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(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)
You don’t need to talk to Brad Owens for long to find out how seriously he takes the humble pen, and the idea of making one. “You can take something inanimate and, with some skill and attention to detail, turn it into something that created society as we know it.” Even as a teenager he liked having good pens and good paper, although he hadn’t heard of fountain pens.
A classically trained trumpeter who set out to be a music educator, Owens experienced burnout in that field and ended up with his current demanding day job as a teacher in the legal field. “I talk for a living.” Pen making serves as his stress relief. It began when he looked around for a side business and tried woodworking, and found he had a talent for it; but selling pieces was very difficult unless they were commissioned. At about the same time, he heard of fountain pens and found Brian Goulet’s videos on YouTube. His interest was piqued, and he bought a couple of inexpensive introductory pens from Goulet Pens.
Soon after that, Owens heard of pen shows, and found out there was one in Atlanta, not far from his home. He and his wife attended, and wandered into the room where the independent makers were concentrated, ending up at Jonathon Brooks’ Carolina Pen Company table. He bought a pen from Jonathon, the first time he’d seen kitless pens, and ultimately contacted him to ask for help getting started making them. Jonathon said, “Come on up to the house and I’ll show you.” After a day or two, Owens had made a usable pen, and was smitten. A Kickstarter helped him get over the cost of entry into the craft. He sold his first pen in December 2019 – “Not the best time to start a pen business! There were few shows in 2020, and pen makers weren’t getting to the customers. It was the customers who were the ones getting the word out.”
When it came time to have company and model names, Owens thought first of gods and goddesses because of his love of mythology. A number of other makers had already gone that route, so he chose to name his early models after ancient Greek writers. “Creativity in mythology is almost like pen making – there is a mysterious feel you have to get, and it can’t be taught, you have to learn it yourself.”
Owens has slowly been evolving the diversity of his models. The Prime was first, just a straight shape, and the natural progression was to start making some more tapered silhouettes. The vintage lizard-skin cellulose acetate inspired his recently premiered Vintage Series (VS) pens, paying homage to classic fountain pen styles. These models are likely to mix contemporary handmade resins with the hard-to-find lizard skin, and have traditional style clips. The cellulose acetate is not heat-tolerant, and will begin to smell like vinegar if it gets too hot, so extra care is needed in drilling and polishing to avoid wasting it. Even with his increased interest in mixing materials, there is no temptation to make his own – “if someone has already said it so well, why try to say it again?” – but his wife is beginning to express some interest in the art.
Inspiration for Owens is an internal feedback loop. “Inspiration leads to inspiration. I continue to try to get to a level of satisfaction with what I’m making –to finish a thing and feel like it is really good, and be satisfied with it.” Of course, “There’s only so much you can do with a piece of plastic,” so there need to be small ways your “signature” is on what you make. Personally, he doesn’t like square edges, so over time his pens have evolved to have more small bevels and rounded corners.
When asked about a favorite pen he didn’t make, Owens holds up a large tray of maker pens. “I have a lot of favorite pens I didn’t make.” Standouts in his mind, for craftsmanship and detail, are those made by Eric Sands and Ryan Krusac, as well as the urushi work of Jonathon Brooks. “When I see something better than what I did, it inspires me to do better. I like my maker pens better than my Montblanc 149 because I know what goes into them.”
Owens’ other pen endeavor, the penmaking podcast As The Pen Turns, has been going on since fall of 2020 and is up to forty episodes as of this writing. Through Instagram chats with Jason Miller (they still have not met in person), the idea evolved until they just decided to jump in. “It came out of a desire to inspire the community of pen makers. Information about making pens should be available to anyone who wants to try it out. We wanted an outlet to talk about our pen making.” The first few episodes talked through the pen maker’s toolkit, and they interview a maker (of pens, blanks, or related supplies) every other episode. After a year, they were joined as hosts by Jonathon Brooks. They are closing in on a thousand downloads per episode, and are clearly the world’s most popular (maybe only?) pen making podcast.
