u/MercatorLondon

Clematis tangutica enjoying some Edinburgh sunshine.

Hop wall in the beergarden at the Gardener. Very matching

https://heatherwick.com/project/olympia/

Hi everyone,

I stopped by Japan House today, which turned out to be a disaster for my wallet (as usual). I love that place.

I just wanted to let you know about an interesting event taking place there on 10–11 October called “Meet the Maker: Sailor Pen”, which is happening at the same time as the London Pen Show.

this is from their website (please check it here)

Join us in the Shop for a Meet the Maker event. The team from Sailor Pen will be on hand to introduce their range of expertly crafted fountain pens. Alongside their signature 1911 model, discover the Naginata Togi with multiple nib sizes designed to render kanji characters, and the Nawate Series – layered with urushi (Japanese lacquer) to form a raised line on the cap for stable grip.

Visitors can also try the winner of Best Fountain Pen in the 2025 Japanese Stationery Awards, the TUZU, and choose from 20 different inks in the Shikiori Ink Bar to find the shade that matches their writing style.

Having the chance to try all these pens and chat with the Sailor team sounds pretty good to me!

So that may be another reason to come to London and stop by Japan House while you are at the London Pen Show. Japan House is near Kensington High Street tube station, which is just 19 minutes away from the Pen Show at Hammersmith.

Hi everyone,

Some projects take us an awfully long time to finish - much longer than we would like!

One of them is the Ebonite Pen (Namur) that we showed you a year ago (!!) at the October Pen Show. We also had it shortlisted for the Spotlight Awards a few weeks ago. I have received quite a few messages asking about it since.

What started as a prototype eventually turned into a production Ebonite pen. The quantities are very small, as we are limited by the supply of ebonite itself, as well as the manufacturing process. Each bar of ebonite needs to be accurately ground down before we can machine it on our sliding-head CNC lathe. So, for now, this is a very limited numbers pen. Hence this will be our top-line now.

We have decided to try pre-orders for this pen (in the US webshop - starting today) while we update and prepare our UK webshop as well (our IT issue). This is a test run at the moment (as we only have components for a dozen of pens ready) so pre-orders may also help us manage production. Kind of made-to-order thing. I hope it makes sense. Thank you for your patience and support!

Hi everyone,

I wanted to give you a couple of updates about our Kickstarter pocket pen and some of the things we learned along the way. Today, I want to talk about titanium. Firstly, the shipping will resume shortly (with updated caps)

We offered a titanium cap as a stretch goal, and it was a popular choice among many backers.
And boy, did we have fun machining it!

We eventually managed to make the caps successfully, so there was a happy ending. We just needed to adjust the cutting speeds, use different coolant/cooling method and take time and patience.

I wanted to share some of the journey because (as always in production) there were some surprises on the way.

We had worked with titanium in the past and had stamped some titanium components (which was a tough job especially for the stamping tools). So we were cautious when considering it as a material option for the pen. So we ran some initial tests on a few pieces using our CNC lathe and everything seemed doable. Production became a bit more difficult.

I want to say - titanium is an amazing metal.

Titanium has three properties that make it incredibly useful: High strength, low thermal conductivity and chemical stability (corrosion resistance)

Those same advantages are also three things that machinists tend to hate about titanium.

Hardness itself isn't necessarily the main problem. The heat resistance is. Titanium is surprisingly good at insulating heat. As a result, heat generated during machining stays very localised around the tool tip instead of being transferred/spread away efficiently through the bar material. Tool wear happens much faster at very high temperatures.

And these properties interact with each other: the heat can't escape, the alloy remains strong, and the material start reacting and can stick to the cutting tool. Once the cutting edge gets hot and is under heavy load, each of these becomes part of the problem.

So, what did we learn?

The Kickstarter turned out to be a great platform for testing. The support from our backers allowed us to take on something we probably wouldn't otherwise have attempted.

Titanium is a fantastic material, but machining these caps was definitely harder than we expected.

For the foreseeable future, we won't be making any more titanium caps. So if you got one, consider it a special one - and enjoy it!

Loving this thing. Gotta be …close to a million berries?

This hotel building was built as part of the Sliač spa complex by Rudolf Stocar back in 1926.

Ivy is slowly taking over the façade of this amazing modernist building -> apparently, Ivy has decided that if nobody is going to renovate it, it might as well do the job itself.

Hi everyone, just a quick reaction on previous video showing two caps: one with anti-roll and one without it. (as per request by u/SmellTheJasmine)

The silver-finish one is a prototype with an anti-roll weight. The red one is the regular cap, happily rolling around.

