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Troublemaker inks seems to be be everywhere lately – new dealers in the United States and the addition of several new inks as well. I’m showing off a couple of these new inks here – Butterfly Dream and Polar Lights.
Troublemaker packages their ink in 60mL dark plastic bottles. I have found some variation in price, but you can find it at Vanness for $24 (for shimmer inks) or $16.50 (for non shimmer inks).
Now for the inks themselves!
The base ink color for Butterfly Dream is an avocado green of medium saturation while Polar Lights is a dark purple-grey. Each ink shows some shading but nothing dramatic. I’ve seen a touch of sheen in each as well.
The two inks really stand out when the light is at the right angle. Butterfly Dream has a blue/purple shimmer and Polar Lights has a turquoise or green shimmer.
Polar Lights is a darker ink than Robert Oster Sterling Silver, but the two are close.
Polar Lights on Midori MD paper:
Midori MD paper at a different angle:
Polar Lights on Cosmo Air Light 83gsm paper:
Cosmo Air Light paper at a different angle:
And Tomoe River (52gsm TR7) paper:
Tomoe River paper at a different angle:
Butterfly Dream is my favorite of these two inks and is incredibly close to KWZ’s Prairie Green (Galen Leather exclusive ink). Prairie Green has lots of gold shimmer, however, while Butterfly Dream is a blue/purple.
Butterfly Dream on Tomoe River (52gsm TR7) paper:
Tomoe River paper at a different angle:
Butterfly Dream on Midori MD paper:
Midori MD paper at a different angle:
Butterfly Dream on Cosmo Air Light 83gsm paper:
And Cosmo Air Light paper at a different angle:
I have kept a pen (a TWSBI Go pen, medium nib) inked with Butterfly Dream for the past two weeks with no sign of blockage or slow ink flow so far. TWSBIs are a favorite of mine with sparkle inks since the feed has a slightly wider channel than other pen feeds.
What is your take on the new Troublemaker inks? Will these be on your to-buy list?
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were purchased by me for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
The post Ink Review: Troublemaker 2022 New Inks appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.
(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.
Rocky Bergen makes papercraft models of vintage computers (previously). With international shipping rates being what they are, I stand a much better chance of getting this Amstrad CPC on my desk than the real thing! Each machine has its own page, with links to downloadable papercraft patterns. — Read the rest
From Burls Art on youtube: See how a shovel is transformed into an electric guitar. The video shows the entire process of the rusty old shovel undergoing an epic transformation into a fanatic sounding instrument. I've seen plenty of cigar box guitars before, but never would I have thought to make one from a shovel. — Read the rest
Ever wondered what the breakfast routine of a mad scientist looks like? From Joseph's Machines: a breakfast feeding machine that uses a conveyor belt and kooky moving parts to feed the user a delicious 5 course breakfast. Before the machine begins feeding the breakfast, a rubber hand slaps the user awake for mealtime. — Read the rest
(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.
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We may prefer our coffee strong and unadulterated, but a coffee maker itself doesn’t have to abide by such strict conventions of caffeinated design. Benjamin Hubert’s design agency LAYER takes on a softer geometric approach to the kitchen appliance with a gentle palette and tactile functionality designed to keep simplicity at the forefront of every cup brewed.
The Breeze is a softly modern coffee brewing appliance conceived for Korean food corporation Dongsuh. While the design firm attributes its mild modernity to the influence of mid-century design language, it’s also hard not to recognize some semblance to Naoto Fukasawa’s line of kitchen appliances for MUJI. All share a conscious attention to detail – “micro considerations” – each conceived not just to improve functionality, but also aware of the importance of designing objects imagined to visually and spatially cohabitate within a domestic interior peacefully.
The Breeze is composed of a simple arrangement of block forms, with a head that cantilevers from the body and an adjustable drip tray that doubles as a platform for a glass or coffee mug.
The resulting compact design offers an almost PEZ candy-like charm, inviting a touch across all of its surfaces. The coffeemaker’s concise and narrow profile is accentuated by a tall water tank and a ridged wrap-around base finished in matte white, charcoal, and light pastel pink, while the Breeze’s controls are equally simple, a tactile iconographic interface comprising just four backlit buttons.
No word yet about the machine’s proficiency at preparing a proper cup of coffee, but like a good single origin roast, the Breeze’s softened simplicity already appeals to one of our senses nary any additives.
With controversial AI creations around so many corners, it’s refreshing to see an analogue project like DREAMHOUSES come along. Thought up by Fort Makers and stemming from the idea of vivid pandemic-induced dreams, the project is an online exhibition of abstract fantasy homes. Six artists and designers created their own “dream house” before being paired up with writers, who then used the creations as a prompt for an accompanying text work. The catch was that participants could only use materials that were available in their actual homes. The result is a digital neighborhood that explores the idea of what a home is to the creators.
“The past few years have forced us to radically reconsider our relationships with our homes, coming to realize that it is where our imagination comes together with reality: we create spaces in our own image while making sure they also serve our quotidian needs,” says Fort Makers Co-Founder Nana Spears. “With this project, we wanted to see what would happen if the artist is free to eschew the practical part of this equation and create a space of pure fantasy,” adds Co-Founder Noah Spencer.
