Except there's a catch. There is no fountain pen that can make someone able to perform these styles of writing. And the heavy sighs at the end of the telephone line assure me that this news is disappointing.

The Spencerian style of writing, featured in the image above, or the more Chancery Cursive style of Mandy Young (featured on our "Calligraphy" page) has evolved over years of patient practice. Calligraphers like Mandy and David have undoubtedly written the letters of the alphabet hundreds of times, performing the two strokes of flat and thick and slanted and thin over and over again. Calligraphers will take months to perfect the length of the ascenders of letters like "b", "h", "k" and "l" and perhaps even longer to create a letter whose body is equal to its descender. Their summer reading might consist of Writing, Illuminating & Lettering by Edward Johnston ca. 1906, The Anatomy of Letters by Charles Pearce and perhaps even John Howard Benson's translation of Ludovico degli Arrighi's 16th century manual of handwriting and the Chancery hand, Arrighi's OPERINA.

I don't handle disappointing news very well and I'm even worse at imparting it. I do understand why Spencerian writing, for example, evokes a nostalgia for the past and why a customization that makes that style of writing attainable, is popular. Fountain pens have the unique ability to inspire a sense of yearning for bygone times. However, the Webster's definition of calligraphy is "beautiful or elegant handwriting, the art of producing such writing". The fountain pen, and cut of the nib, is merely the tool. In the same way that a person wouldn't expect to be able to just pick up a violin and play beautifully, so is it with fountain pens and calligraphy.

We would not be in business if we said we could provide a pen, and customization, that would magically enable a customer to "write calligraphy". On the occasions we have been persuaded to provide, for example, an extra fine, extra flexible nib for an untrained hand, the nib and pen have invariably been returned to us - along with exasperated notes. Very seldom has a writer persisted with one of these difficult nibs to the point where they say: "I can do this". However persistence, patient persistence, is the key.

We are not here to deny anyone the opportunity to labor with their fountain pen undertakings. Infact, truth is often revealed in the struggle. We are here, however, to give the best advice we can. So when the phone rings here at Classic Fountain Pens and a customer asks for a pen that "writes calligraphy", I can't help but think: What would degli Arrighi do?