Among my many weaknesses is my unrequited love for fountain pens and typewriters. After delving into some specialized websites, frequenting spaces where people go into their own soliloquies praising Clipper Smith Coronas or debating the superiority of German-made machines, I thought I’d blog about them a bit myself too. Unlike typewriters, fountain pens can offer quality even when they are not made by world-famous brands. For example, TWISBI is a great FP brand that non enthusiasts may have never heard of but whose pens are really very good. On the contrary, I have a hard time finding good things to say about Faber-Castell pens. Do not ask me why, I am not maligning the brand, but I have never had an out-of-this-world experience with their fountain pens.
Typewriters are a different beast, with fewer options that guarantee full performance in my view. True, there is the fact that typewriters are no longer manufactured around the world in a technical sense. That alone does not only make finding a true gem difficult, but also means that — once you find one — there may be a significant amount of maintenance and tinkering required before you can almost slide your fingers across the resistant keys and experience any pleasure from that. At the other end of your visual fields lies the pleasure/frustration ratio of skipped keystrokes, malfunctioning margin releases, hard platens and hole-punching typeslugs.
My favorite brands? For now I think I’ll let them be. I’d like to prepare a lengthier post discussion on those one of these days.