CHIAOZZA X Janelle Zara
“Parallel House,” created by the duo at CHIAOZZA, features a horseshoe-style layout of two houses. With an all-white exterior and interior full of brightly-colored objects, the design takes advantage of indoor/outdoor living spaces. Entirely modeled of construction paper, this modern piece of architecture is ready for the California desert.
Janelle Zara wrote “Imagining Life Inside CHIAOZZA’s Dreamhouse, Which I’m Sure Exists in LA” in response. “In my dream house, time is an illusion, a social construct; here adherence to time is 100 percent a choice. There are no clocks, no scheduled zoom meetings, only the movement of light and shadow as the sun traces its path along the sky. Throughout the year, from day to day, this movement is never fixed; the day stretches and contracts according to the seasons.” Read it in full here.
CHIAOZZA X Janelle Zara
CHIAOZZA X Janelle Zara
Harry Nuriev X Drew Zeiba
Harry Nuriev’s immersive work likes to blur the line between actual and virtual realities, so it makes sense that “Off The Road” would follow suit. The 3D rendering uses his signature cobalt blue to highlight a canopy bed set in a green meadow. Once the sky dims, an otherworldly light of its own turns on.
In “Sense Index Zero,” Drew Zeiba dives into what we feel like when alone in the comfort of our homes and the color blue. “One can feel blue; blue is not something one wants to feel. In Maggie Nelson’s obsessive catalogue of the color, Bluets, she writes, “Loneliness is solitude with a problem.” Soot lands on my tongue as a reminder that there are things I cannot control, that home is not the shape of a globe, that there is no edge. The world escapes. I am beneath a sky of my own making as words crystalize carbon gray against my teeth. I shed description: I become primary.” Read it in full here.
Harry Nuriev X Drew Zeiba
Laurie Simmons X Natasha Stagg
Artist Laurie Simmons, explorer of nostalgia, gender, and consumerism, created “Sparkle House.” A sparsely furnished Victorian mansion of sorts, its personality comes from the patterned textiles used throughout its rooms – including the sparkling rugs that come to life when hit with light.
Undeniably a great setting, Natasha Stagg wrote “Nowhere to sit” in accompaniment. The short story tells of a group of roommates, their various personalities, and the dynamics that exist in such situations. “The couch was so unlike the image when it arrived. All of the roommates looked at it, delivered and out of the box, the first new piece of furniture they had bought as a group. It was supposed to be what brought the room together, a luxurious blue velvet thing. They should have known, they all thought, that cheap velvet would look it, giving away more than what their second-hand or inherited furniture did.” Read it in full here.
Laurie Simmons X Natasha Stagg
Laurie Simmons X Natasha Stagg
Laurie Simmons X Natasha Stagg
Noah Spencer X Philippa Snow
“Sunshine Daydream” was brought to life by Fort Makers Co-Founder, wood sculptor, and painter Noah Spencer. The tiny mixed-media hut features a single unfurnished room that can move across the accompanying desert landscape with you – almost like a pet.
Critic and essayist Philippa Snow wrote “Ithaca” in extension.
“Ithaca, whose name was actually Jane, had dropped out of her Creative Writing MFA to start a new life in the desert, where she’d planned to write a novel, drop some acid, and behave exactly like the kind of white girl who called things her ‘spirit animal.'” Read it in full here.
Noah Spencer X Philippa Snow
Noah Spencer X Philippa Snow
Marcel Alcalá X Whitney Mallett
Populated with non-binary figures, Marcel Alcalá’s “Corner Studio Girlies” uses glazed ceramic figures against a cardboard city painted red to share alternative expressions of queerness. It was photographed in the corner of Alcalá’s studio, which is also the piece’s namesake.
Whitney Mallet explored the hectic, playful yet dark, “Corner Studio Girlies” and wrote #Justiceforglitter. The piece revolves around Mariah Carey, 9/11, and the movie Glitter. “And while I’m not suggesting that sabotaging the vehicle intended to catapult Carey into cinema stardom played a role in Al Qaeda’s attack schedule, it has been documented that Osama Bin Laden’s preferred five-octave-range songstress was Whitney Houston.” Read it in full here.
Marcel Alcalá X Whitney Mallett
Marcel Alcalá X Whitney Mallett
Marcel Alcalá X Whitney Mallett
Samuel Harvey X Tash Nikol
Like something out of a fairytale, ceramicist Sam Harvey created a single tower. Covered in light blue shingles and waving a flag reading “having no idea as to what it all meant he chose to stay home,” your imagination just might run wild.
Poet, writer, and curator Rash Nikol interpreted the tower into words, perhaps as a link to another world, in “Waiting Room for Spirits.” “the wise ones speak of the spirit house / here and there / our ancestors speak of a place there / a holding room for spirits / outside of skin / not far from clouds.” Read it in full here.
Samuel Harvey X Tash Nikol
Samuel Harvey X Tash Nikol
Samuel Harvey X Tash Nikol
To learn more about DREAMHOUSES, visit dreamhouses.fortmakers.com.
(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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