Leigh Reyes. My Life As a Verb.

Stubs are the smartly-cut jackets of the pen world. They can make anyone (and their signatures) look better. Stubs make broad vertical strokes and thinner horizontal strokes. Unlike italic nibs, the corners of the stub nib are rounded, so upward strokes don’t bite into the paper.

A Stub Sampler

Here’s a sampler of my stubs. They’re all factory stubs, meaning they’ve not been modified from other nibs. The Bexley stub writes a tad dry compared to the Danitrio flexible stub, which gushes like a schoolgirl with a crush.

Stubs - writing samples

I hope to have a stub on my Waterman Carene before Christmas. I don’t think it will make it in time to address holiday cards, although if it did, I will consider that a fine gift.

December 3rd, 2008 | Tags: Bexley, Carene, Danitrio, sheaffer, Stipula, stub, Visconti, Waterman | Category: Fountain Pen | Comments (1)

Sky Smiley

Jupiter and Venus are the eyes, and the smile is the crescent moon. I hope everyone who saw it tonight smiled back.

December 2nd, 2008 | Tags: Jupiter, moon, sky, smiley, Venus | Category: Internal Monologue | Comments (2)

A friend sent me a surprise in the mail. It was a Frankensnork. There are at least five different Sheaffer Snorkels in this Sheaffer Snorkel, and it makes me smile every time I pick it up and write with it.

(On the permutations of “Franken:” in my line of work, we’re used to cobbling together pleasant-looking wholes from parts of images. “I like her hair there, but only the sides. Can we take the front from this other image here?” The aim is perfection. In Frankenpens, the aim is more likely to be, “I’ve got this great nib/cap/barrel, it’s a shame to leave it lying around unused and unloved.”)

Frankensnork

The Sheaffer Snorkel fills using, what else, a snorkel: twisting the end piece extrudes a metal tube underneath the nib. Plunge the metal tube into your choice of ink, twist the end piece the other way, and the pen fills with ink. My friend walked me through the process via IM, as I’d never had a Snorkel before, and I was worried about accidentally extracting blood from my thumb.

Frankensnork, uncapped

The Frankensnork is a one-of-a-kind pen, and it certainly has a rare nib: a flexible stub, marked FS5 on its underside. Sheaffer rarely made flexible nibs, as far as I know. That it’s a stub as well adds to the rarity.

Frankensnork, nib

Frankensnork, nib marking

This vintage stub’s stroke is thinner compared to a modern Sheaffer factory stub. It widens with pressure on the downstroke. (I’ll post a side-by-side sample of this stub compared to the only modern flexible stub I know that’s available without modification, the one from Danitrio.)

Frankensnork, flexible stub writing sample

Rarity is a thrill, but what matters more to me is the generosity of spirit behind this gift. Perhaps fountain pens, and the shared love for them, do take us back to a kinder time and place.

December 1st, 2008 | Tags: flexible, frankenpen, sheaffer, snorkel, stub | Category: Fountain Pen | Comments (5)

“You do seem to be a blur. Moving all the time emotionally and physically. Maybe men only see where you’ve just been, have no idea where you are, and are clueless about where you’re going to.”

November 24th, 2008 | Category: Internal Monologue | Comments (2)

This was my first Danitrio. I haven’t seen another pen similar to it, so perhaps it never passed the prototype stage. The entire pen is ebonite, except the feed. The barrel features sterling silver inserts: one engraved with a phoenix, the other with a dragon.

I’ve had it a couple of years, and it shows. It’s scuffed in places, and it used to be shinier.

Danitrio Dragon and Phoenix

It’s big, but not heavy. The girth of the barrel makes it comfortable to grip. I do hold my pen in an unusual way, with my hand higher on the barrel and my thumb hiding under my forefinger, so this observation might not hold true for others.

Danitrio - detail

It came with a flexible extra-fine nib, originally. I had it replaced with a flexible stub.

Danitrio flexible stub nib

The ink is J. Herbin’s Gris Nuage, and the writing sample is on Rhodia paper.

November 22nd, 2008 | Tags: Danitrio, dragon, flexible, phoenix, stub | Category: Danitrio | Comments (2)

I was freelancing. It was the first time in my advertising career that I’d ever done that. It was 1995 and I had resigned from Basic Advertising in a principled huff, in the way only young people confident of prospects can, but I still needed to earn my keep. So I was in Ogilvy writing copy for a real estate brochure. With a gel pen.

I received a page. (Remember those?) “Call ARM’s office.” ARM was Mr. Mercado, and his triple-letter acronym was right on top of the list of triple-lettered management in the agency I’d just left. Sitting in front of him, listening to him explain that oh, the FCB office in Jakarta is looking for a creative director, and I thought of you, so I’m giving your name to this guy (who turned out to really be a Guy), and, well, good luck with the interview - I didn’t know he had just changed my life.

My book wasn’t great. The interview was short. “So how old did you say you were again?” “Twenty-five.” “We’ll say you’re twenty-eight.”

So began a life of planes, sambal and green chilies, dreaming in another language, batik bedspreads and boiled wool jackets. Jakarta was on the cusp of change, and two years later army tanks would be playing bump car with the Toyota Kijangs on the streets, and students would shout Merdeka while they tagged the walls with red and white paint. But not yet.

What they say about expatriate life - and who are “they,” really, that anonymous mass of wisdom we can’t help but refer to when we lack the data but feel the truth - is mostly what I lived, but not quite. I worked hard, but nowhere nearly to the bone as I do now. I made friends, and many of those friendships faded, but many remained. (Being in touch with two of those friends, after more than a decade, triggered this blog entry.) I became used to feeling temporary, but found out for myself the meaning of “home is where you make it.”

I arrived a silly girl with a gel pen, and departed a silly girl with a Montblanc 149. What did I know? I wasn’t even twenty-eight.

November 22nd, 2008 | Tags: 1995, FCB, Jakarta, MontBlanc | Category: Internal Monologue | Comments (2)

Please send me text messages. Joel grabbed the ending notes of the new Star Trek trailer, did his usual magic with Garage Band, and now I have a new message tone.

Here it is.

November 21st, 2008 | Tags: message tone, ringtone, Star Trek | Category: Geekery | Leave a comment

Back in the day, you didn’t have to change your pen if you became bored with how it wrote. You just bought another nib. Vintage Esterbrook pens are affordable and easy to find, and offer new-to-vintage fountain pen collectors the joy of interchangeable nibs. (Esterbrook.net is the online destination for Estie information, pictures and more.)

Esterbrook Nib Sampler

I managed to acquire several uncommon nibs, including a 9128 (Flexible Extra Fine) and a 9284 (Signature Stub). The most common Esterbrook nib is the 2668, an all-purpose medium. Well, you know me. I am adamantly anti-medium.

Green Esterbrook

The nibs screw in and out easily. I think I have to replace this Estie’s sac, though.

Esterbrook nib (showing threads)

These nibs were the workhorses of their era: steel nibs, not gold; and no iridium tipping, which meant they would eventually wear down from daily use. The previous generation’s disposable is now our collectible. That only seems fair.

November 18th, 2008 | Tags: 9128, 9284, Esterbrook, flexible, signature, stub | Category: Fountain Pen | Leave a comment

The “Approaching Advertising Through Poetry” presentation is available for download until November 11, 2008. Just click the “Raw School” tab on top.

November 6th, 2008 | Category: Advertising, Poetry | Comments (3)