The PENguin Blog

In the course of my wanderings through pendom I have seen a number of workshops, from the exquisite workspaces created by Richard Binder and David Parisi to the creative caverns of Victor Chen, Jim Marshall and Osman Sümer. My own space cannot compare to any of them. We like in a small house at the northeasternmost reaches of California’s Silicon Valley, where even in these hard times the smallest house can approach seven figures in cost. Moreover, my small office must also do its duty to my academic work, such as it is. Therefore, pens, tools, parts, shipping supplies all vie for space with books, papers and the like. Thus all my pen stuff must be storable. This includes my “photo studio,” which lives in a nether corner of the office tucked between bookshelf, inventory box, and file cabinet; and when it comes out it gets set up in the dining room, often to Sharon’s patient dismay. Recently, I undertook the largest update ever to the site, one which is still going on. Despite the fa...

As many of you know we have been closed for the past five months while I have been teaching and travelling abroad. I’m back, and I brought with me more than one hundred new pens. We now have our largest inventory of pens ever. To celebrate, we are re-opening with our biggest sale ever. For the rest of June and July there will be neither shipping nor handling charges on any pens shipped to the United States. Buyers outside the US will enjoy savings similar to those at home. Purchases over $400.00 will enjoy a 10% discount. Or if you buy two pens at any price, the pen of lesser value will be discounted 20%. Also, watch for our new specials of the week, marked by a gold star. These pens, often, but not always, premium or limited editions, will be at significant discount. But only for a week. The pen of your dreams may become more affordable, but only if you visit often.

So, what did I get in England and Germany? In truth some interesting stuff, most of it as you will see, for the website. It will be a few days before I can get all this stuff checked, restored as necessary, listed and photographed. But for now, here are some teaser photos, not very good ones, yesterday was my worst day for jet lag, but here they are: And, so what did I get for myself? Less than I did for you guys, but at least two were spectacular Pelikan finds, the short captop tortoise 101 and the three piece M/K/D tortoise 800 set. Before this one, which has a great backstory, there were no known tortoise pencils. So I am stoked. And there were a few English pens most notably an antique (read rmhr) Onoto 1850, a massive pen with a super nib. I also fed my interest in large German safeties with a RicLei number 6 and my fondness for Italian celluloid with a rosso verde large faceted “Duchessa,” which I think was one of many OMAS sub-brands. The array of pens for the website The ...

Finally starting to settle in. We arrived in San Francisco at 2:25, a scant three hours after our departure from London at 11:35 Sunday morning. (Yeah, right!) Despite the fact that I had arisen early hoping to be tired enough to sleep through the flight, that was not to be. The family in the row ahead of us were active enough to draw the notice of all around them. Having gotten home, we began tearing into our suitcases, unpacking, sorting, laundering, finding places for new things, you know the drill. By the time we called for pizza (Mission Pizza in Fremont may have the best pizzas I haave ever had) we would actually rather have just crawled off to bed. What kept us going were the greetings we got from Anna and Percy (the cat). We half expected Percy to have forgotten us, but to the contrary he has been our constant companion day and night since our return. Anna has managed to tear herself away from our presence. By Tuesday morning when these images were taken, both Sharon and I...

We arose in Kent around 5:30 Sunday morning ready, more or less, to go to Heathrow airport, the start of our journey home. I think I have mentioned before that by training our friend Ray Atkinson is a London cab driver, not one of those who drive the thousands of mini-cabs that swarm through London like so many insects. Ray is the real deal, having spent two years of his youth on a motorbike learning the backstreets and by-ways of London as well as the locations of all the city’s major sites. If you want to see this kindly man sneer in contempt just mention SatNav (global positioning navigation devices). Ray was, of course, going to take us to the airport on that gray, rainy Sunday morning. It was the darkest, wettest dawn in several weeks and as we loaded up in the rain he suggested that perhaps we had packed up our weather to take back home. The previous fortnight had been absolutely glorious as only England can be when the weather, all too infrequently smiles on them. I assum...

Tomorrow we take off for home, but made one last excursion with Sylvia, Ray worked today, to Down House, the home of Charles Darwin for the last forty years of his life until his death in 1882. In a previous life, I actually managed a historic house museum, San Francisco Heritage’s Haas-Lilienthal House, and have retained both a professional and amateur interest in historic house museums, and I have to say that this house, operated by English Heritage, is one of the best I’ve toured. I would say that for anyone in the London area (the house is in Kent) this is a must see. I j snapped just a few photos, including a few interior shots under the mistaken impression that non-flash photography was allowed. Oops, sorry! Model of the HMS Beagle The family sitting room, though he often had experiments running here, too. The study where he worked and wrote, including the Origin . He did not write at a desk, so note the writing table that spanned his armchair where he composed. The gardens we...

For me, before there were pens there was politics. By my thirteenth birthday I was fascinated by the political process that led to the rise of John F. Kennedy, and in high school I was active in and a local officer of the Californai Federated Young Democrats. In college I studied politics as first a political science and then a political history major. My interest and activity extended through the late 1980s and into the 1990s. So, it has been interesting to be in the UK for the past four and a half months during a period of political instability that now looks as if it might result in the parliamentary (but not electoral) replacement of an unelected prime minister by another unelected prime minister. Parliamentary politics can be complex. For those who know the system, no prime minister is ever elected in the sense that a president is elected, even indirectly, by the people. In the UK folks vote for members of a party who have selected their leader. Should that party achieve a maj...

Catcher in the Rye No big story here. On Thursday both Ray and Sylvia were able to clear their day and take us out to see Rye, which is part of what is locally called 1066 country, the area around Hastings, site of the Norman invasion. Located too far inland to be an active port today, seven hundred years ago Rye was one of the cinque maritime ports and was important enough to have been invaded and burned by the French in the mid 14th century. Only later was it returned to English control and became one of the bases for the rise of English maritime power in the late 16th century. While we only spent a few hours there, it was long enough to enjoy a brief walk through the town, have a lovely lunch in Thomas Fletcher’s house, and for me to get a hot(?) lead on a possible source for pens. As you walk up , you are treated to this view The approach to the church, the Fletcher house, where we had some great crab sandwiches and even better lemon and lime/raspberry tarts for dessert. The real...