There is a noticeable difference, and the balancing definitely helps. But it’s not a silver bullet: if the shaking or acceleration gets above a certain level, it will eventually roll, as you can see at the end of the video. Physics wins. Every. Single. Time.

This concept is intended for a normal desk (by “normal” I mean not perfectly level) that ideally doesn’t move. Also, the impact will be smaller with a steel pen..

But this is what afternoon sunshine and five minutes of spare time in half empty train carriage can lead to…

Hi everyone! I took the cap prototype out of my bag to see how it would handle the sometimes bumpy and sometimes shaky Southeastern Railway journey to Victoria Station :) I do love trains!

And it managed surprisingly well not to roll off the table! Shall we include this in the final design?

The courtyard sits at the heart of Great Portland Estate’s new development. Built on top of Crossrail’s New Bond Street station, the central public space and its three unique pedestrian passages connect New Bond Street, Oxford Street and Hanover Square. Built above a major piece of transport infrastructure and bounded by central London’s busiest shopping district, the courtyard offers a quiet, contemplative green space to sit and rest, away from the flurry of the city centre.

Hi everyone,

It is taking me a little longer than planned to give you an update. We had some really good feedback at the show, both from visitors and from buyers. And some of them were serious fountain pen enthusiasts as well. It seems that buyers were liking the range, as well as the new designs.

Which brings me to an update on the colours for the new pocket pen. I was planning to cut the selection down to just two or three colours, but after the feedback we received, we have decided to launch with all eight colours. Which is exciting (and a little scary from a stock-keeping point of view)
So you may be able to try these in person in some UK pen shops before end of this year, fingers crossed.

Garden building at St. Hilda's College in Oxford, UK
1967-1970. architects: Peter and Alison Smithson

Photography by u/thehippieswereright

Hi everyone,

These are the two rods I selected for the next prototypes.

The green should work well with both silver and gold components. The reddish one should pair nicely with pink or champagne gold IP plating. I like those patterns.

I will also post some updates from the TopDrawer and regarding our progress with the Kickstarter soon!

Just a very short post. Today we spent the whole day setting up our stand for the Top Drawer trade show, so I wanted to share a few photos. More photos coming on Sunday.

As promised, please find some photos of the small ebonite samples I received from Schönberger. I think “the tyranny of choice” is the right expression here. Thank you Kai.

Germany - Under §265a of the Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch), “obtaining services by deception” includes riding public transport without a ticket. Penalty: fine or up to 1 year in prison

Netherlands - Using public transport or even being on a platform without a valid ticket is a criminal offense (overtreding) under the Passenger Transport Act 2000. Theoretical maximum: 2 months jail or a fine of several thousand euros.

Austria - The Criminal Code has a similar provision (§149 StGB, “obtaining a service by deception”). It becomes a criminal matter mainly if you actively deceive a conductor or inspector and the unpaid amount is small. Prison is possible but rare (up to 1 month).

Switzerland - Article 150 of the Criminal Code explicitly covers using public transport without paying. It is an “on-complaint” offense punishable by up to 3 years in prison or a fine.

England (edit: not whole UK) - If you ignore a penalty fare, fail to settle out of court, or are accused of intentional, deliberate fraud under the Regulation of Railways Act 1889, the case can go to the Magistrates' Court

In France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, Czechia, and most other countries it is treated as an administrative infraction only. You get a fine (typically €30-140 depending on the city) and, if unpaid, debt collection. No criminal record and no realistic risk of prison for ordinary fare evasion.

Hi everyone,

I don’t want to turn this sub into a marketing channel, but I wanted to share some new photos from the photographer and also share some good news. Our Ebonite fountain pen has been shortlisted for the Top Drawer Spotlight Award. So, fingers crossed!

This was the pen we showed you (as a prototype) at the London Pen Show back in October. We should be ready to start offering it this October. Some things take us much longer than we would like, really. I realised that the last update on this pen was over five months ago…

I also received some new green/black and orange/brownish ebonite rods from the lovely people at Schönberger Ebonite Manufaktur GmbH in Germany, and we’re going to try making some new prototypes. Check their rods in case you need some.

I will be spending the next few days preparing our stand and painting the walls and sticking some pictures. In case you are passing by we will be at stand T25 at Olympia, London.

Nothing important to report today. Some of you asked about the centre of gravity of this little pen - I thought spinning might be the best way to show it/visualise it. And I found it quite relaxing as well. We all do it sometimes, right?

There has been a lot of discussion about the UN and map projections lately.

I just wanted to share this image of the UN flag from 1947 and their choice of a very sensible map projection - one they still use on the flag to this day.

Perhaps adopting Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion map would be a nice gesture for the UN going forward.