came out of the box well adjusted perfect tine allignment, no smoothing required. Just fill and go.

As all of the production line pens from edison, this is a cartridge convertor filled pen and it comes with a standard international convertor already installed into the pen. I've yet to have a problem with the ink flow using the convertor but I have encountered a slightly reduced flow when using a cartridge of Kaweco Sunrise orange. That being said, I've only ever used 1 cartridge in this pen so it's likely that it's the ink to blame rather than the pen. But as I'm not certain of the cause and I mostly use bottled ink I don't see this as a criticism towards the pen.

Size wise this looks to be pretty perfect. This is a larger pen and certainly dwarfs some pens in my collection (Sailor Professional Gear immediatly comes to mind). But it just perfectly fits in the hand. This pen has been designed so the cap can not be posted. But luckely it just feels right in hand. I have got oily hand syndrome and with that comes a lot of grip readjustment. But the section is shaped really well and keeps your grip locked in. But, if you like to hold your pen closer or further away from the nib it still is a rather short section and the threads, although not sharp, aren't the most comfortable place to hold the pen.

All in all I'm absolutely in love with this pen. I've owned it for nearly a year and the material still amazes me. The only thing that changes is the ink I put in it as it has not been left uninked for as long as I've got this pen!

I will enclude a small disclaimer. When I got this pen, the clip was really weak and completely snapped off. Immediatly contacted Edison pens and LCDC where the pen was bought and they were aware of the problem. In the reply Brian told me how they've used the same clip producer for 7 or 8 years and have never had any problem with them. They just seem to have gotten a bad batch. They sent replacement pens to their resellers to replace the affected pens (and I actually got lucky and got a nicer looking cap in the process).

Fountain Pen Review - Pelikan M200 Café Crème

I found it fitting for this pen to be my first fountain pen review as this is the first "high-end" fountain pen I've ever purchased. And even before I got my first pen, I went through some stages of what I liked. Started out absolutely disliking gold trim on fountain pens. But that all changed when the fire nation ... wait I'm mixing stuff up now! It did all change when I saw the special Edition of the M200, the Café Crème.

Pelikan is one of those brands that everyone knows about, no matter how little interested you are in the whole pen/stationery world. When I first saw this pen I didn't know Pelikan had a premium line of fountain pens but I immediately fell in love with the design (and still am to this day), it's not a flat top nor a cigar shape, it's just a Pelikan Souverän. 

The M200 is pretty much the baby brother of all the other Souverän models, same size as the M400 but with a steel nib and finished to a "lower" level yet still retaining the piston filler of his bigger, more expensive brothers. What I call a lower level finish isn't anything to complain about though, the only complaint I have here is that there are some mold lines left on the section, which I imagine wouldn't be left on the gold nibbed pens. They don't bother me when writing, it just doesn't look as nice as it could be.

So I was set on an M200, but this wasn't the first M200 model I was looking at, I had my eye set on an M200 in red (since I'm not a person who likes a lot of black). I just couldn't find one in stock anywhere and I'm actually happy I couldn't find one; new to the pen scene as I was, I wasn't aware that Pelikan often releases special versions of their pens and when I saw the ad for this version I was sold on this pen! The Café Crème - being a coffee and cream themed pen - just drew me in like a moth to a flame (and I'm not even a coffee drinker). I love the cream coloured barrel, dark brown piston knob and cap finished off with gold accents.

I got mine with a Broad nib (with the emphasis on Broad). This is just a gusher of a nib, yet out of the box it was absolutely perfect! It even felt smooth on the paper without being inked and only gets better when inked up. And I've read elsewhere that the Pelikan steel nibs have a fair amount of give to them and you can actually spread the tines quite a bit to get an even broader line, so an A+ for Pelikan for getting the nib just spot on!

This pen does have a huge writing performance but it's far from a big pen - for me it's just a tad too small in every way. First up is the length, when used unposted the step down from the barrel to the piston turning knob digs in just a bit too much into the webbing of my hand, this isn't a problem at all when posted, and when doing so it improves the balance and feel in the hand - at least for me. The second problem can't really be solved that easily and that's the section. It lacks around 1-2mm of girth for my fingers to be called truly comfortable. Other than that the section is well shaped with a nice lip to stop your fingers from sliding up on the nib. The material also isn't as prone to slip in your hands, and I should know since my fingers do get oily after holding a pen for an extended period.

What really sold me on this pen was that it has a piston filler. Being new and full of prejudice I looked down on cartridge/converter filled pens, so for the M200 to have an internal filling system was a big plus in my book, and it still is for this pen. As stated above this pen is such a wet pen that it goes through a fill of ink in a record time (with intense studying/writing it'll last around a day + VAT). So thankfully there is an amber tinted ink window that lets you clearly see your current ink level. And the amber tint makes it blend in perfectly with the rest of the pen.

This pen has done a lot for me: it drastically changed my opinion on gold trimmed pens, it improved my handwriting (or so I think) and due to the wet nib, it made me love different kinds of inks even more than I already did. Even though it is a bit on the small size, it's a wonderful writer and even if I could I wouldn't have made a different decision to get this pen as my first real fountain pen. Even though you might not be able to find the Café Crème version of this pen anymore, the pen in its own right is a great pen and there still are normal versions, not speaking of the regular stream of special editions. So if you're interested there is definitely one that will be just perfect for you!