The Well-Appointed Desk

Since I spent my Saturday helping out at the Anderson Pens table, I didn’t get to see much more of the show than the four tables in front of me and the people who came to it. But a LOT of people come to the Andersons tables. And they are awesome people too. Some people came especially to say hi to me which was amazing and awesome and other people I was able to help buy their very first fountain pen which was equally amazing. But I thought it would be funny to show the upside down world view from my side of the table.

And what it looks like from behind the giant wall of ink. Not as exciting, huh? Nope. Just brown boxes back here. What you can’t see is the pile of tissues, Altoids, half-consumed lunches, bottles of water and lip balm. The things we do to keep the show going!

And it was busy, busy, busy, busy. In a rare moment of quiet I snapped a quick shot of the moment of comtemplation that I saw all through the day of someone trying to decide which ink they wanted to buy.

Here’s a late afternoon long view down the trays of fountain pens with the Anderson and Jason (one of the helpers this weekend) along the right and potential buyers and friends on the left. At several points throughout the day, there were often people three deep on the lefthand side. Crazy!

In the evening, there was a band that played well into the night and everyone had a good time listening to a mix of country and rockabilly. We got a little drunk and eventually got them to play Rockytop that led to a couple of us UTK alums to get pretty goofy. Yeah, free drink coupons. I’m hoping no Instagram videos surface of that!

More reports of Day Three will follow and there will be more shopping and a mail social today. If you get a chance to come for one last day of the show, this has been a really great show and totally worth the trip to Redwood, CA. Hope to see you!

I tried to get some photos from the San Francisco Show on Friday. Many vendors were still setting up throughout the day but it was a good day to walk around and talk to vendors and friends.

I even got to do a bit of shopping including getting one of those much-coveted show special editions from Franklin-Christoph. I got a Pocket 20 in a beautiful teal/turquoise swirly blue. I’ll have more details about it in a future post but its always such fun to get pictures of Jim at work tuning nibs and filing pens so that each customer leaves happy with their pen purchase.

I also got to see all the delectable colors of the Ranga acrylics and resins from Peyton Street Pens. I fell in love with in particular that Peyton Street fitted with a vintage nib. I’ll have more details about that later too but aren’t they beautiful? Like a tray full of candy!

Another eye catching offering in SF this year is the Snake Inks from Australia. They brought fabulously packaged 8-pack sample sets of all the colors in their range which sold out on Friday. They still have full-sized bottles available for the rest of the weekend which are equally well-packaged.

And of course, if you’re coming to the show, please come by the Anderson Pens table and say hello where I’ll be helping out on Saturday. Lots of fun stuff to buy too including the “wall of ink,” lots of paper and tons of amazing pens like Sailor, Lamy, Pilot and more. See you soon!