Do you like to write with dip pens?

[TwistedStitchCrochet]

I love dip pens, it just takes you back to better times.

[Gran]

I, too, find the process of dipping and writing a connection to a time when people conserved paper. The whole process of dip-pen writing requires that one think and plan when one puts the pen to paper.

 

Miss Crochet, unlike the cultures on the eastern side of the Atlantic, children in the US are no longer taught to write with fountain pens in school, nor are they taught cursive writing. The use of fountain pens and cartridge pens is now a sub-culture. Calligraphy writing instruments are available at large hobby stores. Standard fountain pens must be ordered online, and can be bought at a shop if one lives in a city large enough to support a brick-and-mortar store specializing in fountain pens, with rare exceptions. The success of the ball point pen was the demise of writing with fountain pens, and of beautiful handwriting, as the norm.

 

Writing with a dip pen, as in days of yore, simply to write with, not calligraphy, is not a skill many are interested in. Most fountain pen stores may carry a glass dip pen or two, but not the old nibs of Gillotte, Esterbrook, Hunt, etc.

 

My mother learned to write cursive with a dip pen, and has great stories to tell about that experience. They do take more attention and skill than a fountain pen. I enjoy writing with them because of this. The fine lines, the light hand, the variation of an ultra-flex nib. The planning of the line spacing, and the ink flow.

[Gran]

Here are a couple of articles on choosing a nib:

 

http://jandtblackman.ltd.uk/eShop/guidedippen.php

 

http://www.iampeth.com/lessons/tips_on_nibs/right_nib.pdf

 

I use the Esterbrook 505 and 543 and the Gillotte 404 for "daily writers".

 

They don't have a much flex as the Gillotte 303, which is what is used for calligraphy. That nib takes a great deal of control.