Montblanc and…Montblanc

For the next several days a few hours can happily be devoted to reading the latest issue of my favorite magazine, Stationery Hobby Box, or Shumi no bungu bako. Volume 22 arrived on Monday, thanks to my ever faithful friend Kumiko and now a smorgasbord of new and upcoming stationery treasures are mine to dream about. It continues to be one of my regrets that life outside of Tokyo has made the riches of this magazine a painful tease, reminding me that what was once available a mile or two from my front door is now mostly out of reach. But in their way, stationery dreams are good too.

Surprisingly, on first look this issue does not have a whole lot that excites me. There have been times when my desire for a new release of ink, pen, or notebook has been hard to bear, knowing that none of it will ever reach me in this Florida beachtown un-attuned to the ways of pen and ink. So far, little in the sumptuous pages of Volume 22 has set my head spinning, but the satisfaction of just looking at pictures and reading the stories brings an agreeable buzz.

The cover this time shows a picture of the new Aurora Mar Tirreno fountain pen, a limited edition of only 480 in a green that is said to reflect the Tyrrhenian Sea and the forests that grow along Italy’s western coast from the island of Elba to Sicily. Most interesting so far is the article on pen cases and those chosen by a handful of prominent Japanese writers and illustrators. It sent me searching online for Japanese stores offering a particular pen case, the oddly named Delphonics Carrying model. More often than not the articles list a store or website that offer the item on display, but not this time. I managed to find the pen case on one site, but then found it excluded from the store’s online inventory. Good side is, that exclusion will save me $68.00.

The picture above gives a partial view of the Delphonics pen case, one that is quite a bit larger than the average pen case. The large Japanese characters at the bottom of the picture mean pretty much what the small English and red arrow to the left say: Check out [this] pen case!

Listed at $4,000, the newest addition to Montblanc’s series of famous name fountain pens is the Alfred Hitchcock, shown in the picture below. The pen also comes in a rollerball version for a little bit less than the fountain pen. These photos strike me as not quite up to par, since they offer no view of Mr Hitchcock’s signature, a feature standard on all of the famous name pens from Montblanc. Not a very inventive photo layout, very surprising in a magazine renown for its high quality and artful photographs.

The third thing that caught my interest is also from Montblanc, and is another of their new ink releases. This too is called Alfred Hitchcock, and is a bottle in the smaller size of 30 milliliters, but at the usual price of $25.00. This small size is not anything new with Montblanc ink, and usually indicates a limited edition. Experience tells me that in three months or so this ink will be sold out and hard to come by. Maybe a trip to the Montblanc store a couple of hours away should be added to the calendar. The color is exceptional, even for one already swimming in red ink.

From Fidel with Love

Been three years at least since I bought a bottle of Waterman Havana ink. For a couple of months after that I used the ink regularly, never overly fond of it, but then not really disappointed either. I liked having seven or eight pens inked with a variety of colors and the Havana fit well into that custom. Some months passed and for one reason or another the Havana slipped into the background among the bottles on my shelves. In all honesty, it began to collect dust from lack of use and when the day came to pack it all up for shipping to Florida, the Havana got dusted off, wrapped carefully and nestled safely among its brothers and sisters in a big packing box. Unpacked and resettled on its new shelf it once more began to collect dust. Until I read something the other day about Waterman Havana on Peninkcillin.

Chances are good that Peninkcillin is already a familiar site to many, but if not then let me be one to recommend it. Especially for pen and ink lovers it’s a good read. But back to the Waterman Havana…

Reminded of the old bottle on my shelves, long unused and nearly forgotten, the urge came to once more dust it off and give it a wake up scribble. Since it's a Waterman ink I decided to fill a Waterman Carene medium nibbed pen with Havana and see if it balanced out with my earlier impressions.

The challenge that Waterman faces with this ink is the recent popularity of brown inks and the dozens of new colors in the brown range that have been introduced in the last couple of years. There was a time when brown ink was uncommon and there weren’t more than one or two companies producing it, but that has changed and these days brown ink is battling traditional colors for place. Sepia ink especially has enjoyed a boom, and with the appearance of Pilot’s Iroshizuku series the bar has been raised. Their Tsukushi (Horsetail) and Yama-guri (Mountain Chestnut) are top of the heap. Then came Maruzen’s Athena ink and a limited edition (1000 bottles only) of a hard to beat Sepia. Noodler’s has entered the competition with their class A Walnut ink and Diamine Chocolate is no less impressive than Chocolate Truffles from Godiva.

The result of all that leads to a slippery slide for Waterman Havana. The first swab I made today reminded me of nothing more than Shinola brown shoe polish, a comparison I have also used to describe Montblanc Sepia (or here in the US, Montblanc Toffee Brown). Surely there are many who like the particular brown typified by shoe polish, and for them the Havana will meet expectations. As one who especially likes brown ink, color-wise the Waterman Havana leaves me lukewarm.

Waterman makes high quality ink, of that there is no question. Like my favorite Waterman, Florida Blue, the Havana performs well in all the areas that draw attention. The shading is good, neither too much nor too little, and on both white and cream colored paper the result is a good balance. Saturation is good, and on the paper I used for testing—bright white copy paper and Rhodia Webbie cream-colored paper—drying time was exceptionally fast. Two, three seconds at most and the ink is bone dry. That might be particularly good news for left-handed writers.

I allowed the example in the second photo here to dry for an hour and then put it under running water for close to forty-five seconds, allowing it to lay submerged in cold water. At the end of that every word was perfectly legible. Let no one tell you Waterman ink is not waterproof.

In the end, chances are good I will go back to my favorite browns in the Iroshizuku and Maruzen families after using the Havana now in the Carene fountain pen. Waterman of course has never pretended to be a frontrunner in the production of ink, and the feeling now with the Havana ink is that the Waterman ink blenders have allowed it to be superseded by other inks in the brown spectrum.

