Category: New Materials

Hi Pen Fans!

It’s been a long time that I’ve been admiring Jonathon Brooks’ work as a penmaker, but also as a maker of pretty amazing materials. I have always wanted to work with Jonathon and some if his great materials. Last year at the DC Pen Show we started to hatch some plans….

Jonathan sent me some material samples not too long ago, and I really liked what I was working with. After making a few pens with these samples, I started to think of some kind of Limited Edition, but something that would remain small and simple to begin with.

Since we are attending the San Francisco Pen Show for the first time ever later this month on the 23rd, we figured that this might be a great time to set up an exclusive pen for the San Francisco Pen Show, and Jonathon’s materials looked to be perfect fit.

So we recently put the finishing touches on a pen design that we’ll bring to the San Francisco Pen Show, sold exclusively at the show…..

This is a Menlo, but without a centerband. This is a material that Jonathon made exclusively for Edison that is loosely based on his “Japanese Autumn”, but Jonathon added some more reds and oranges to set this material apart. The Menlo is typically a Draw Filler, but we made this pen as a converter filler. You can see in the photo above that we created a nice engraving to note the exclusivity of this pen to the 2019 San Francisco Pen Show.

This pen will be available at the San Francisco Pen Show as a Limited Edition of only 10 pieces. It will be first come, first served at the show when we set up on Friday the 23rd. We will not take pre-orders for this pen.

(if you would like to see higher resolution versions of these photos, click here, here, and here.)

We are going to price this pen at the same rate as our normal Menlo set up as a Converter Filling Pen. $275 with a steel nib or $375 with an 18k nib.

Now I realize that some of you might feel left out if you love the looks of this pen, but cannot attend the San Francisco Pen Show. But I think that we can still help you out!

We do still have some of this Modified Japanese Autumn material available, and we can make a few more custom pens from it. But abiding by the rules of a Limited Edition, we cannot offer it as a Bandless Menlo, and we cannot offer it at the same price. Jonathan’s materials are significantly more expensive than what we normally use. In the case of the Limited Edition, we can absorb this cost since we made these pens “assembly line” style. But a custom pen made from this will be a bit more expensive due to the materials cost. Exactly what the additional cost would be, I don’t know yet, but if you are interested, please reach out and we can figure it out.

It’s truly been a pleasure working with Jonathon’s materials (and Jonathon!) If anyone wanted Edison to create any custom pen made from any of Jonathon’s materials, it can certainly be done, so feel free to inquire.

If anyone has questions, please email me! Otherwise we’ll look forward to seeing you at the San Francisco Pen Show! next week!

Lastly, expect to see another blog post next week highlighting all of the other pens that we’ll be bringing to the SF Show. We are putting the finishing touches on some other items, and will be bringing more then 350 pens! I’ll be showing those pens next week.

Brian at Edison