The last couple days have left my Instagram feed in awash in photos from the Stationery Show in New York. This annual event is THE place where all our favorite stationery and card companies unveil their latest goods and buyers from shops, big and small, place orders for the coming year.
I thought I’d share a few photos but if you want to see the over 6000 images on Instagram, just search for #NSS2014. Click on images to see the original photo or post.
Pens & Ink:
Paper & Notebooks:
Pencils:
Other stuff:
Peek inside some stationery shops like Present + Correct in the UK.
(via Monocle, tip o’ the hat to Letter Writers Alliance)
Frank at Fontoplumo was so impressed with the enthusiasm Desk readers had about the new Kaweco Skyline Mint fountain pen. He wanted to thank everyone for checking out his site and say thanks for all the orders. So, he’s offering a special discount code for Well-Appointed Desk readers. If you enter the code WAD2014 you get a 10% discount on anything you order. And this offer is good for the whole year.
Frank also let me know my Kaweco Skyline Mint is on the way so reviews and lots of photos will be posted soon!
Kansas City Letterpress-ati, Hammerpress, have recently updated their web site and added a lot of new products. Their letterpress cards are gorgeous and if you can’t make it to Kansas City to shop locally, ordering online is the next best thing. Prices on cards are $4-$5.50 per folded card, and are blessedly blank inside and ship with a kraft or coordinating envelope.
But the best shopping experience is to stop in to the Crossroads store in KC and browse posters, postcards, and ephemera.
Once again, I attended the Spectrum Fantastic Art Live event here in KC this weekend. Its a convention of fantasy and science fiction artists working in comics, fiction, storyboarding, sculpture and more. There are Q&A sessions and artists doing live demos of painting, sculpting and digital techniques. Its an amazing show with A-list artists from all over the world.
A couple years ago, a few artists were kind enough to show me the tools they use to sketch and draw. This year, I was able to talk to a few more artists about their favorite tools.
Tom Kelly showed off his favorite tools to my husband. And was enthusiastic about his Uni Ball Signo Broad opaque white gel pen, the Kuretake No. 13 brush pen, and the Pentel Presto! Correction Pen as a drawing tool. He also kept an arsenal of Sakura Pigma Microns, Sharpie markers and a Pentel Graphgear 0.5 mm drafting pencil.
And he makes stuff like this:
I met Hector Casanova who is not only an illustrator and comic book artist but also an illustration professor at KCAI. We bonded over our unending love for the Sanford NoBlot pencil. I just write and doodle with my NoBlots but Hector sketches and draws with his hoarded collection. Then he adds water to create a washy blue effect on his drawings like these figure sketches he did at an event at Spectrum this year ( may be NSFW).
Aren’t they amazing?
Hector also uses a full army of Japanese brush pens. I recognize the Pentel Pocket Brush pen and the Pilot Futayaku Double-Sided Brush Pens.
And with these tools are the start of artwork like this:
Pretty amazing, huh?
I’ve always been a fan of the classic Ticonderoga pencils from Dixon. Where the Ticonderoga is a classic hexagonal wood-cased pencil, the Tri-Conderoga is a triangular pencil. The Tri-Conderoga has a rubberized coating with a matte black finish.
What most surprised me is that the Tri-Conderoga is wider in diameter than the regular Ticonderoga or other triangular pencils. The Faber-Castell Grip 2001 is a similar shape but smaller, more comparable to a regular hexagonal or round pencil.
The matte coating on the Tri-Conderoga reminds me of the finish on the WOPEX pencils. Love it or hate it but I think more and more pencil manufacturers might embrace this soft-touch finish. It feels pleasant to touch and may make writing more comfortable but I kept feeling like my hand was sliding down the pencil as I wrote.
I did need to use a large diameter sharpener to sharpen the Tri-Conderoga. I used the KUM “Special Diameter” sharpener which worked well. This explains why Tri-Conderoga sells the pencil in a blister pack with a sharpener because a regular diameter sharpener will not work. Of course, a pen knife or an adjustable sharpener (like the Classroom Friendly or the classic wall-mounted Boston) would work as well.
The pencil performed well in writing. The lead did not crumble or flake while I wrote and the darkness was a little on the light side on the smooth Rhodia test paper. I suspect office paper or standard notebook paper which is a bit toothier would cause the line to look a little darker and probably require more frequent sharpening.
Since the pencil is a bit larger than an average pencils, the eraser is also a bit larger. Its a black rubber compound eraser and it ended up working better than I had anticipated. But for ease of use, I recommend using a plastic eraser like the Staedtler Mars Plastic eraser if you’ll be using any pencil.
I found the overall size of the Tri-Conderoga a little large for me but I can definitely see where younger folks and anyone with larger hands would find it comfortable to use. I do love the triangular shape for comfort and the lowered likelihood of rolling away when you set it down.
Thanks to RJ for sending me the Tri-Conderoga.
