How Did You Get Here?

[eachan]

I'm not entirely sure how I got here, how I became a restorer of vintage fountain pens. I always enjoyed writing with them of course and my interest tended towards old rather than current. I've almost always had and used fountain pens since the age of eight but that's not the full story. There are, perhaps, two things two things that determined that I would pursue vintage rather than new. One was memory of the pens that were around when I was young, not school pens but the rather better ones I saw at home. My grandfather had a Sheaffer, one of those with a Triumph nib. My mother used a green marbled Conway Stewart though I can't say now which of that company's many models.

The other reason arose because I was, for a time, a Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. All records and certificates were written with a fountain pen and Parker Permanent Black ink. I was issued with a cheap Parker, a Vector, I think, which didn't suit me well at all. Ebay got under way around that time and I looked at the pens offered there. I settled on a 1920s Onoto and a later Swan, both of which improved the appearance of my writing no end! I was hooked, between a practical necessity and nostalgia for a time I never knew.

Deb, too, was fascinated by old fountain pens. We both wanted to see and handle all the fountain pens there were. By that time I'd developed some skill and knowledge about pen repair and restoration. She saw a way to fulfil that wish: buy pens, restore them and sell them on. Thus was Goodwriters Pens born.

And it worked, too! We've handled and written about pretty much every British vintage pen and quite a few from other countries too. The pen-selling business keeps itself afloat. If we depended upon it for our income we would be living on gruel in a tent but that was never its purpose. Nowadays around three-quarters of the pens we use every day are vintage: Swans, Conway Stewarts, Mentmores and Summits. The rest are mostly post-war Japanese fountain pens, predominantly Pilots.

That goes some way towards explaining how I got here. There are many junctures in life when decisions are lightly made with no thought that they will influence one's future. In my twenties I was fond of fountain pens but was perfectly happy to to use BICs at work - at first, at least, though I found that they hurt the hand later when I had more to write. That slight preference has grown into the obsession it has become. I liked old mechanical things but I might have chosen watches, clocks, cigarette lighters or pocket knives but fountain pens proved right for me. We are very lucky. Not many people get to occupy themselves with what interests them most.

So how did you get here?