This desk was built by the Roentgen brothers in the 18th century and is full of hidden compartments and unique features. If you like this, you might also like this 18th century, French mechanical table.
(via Neatorama and a tip from mjh)
Color Your Year, Pantone-style
Color your world, or at least your wall, with the 2013 Pantone calendar ($14.99). Designed by the legendary design firm Pentagram, each month is a pixel grid of colorliciousness. There is also a weekly desk agenda ($16.99) which also features a bevvy of color and inspiration.
(via Felt & Wire, Pentagram and Amazon)
Pipin’ Hot Desk Plans
The folks over at Carolina just built a beautiful, simple worktable from cast iron plumbers pipes and a heavy wood top. The table can be crafted at counter height or at dining height. It looks a little vintage Parisian workshop and a little steampunk-y. The Cartolina blog has download links to build your own table.
(via Poppytalk)
Argh! Notecards
My darling friend Annie sent me a pack of gold engraved, skull-and-crossbones note cards from the London-based stationery shop Mount Street Stationers. The envelopes are lined with glossy black paper and are perfect for my next order of rum or official decree for someone to walk the plank.
Pilot Varsity Fountain Pen
I noticed that I had never written a review of the Pilot Varsity Fountain Pen so I thought I’d add it. Let me start by saying that I bought this several years ago and was very unhappy with its performance and stuck it in a drawer. It actually took quite some time before I was willing to venture into fountain pens again because of the experience. To be honest, at $3 per pen, I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting.
To a newbie though, the Varsity seems like a reasonable way to get into fountain pens. Its not. The most expensive part of a good fountain pen is the nib and feed, and this one, available in a medium width only, is not good at all. Its a plain steel nib. Steel nibs can be good but not at $3, I think.
If you look at the writing sample above, the pen skips and whole letters will not appear while the ink flow readjusts. It squeaks on the paper, actually squeaks. If you have an aversion to the sound of nails on a chalkboard, you best give this pen a wide berth.
I’m not inclined to write reviews for products that I genuinely dislike and think are terrible. I’d prefer to let me silence speak for itself. However, I get enough people asking about the Varsity and other sub-$10 fountain pens that I felt I should be honest.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll put up reviews of the other entry-level priced fountain pens. Maybe there is a gem among them.
Typewriter Ribbon Box
This is another bit of vintage office packaging from my ever-growing collection. The box included the metal spools and the two-tone ribbon. Written in pen on the box from the previous owner, “old spools replaced 3/1/88”. I wonder if she bought this box in 1988 or if it was in her office for 20 years?
Oh, the little paper ephemera treasures!
Zebra Dual Tip Permanent Marker meets its cousins
I was doing some office organization when I found this Zebra dual-tipped marker in my collection. The body of the pen, with the exception of the brand name, is written in Japanese but I’m pretty sure I acquired this gem from my company’s Hong Kong office or from a hotel in China last spring. Sorry its taken me so long to share it.
Its basically a similar tool to a Sharpie Twin Tip marker or other permanent marking pen. I think every office should have a few of these permanent tools floating around to mark file folders, envelopes and boxes. I don’t find them great for everyday writing because on plain paper, they all have a tendency to bleed. But for writing on a manila envelope, cardboard, plastic, glass or other unusual surface, these tend to be just the ticket.
What made the Zebra notable was that the bold end of the marker is just a little bit finer than the “fine” end of a Sharpie marker. I write pretty small, even on a box or envelope so the difference is just enough to make the Zebra marker appealing. The fine point on the Zebra was comparable in size to the “ultra fine” Sharpie marker or the Le Pen Permanent.
You can see how much these permanent markers bleed and show through on the reverse side of plain paper but that’s not really what they are designed to do.
There appears to be a few Zebra permanent pen options but as recently mentioned by Brad Dowdy on the Pen Addict podcast, pen manufacturers seem to NEED to create complex naming systems for pens sold in the US. There is a single “needle tip” version from Zebra listed on their site called the Z-PM. The closest cousin I could find to my dual-point is the Zebra “Mackee Care” Double-Sided Pen on JetPens. It sells for $2.