I found myself buying quite a bit of stationery recently. The nice thing is, even premium stationery lines are cheap compared to computers or photography, my other capital-intensive hobbies. A top of the line solid sterling silver pen like the Waterman Edson LE will not break the $1000 barrier, when you can’t even buy a handbag for that price from most luxury brands.

I spent four years in a Catholic school in Versailles, a very conservative city, where we were not allowed to use ball point pens because they deform handwriting. I used Sheaffer pens back then, and all the way to college. When I started working, I splurged on an Edson Blue, but what with computers and email, seldom got to use it.

There is a kind of fashion phenomenon brewing around Moleskine notebooks and journals, including an aficionado website (of which I was a charter contributor). Their Italian manufacturer concocted a clever marketing campaign to give them a cosmopolitan aura of travel mystique, branding them as “The Legendary Notebook as used by Van Gogh, Chatwin, Hemingway, Matisse and Céline” (to which my obvious reaction was, Chatwin who?). These notebooks have thin yet rigid covers, a pocket for clippings in the back, and an elastic band to keep them closed. They are decently made, but not exceptionally so. Just holding one in your hands makes you want to write in them, in a purely emotional way, as described in a recent book by Don Norman.

After the bug bit me, I bought in quick order:

• A pair of Faber-Castell mechanical pencils that use thick 1.4mm leads and just glide on paper
• Some sets of Crane’s paper. It is made from 100% cotton rag and they are the official supplier for US currency.
• A pad of G. Lalo “Vergé de France” laid paper (paper that has a horizontally striped watermark, for a striking yet classy finish). This paper responds exceptionally well to fountain pens.
• A Pelikan Souverän 800 fountain pen in classic green Stresemann stripes, with a broad nib for bold modulated strokes. My grandfather used to own a pen like this one, and they are the equivalents of Montblanc pens in quality, at a much more reasonable price.
• Inks by J. Herbin, a company that has been operating since 1670. I am particularly enamored of their black (Perle des encres) and meadow-green (Vert pré) inks, the latter is the color I am now using for the navigation and date headings on this site.
• A handsome journal by local company Oberon Design, with a richly detailed cover hand-tooled from leather in a Celtic knotwork pattern (St Patrick’s day is just around the corner…) and matching pewter accents. Many of their designs are breathtaking, like the oak tree on their home page.

Now, I just have to muster the inspiration to make use of all this…

Update (2004-03-21):

I may have to revise my judgement about “inexpensive”. Last Friday, I stopped by at a local Montblanc store. The saleswoman tried to interest me in a J. P. Morgan Limited Edition fountain pen, for a mere $1850… Her closing argument? “It will sell out soon”. Given the slightly hysterical nature of Montblanc collectors (and the fact it is the default brand for rich people who are not all that knowledgeable about pens, much as Rolex is for watches), she may well be right.