Bauhaus is my kryptonite

[daidoji_gisei]

I bought myself a TWSBI Vac 700 tonight. This was entirely unexpected. But I had gotten through my annual evaluation today without wanting to stab myself, TWSBI was running an interesting sale, and I happened across a review of the Vac 700 which said, basically, that this was a pen that put functional design over pretty styling and I was sold. It also helped that the pen has a novel filling system that excites my inner physicist!

I ordered it as a demonstrator. I'm neither hot nor cold on demonstrators, and the smoke version of the Vac 700 is very stylish, but in this particular case I'm buying the pen because of its engineering so that's what I wanted to see. I'm looking forward to putting ink in it, though due to its filling method it looks essentially useless as a way of using up ink samples: I'll have to feed it from ink bottles only. Not that I lack for those....

Comments

[yhlee]

They sound intriguing--I hope you will report on yours when it arrives!

[daidoji_gisei]

I am sure I will babble about it somewhere. :)

Last night was very illuminating in terms of fountain pens. In reading FPN I had come across a post by ethernautrix talking about the aesthetic experience of writing of writing with a Nakaya, and I thought, "Yes, I can understand why people would like that". Then I read the Vac 700 post with the functional design observation and I thought, "YES! THIS IS MY FLAVOR OF FP SEX!!!"

It seems very odd to me that I, as someone who spends her summers collecting rayon frocks in floral prints, should zero in on this kind of design philosophy in pens. But there it is.

[yhlee]

Yeah, one thing I do like about fountain pens is that there seems to be something for everybody who is into fountain pens to begin with! I know a lot of people speak highly of their TWSBI posts, but try as I might I cannot work up any enthusiasm for them. And yet here I spend hours ogling Nakayas and Parker Vacumatics because I like certain values of shiny.

And it's also funny because I am someone who spends my life in increasingly ratty T-shirts and jeans, and I have no eye for home decor, and everything else in my life is very plain or functional. But apparently for pens I want a bit of pretty.

[helen_keeble]

It's... it's a foreign language. But I do love to see you and Yoon geeking out over this utterly mysterious (to me) thing. :)

[yhlee]

It really kind of is. There are still whole gigantic areas of fountain pen geekitude I haven't even touched (how does a Snorkel filling mechanism work?) but fortunately there's not a test.