Montblanc released the Heritage 1912 in 2013 as a homage to their safety pens of the early 20th century. The 1912 is a piston filler with a retractable nib and a small profile (when capped) but a normal well weighted pen when uncapped. This is a bit of a different review as the pen isn't a stock pen from the manufacturer; the nib has been modified by Mike Masuyama.
Read More
Five years ago, October 2013, I bought my first fountain pen; two years later I helped Jonathan Deans with co-founding Fountain Pens Australia; and two years ago today, July 15th 2016, I started this blog, Macchiato Man. I started with fountain pens fairly slowly, and somehow avoided jumping head-first down the rabbit hole. By October 2014 - one year after my first pen - I had 6 pen (but three of these were hand-me-downs) and 4 inks (one ink came with my first pen). Unfortunately the slow start was just the beginning of exponential growth: 6 months laterI had 9 bottles of ink; another 3 months, 32 bottles, and fast forward another 11 months to July 2016 and I had around 300. Boom.
Read More
Orange Rumble is a relatively new addition to the Robert Oster lineup. It looked nice when I first saw photos of the ink from Rob, but upon seeing it in person I was very impressed! Rob describes the ink as a 1970's inspired ink. I can see where this is coming from; browns, burnt oranges, yellow-greens are certainly some popular 70s colours schemes!
Read MoreOMAS, sadly, went into voluntary liquidation in January 2016. Fortunately, Emmanuel Caltagirone bought the defunct OMAS assets and created Armando Simoni Club which uses the same Arco Celluloid that OMAS is famous for. I lay-byed this newer model OMAS Paragon shortly after the end of OMAS from a local shop in my home town. Late that year it was finally mine. I've had this pen until recently when I traded it for another OMAS that I, personally, find more comfortable.
Read More
Early 2017 Monteverde began what has become a huge expansion to their originally somewhat minimal ink collection with a Gemstone set comprising of ten inks. They've subsequently added a Noir set and an Emotions set. Some pretty inks in the collection from what I've seen. The inks come in 30ml and 90ml bottles. Coincidentally, the stone is also my birthstone. Whatever that means!
Read More