The number of sites devoted to pens has been growing at a furious pace over the past few years. Some useful sites are maintained by clubs and are listed under that heading. Most sites, however, belong to individual pen enthusiasts, and as one might expect, are a somewhat mixed bag. Historical information is nearly always taken from other sources, and usually contains more than a few errors; links to other sites, however, are often quite up-to-date, along with information on shows, local club meetings, and online chat sessions.
Internet Pen Resources: Craig Lewis has been compiling encyclopedic lists of pen resources online for some time, and now Tamer Oszu has put them on his website. If you can't find it here, it probably isn't to be found.
Rick Conner's Penoply: Nicely laid-out and entertaining, much good basic vintage fountain pen info oriented towards the user-collector. At last viewing, much of the site hadn't been updated since 1998 (though the site was moved in fall of 2002), so not the place for current events or fresh links.
Pier Gustafson's: Home page of the celebrated artist, calligrapher, and stylophile; take a look here for samples of some of the most imaginative and attractive business cards you've ever seen, along with many examples of Pier's distinctively anthropomorphic pen renditions.
Bill Acker's: Thumbnail histories of selected pen companies, pictures, pen show information, links.
Commercial websites that list vintage pens are plentiful, but few offer much in the way of useful information. Some notable exceptions are listed below:
Battersea Pen Home: Based just outside London, the Pen Home maintains an illustrated archive of pens and pencils that have appeared in their catalog. This is particularly useful for British, German, and Italian brands, which are otherwise rather underrepresented in online references. Follow the Pens for Sale link, then click on Archive .
Greg Clark's: Primarily devoted to sales of the ink sample book, a volume full of actual ink-on-paper examples covering a vast range of manufacturers and their various colors. Also miscellaneous ink info of all sorts.
Penbid: Not recommended as an auction site (and may not be in business much longer), but for now hosts a series of fine articles by leading pen expert L. Michael Fultz.
Jim Gaston's: This bandwidth-intensive site is not the easiest to navigate (and beware the background music on the main page!), but it does contain a fine selection of original vintage pen advertisements.
Copyright © 1997-2008 David Nishimura. All rights reserved