Keep an eye out for a future Waterman Havana review from Peninkcillin. His review will most likely be more thorough than the one here.

Another Hobby Box

Always a thrill to receive a new issue of Japan’s stylish magazine for stationery goods, Shumi no bungu bako, or Stationery Hobby Box. The new issue, volume 18 was published in Tokyo on December 20 and a faithful friend immediately posted a shiny ink-scented copy off to me in Florida. True with each issue, the magazine is filled with articles and lush advertisements across the entire spectrum of pens, ink, paper and related products. Always a lot to read and see, but the main articles this time focus on the depth and variety of nibs. There are twelve different perspectives on nib types and shaping from pen makers and nib specialists. Gratifying to see that one of the experts consulted is Moriyama Nobuhiko, who crafted the nibs on three of my own fountain pens.

Seems like Sailor Jentle Ink always has a few new inks to introduce in these quarterly issues, and the December number is no different. Six new colors are offered and are shown in the second photograph on the right. One is a dark green called EPINAR, which Sailor likens to spinach; GRENATE is a deep red related to the color of pomegranate; ULTRA MARINE a purplish blue that Sailor sees as ocean blue; APRICOT is another bright orange in the line of Edelstein Mandarin; the other blue they call SKY HIGH and from the magazine sample appears to resemble anything but the blue of the sky; the pink called PECHE is not peachy at all, but a rather ordinary pink.

Montblanc has at last come out with something to replace the discontinued Racing Green. The third photo shows the new IRISH GREEN alongside the old Racing Green on the left. The ad assures readers that this new green is now available in Japan, but it will require a Monday phone call to the Millennium Montblanc store in Orlando to see if this ink has reached the US.

The bottom photo all-a-jumble with pencils, pens, clips, erasers and a dozen other things is a shot inside a small, popular stationery store called Traveler’s Stationery in Kichijôji, a area of western Tokyo. I include the photo only because it impressed me as an especially good composition that holds the eye.

Stationery Hobby Box is a thick magazine that always draws me back again and again to linger over the wealth of photos and information. Older issues alway serve as an excellent source of reference for fountain pen enthusiasts.

Hangin’ Out at the Mall

Driving west on I-4 for a little over an hour takes me to a giant shopping mall called Mall of the Millennia. Like most malls, this one too has what seems like a hundred stores on two levels, including three department stores (Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s and Neiman-Marcus), an Apple Store, Montblanc, the best of all hamburger restaurants, valet parking, and a million people. Visitors from Japan love this kind of thing, so we made a day of it this Monday.

Kumiko and Ikuko arrived at the mall with stars in their eyes, comfortable walking shoes on their feet and a stack of credit cards in hand. One minute inside the main entrance and there was a gasp on either side of me as the Ann Taylor store came into view. I didn’t need words to understand that it was time for me to leave them to it, while I went off to Apple and Montblanc. We agreed to meet later for lunch at Johnny Rockets.

The Apple Store at Millennia is design-wise nothing special, little more than a big rectangle with hardware on tables, and software, along with accessories on racks along the back half of the store; Genius Bar at the far end. It’s nowhere near as cool as the Manhattan glass cube store, or either of the two Tokyo stores, one of which features a glass spiral staircase leading to the upper floors, and the Ginza store which occupies its own multi-storied building. On visits to an Apple Store anywhere chances are you will find it crowded, but now with release of the iPad and the iPhone 4, you almost have to wait in line to get inside. To meet the surge of curious browser-buyers, Apple has increased the number of store personnel greatly. There were at least thirty blue-shirted employees in the Millennia store today, but unlike earlier days, not all of them are Mac professionals. They are all friendly and quick to help, but I talked at length with four of them today, and two impressed me as still learning the Mac architecture. No complaint intended. Mac professional or not, they are still good sales people and managed to separate me from almost $200.

Entering the Montblanc store, I crossed over the gates of heaven. It is the ONLY place within a hundred miles or more where I can handle and sample fountain pens and ink, and you can be certain I did that today. First on my mind was ink, and I had a deep down hope that the Millennia store would somehow have an unsold bottle of either Racing Green or Turquoise. But I got a quick no on that request. Still, there were unfamiliar colors for me to sample. Surprising to see that the bottles, boxes and color names are different from what you find in Japan. For example, what in Japan is called Deep Violet is called Lavender Violet here. The bottle in Japan holds 50ml, while the bottles I sampled today hold 60ml. The familiar rounded end opposite the cap is not rounded but square. It looks more old-fashioned, and that I like.

After playing around with half a dozen fountain pens and several colors of ink, I settled on an elegant, aristocratic-looking gray ink named Oyster Grey, and a twin to Montblanc’s Sepia, here called Toffee Brown. For reasons I haven’t figured out, the company is using different ink names here and in Japan. Samples of the Oyster Grey and Toffee Brown will be upcoming in a later post.

Johnny Rockets retro 50s hamburger restaurants are located in sixteen or seventeen countries, and thirty-one states in the US. For a long time it has been my favorite place for hamburgers, and since it is not in Japan, I wanted to introduce rocket burgers to my guests. The whole experience is a throwback to the kind of hamburger shops that were popular in the 1950s, and the burgers, though now offered in combinations wider than the lettuce, tomato & pickle hamburgers of long ago, have that great flavor I remember from high school, nights at Hoppers and curb service. Strange as it seems, we had a waiter today who grew up in Japan, so amidst all that 1950s Americana we ordered our lunch in Japanese.

After lunch we separated again and when next we came together I could hardly find the two ladies behind all the shopping bags. And so, with the trunk filled, we joined the late afternoon traffic on I-4 heading east.