I remember seeing my first Kaweco fountain pen at a flea market in 1994 and wondering what that was.  Rare among pens in shoe and cigar boxes of the time which mostly contained Parker, Waterman's and other American made pens the Kaweco stood our for it's abbreviated size and extra long cap. I opened it discovering a very short body. But when I put the cap on the back of the barrel this faceted pen became a proper hand-full. I snapped it up and added it to a collection of pens that I knew little about. At the time there were no guides to European pens or for that matter anything other than American made pens as seen in my first pen bibles, Cliff Lawrence's Newsletters and Xeroxed book.

Jump forward more than twenty years and at the enthusiastic encouragement of Gena, my advanced nib specialist, I had a good look at the Kaweco offering.  I like the compactness, the proven and timeless design and the fact that we can put a high quality solid 14K gold nib in this jewel. I recognize these nibs as great for customizing. (We have always drawn the line on what pens we offer at gold nibs in the belief that they will be around for generations, do not corrode, and are adjustable in wonderful ways.)

The first of these pens and nibs have now arrived and the excitement is palpable.  As we do not offer a discount from the retail prices we have decided to increase the value of this offering by including a number of add-ons, all of which make good sense to us. The Kaweco pen comes without a pocket clip. Lots of people like it that way, but if you want to clip it to a note book or your pocket the clip will be there for you to use. You can put it on and you can take it off. The Kaweco metal box holds the pen and a supply of other little things you may want to protect. As well, we provide a silk lined leather pen sleeve, a converter for drawing ink from a bottle and a box of Kaweco cartridges. This turns the bare pen into an item ready for the real world.  The first twenty orders we received for Kaweco pens with a Stub customization selected had the customization fee waived at checkout. This was the first time we had offered free customizations, but we felt this pen deserved it - and so did our customers, we reached those first twenty Stub customizations very quickly!

The model shown below is very similar to the classic black guilloché model that I first saw at the Rose Bowl Flea Market.