The podcast website boasts an extensive directory of links to pen makers, material makers, and nib grinders. A community has bloomed around the podcast, through the annual “Super Most Awesome Pen of the Year (SMAPOTY)” and “Blankety-Blank” awards, voted on by the makers themselves, as well as a secret-santa pen exchange. A number of makers have found inspiration and encouragement in the podcast and related activities. “If I help another pen maker out, it helps me out.”
Despite all the hours working alone in the shop, Owens doesn’t think small when talking about what he does. “I want to think I’m contributing to something bigger than me. Preserving the written word is very important. The next great writer could get one of our pens and write something amazing.”
Brad Owens’ work can be seen at the Atlanta Pen Show, as well as at MythicPens.com and @MythicPens on Instagram.
(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)
For many people, the path that leads them to make things begins before they were born. Greg Hardy, of Hardy Penwrights, spent time with his brothers in their grandfather’s workshop starting at age 6 or 7, making and fixing things. As a teenager he began carving wood and making jewelry, with a lot of inspiration from an art teacher who was skilled in and enthusiastic about Celtic art forms and uncial calligraphy. “He was the first person I ever saw who used a fountain pen – an Osmiroid that he never cleaned and ended up having to use as a dip pen.”
Despite coming into possession of his great-grandmother’s 1930s Wearever fountain pen at the age of 12 (which he is just beginning to restore), Hardy didn’t move to making pens until ten years ago, when a stressful job as a school superintendent meant he needed to spend some non-working time working with his hands, “a daily challenge to keep my head from spinning. I wanted to apply things I knew how to do in new ways.” He retired five years ago from that job and cut back to merely “seventy hours in the shop” – by which time the shop included five lathes and his son Gavin as fulltime staff. Nowadays, he generally heads into the shop at four or five in the morning, and by lunch time he’s put in an eight hour day and is ready for a nap (he’s a big believer in naps).
What sets Hardy pens apart from some others is the incorporation of metal work, whether it’s a simple rollstop, a beautiful clip, or complex all-over design. “I think every maker tends to move to some area of specialization – for some it’s casting materials or incorporating wood. In our case it’s the metal work.” He chooses a word that echoes Adolphus Smith: “My joy is the metal work.” Having studied jewelry making as a teenager, it quickly became clear to him that there were many aspects of a pen that could be done with metal. “I was no longer limited to a single detail in metal art. I could have many details that formed a series of thoughts or a bigger idea. I now had space to tell a story.”
Hardy Penwrights Secret Garden.
In 2021, his Secret Garden pen won Best Metal Mastery recognition in the Pen World Magazine Reader’s Choice Awards, and a more recent pen is inspired by the many legends surrounding Glastonbury Abbey in southern England. Even a “simple” rollstop like the one on their Traveller model took a lot of research and development, not only to get the weight right but to test that it didn’t roll down his handmade writing desk.
Hardy Penwrights Glastonbury Abbey.
Inspiration? “It would be easier to say what doesn’t inspire me.” Constant reading about art, music, anthropology, theology, and philosophy produces a constant stream of ideas for pens, such as the Glastonbury pen or the pen based on the Scots legend of the selchie. “I’m pretty easily inspired.” Hardy’s favorite pen he didn’t make, a 1937 Parker Vacumatic, provided inspiration for his Retro model. One thing that doesn’t inspire him is a big spread of available inked pens. “We already do a lot of pen washing in the shop, and that’s enough, so I only have two pens inked at once.”
Being in the far north of New York, south of Buffalo, does not in the least take the Hardy shop off the beaten track. “Everyone has sought out another maker to get help at some point, and most of us are quick to help.” Hardy cites Jason Olson of Write Turnz and Troy Breeding of Country Made as early sources of help for him, and intends to be a “good citizen” of the pen community when asked for assistance by others. Most people nowadays come to him with questions about metal work, having already learned to make pens. Rich Paul of River City Pens came and spent a few days learning to do some work with metal; on one of those days, Tim Crowe of Turnt Pen Company joined them, and Rich, Tim, Greg, and Gavin turned out a run of pens together, followed by pizza and beer.
Hardy Penwrights Traveller.
