Weekly Pen Mail Call for 10/8/17

A small but spiffy slate of pen mail this week. Hot on the heels of the latest Field Notes edition, the Fall 2017 Write Notepads “Fingerprints” edition quietly arrived. And all the way from Japan, my Platinum #3776 Century Nyhavn came in like a yellow ray of sunshine.

The last two quarterly editions from Write Notepads (Samuel Morse and Chesapeake) were stunning. They had beautiful covers and packaging, matching custom pencils, and terrific stories behind them. They oozed of quality and we’re shining examples of well thought-out and carefully designed products.

This Fingerprints edition seems out of place and far less intentional. The overall premise seems to be a fairly weak link between Autumn’s falling leaves and wood. The covers have a pattern of “fingerprints” made from the ends of wooden dowels. One fingerprint is a solid dab of “rogue rouge” to indicate that it’s okay to go “against the grain.” The paper inside is blank. There are no matching pencils. The only extras were two rouge-colored stickers with a different Write Notepads logo on them.

It’s certainly not a bad edition. It’s still really nice. But I don’t think it’s up to their usual standards. The whole edition seems kind of random. Even the boxes the three-packs come in are completely generic.

I get the feeling that this may have been a “rainy day” edition, sitting in the can and ready to ship in the event of a delay. I’m going to go out on a limb and say there must be another edition in the works so awesome that it’s taking extra time to produce, and the Fingerprints edition was shipped to keep them on schedule.

Platinum is one of the premiere fountain pen manufacturers out there, and their #3776 Century is a marquee entry-level gold-nibbed pens. They have a number of beautiful designs in both production and limited editions, and occasionally they produce special editions for retailers.

The Nyhavn, limited to just 100 pens, was made for Japanese retailer Engeika to celebrate the 17th-Century Nyhavn riverside entertainment district in Copenhagen, Denmark. It consists of a transparent, pink-gold demonstrator body with yellow cap, section, and end cap. The color scheme is intended to capture the sun dancing on the surface of the Nyhavn River.

I don’t think the Nyhavn is as pretty as another Engeika exclusive, The Lantern, but it’s definitely unique and unlike any other pen I have.