Crowe got his start with some lessons from Hardy, who knew his dad. “When Tim first called me, I thought I was talking to his father also named Tim. I bought my first guitar from Tim’s dad’s music store, and when he went back to school, he student taught in my high school history classroom.” While all pen makers cite close connections with other makers, this has to be one of the tightest. Hardy’s new model for this year honors the company’s tenth anniversary, and is made from a custom resin pour by Crowe.
Despite the joy of creating beautiful pens, that’s not the end-all for Hardy. “I love pens, but I love more what people do with pens. Someone in a workshop builds hammers, and people build cathedrals with them.”
Greg Hardy’s work can be seen at pen shows in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, St Louis, DC, Boston, Detroit, Ohio, and perhaps Raleigh, as well as online at Hardy Penwrights and @hardypenwrights on Instagram.
Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.
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(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)
It’s not often you ask a pen maker, “How long have you been making pens?” and the answer is: “Nearly three decades.”
Adolphus Smith, the man behind Darailpenz, was working for a furniture company when he saw a perfume atomizer someone had hand turned, and he thought, “I could do that.” Soon there was a Jet Mini wood lathe in his garage in Ohio, and he was making atomizers, bowls, furniture, and also kit pens. In the absence of the multitude of online resources available today, there was a lot of trial and error and learning by doing. However, he persisted to the point that he needed a company name for his work; he started with his first name, but then settled on Darail, his middle name.
Initially, the materials available for making pens were limited – most kit pens featured wood, and there was not the range of colorful materials available now. About seven years ago, he was introduced to kitless pens by a young maker who said, “Once you do these you’ll never go back.” He acquired the necessary taps and dies and found guidance through YouTube videos of makers turning kitless pens. Both kit and kitless pens remain important to his portfolio, however. First, “My wife likes kit pens.” But in addition, he has found that people new to pens or intimidated by fountain pens can still walk up to his table at a show and buy a rollerball or ballpoint kit pen and have a good variety of attractive affordable pens to choose from.
In addition to the universe of available materials, he particularly enjoys turning soapstone and alabaster, using the same tools as for the acrylics – as long as they are kept sharp and in good working order. Soapstone presents a favorite challenge. “It’s soft, you can’t rush it, you can be almost done and it will shatter.” His stone pens usually are sold before he can display them at a pen show.
Although he has dabbled in casting his own blanks, “it doesn’t call out to me.” He has a son, however, who enjoys casting and has been making blanks for his pens. And following what calls out to him keeps him happy with what he does. “To me it’s relaxation. I don’t look at it as a job.”
He finds constant inspiration in his materials. “The nature of each blank is what inspires me.” He enjoys working with celluloid, although it can be finicky, because of the challenge it offers. Which blank gets turned at any given time comes down to inspiration as he looks through a collection of blanks spanning fifteen years. Even beyond the fact that a given blank will make a different pen every time it’s turned, he will sometimes turn a blank on a slight angle to get a different look. Before cutting a blank he looks at it to decide which area should become a pen’s section, cap, and barrel. His philosophy is to “let the material talk to you.”
When asked about a favorite pen, Smith thinks immediately of one of his own that got away. “It was a Conway Stewart blank with blue, green, and purple. I put it on the table and said, ‘If they don’t buy it I’ll keep it,’ and it sold right away.” He’s still looking for more of that material. (Anybody have any? 😊 )
In search of a new challenge, he has ordered materials to make custom clips, to learn how it’s done and see if it brings that necessary joy. He’s also teaching some of his thirteen grandchildren to work in his shop (including young Darail), and he plans to begin naming pen models after his grandchildren.
Smith is willing to invest more time in custom orders, and is working with his son to improve his online presence. He intends to make and post some videos, especially of turning his stone pens.
When he teaches pen turning in his workshop, which is still outfitted with his Jet Mini lathe, “I tell them to keep it a joy. I don’t watch sports, my joy is in the shop.”
Adolphus Smith’s work can be seen on Instagram, at his website, and in his Etsy shop. He has a full show schedule this year, and you can visit him at shows in California, Baltimore, Arkansas, Chicago, St Louis, DC, New York, and possibly Atlanta, San Francisco, and, in the fall, London.
Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.
Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!
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