Sunday Reading for September 28, 2025

1. Ink Swatching Tools Update (via Olive Octopus). Lisa walks through her latest ink swatching tools setup, which tends to be more involved than the process I recently discussed since she does much more with inks to explore their various properties.

2. Totally Should’ve Tag - Stationery Edition (via Rachel’s Reflections). Ok, this isn’t a trend I was aware of but I think I can get on board with it. I have my own thoughts on a few of these.

3. Challenge Results: How Did My Starter Pens Week Go? (via Well-Appointed Desk). Ana took Derek’s challenge to only use inexpensive “starter” pens for a week! Follow along to see how she fared.

4. What’s the Difference? Gravitas Monster vs Other Vac Fillers (via Doodlebud). A nice video review of a pen that’s received a lot of publicity lately. I enjoy bead-blasted texture on aluminum.

5. Why Am I Doing This? Why Not? (via From the Pen Cup). Mary always manages to uncover these fun stationery experiments. Here, the junk mail collage.

6. Buc-ee’s Stationery Hunt: What Surprises Await? (via dwrdnet). I never would have thought to hunt stationery at Buc-ee’s. I want that logo pen.

7. Meet Your Maker: Dennis Humm, Denn’s Pens (via Pen Addict - Caroline). I still keep finding new reasons to attend the London Pen Show. Some of these designs are super unique.

8. Stilo & Stile + Leonardo Poliedrica Desiderio (via Figboot on Pens). An interesting new design from Leonardo in a limited edition finish. Facets on a Leonardo pen?

9. Kaweco AL Sport Piston Filler Fountain Pen Review (via Pen Addict). I love discovering fellow fans of the Kaweco piston fillers. I think these are a great evolution of the Sport line to give people more choice over format.

10. M805 Metal Sleeve Special Edition Fountain Pen (via Pelikan’s Perch). A somewhat unique new design for Pelikan - not necessarily my style but props for trying something different.

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In Case You Missed It…

This week on the blog I did a “State of T.G.S.” post, talking about a handful of things I’ve learned in my first year as a brick-and-mortar shop owner. There are also a few announcements about upcoming events at T.G.S., discussed further below. I also spent a fair bit of time with ink yesterday, building out some of our swatch books in-store, and thought it might be fun to talk about the different tools and techniques I use to create ink swatches not only for T.G.S. use but to organize my personal collection.

I’ve also posted a few new videos to the T.G.S. YouTube Channel this week! The first was a quick video tutorial I filmed on setting up the Tom’s Studio Wren Fineliner, when I was filling the Wren tester pens for the shop. The second was a quick video flip through of my ink swatch notebooks.

Ok, I’m definitely keeping one of these. No questions asked.

This Week in the T.G.S. Curated Shop

The biggest new arrival from this week was the TWSBI ECO Carrara + Onyx, which is now available. We also have a fresh shipment of Tom’s Studio Lumos and Wren fineliners, as well as the excellent Tom’s Studio pigmented black ink which is back in stock and available. We also have the latest Blackwing Volumes (Keith Haring!) and more of the excellent one-step long-point sharpeners. We finally received a fresh shipment of Midori MD Cotton A5 and A4 pads, which I’m happy to report are now fully stocked since we were running dangerously low for a while there. And for those of you “Strategist” readers still scouring the internet for Anterique pens, we have plenty of them, despite your best efforts to clean us out!

We will be open this coming week for normal hours: 1-6pm Thursday and Friday, and from 10am-6pm Saturday. Please do keep checking back on the main store page for updated hours and special announcements.

Laconic Tokyo

Yamamoto / Ro-Biki

Belle & Union

Blackwing

Upcoming Events and New Brick-and-Mortar Store Announcements

So what have I been doing in my spare time? Building out a new section of the T.G.S. store on the front of our current location, where we will have a dedicated showroom/shop section! The space we currently occupy will continue to serve as our office and warehouse, as well as additional space for special events, classes, and workshops as we finish the transition. Our initial event, which will utilize the new space assuming everything stays on schedule, will be a trunk show/shop takeover the weekend of October 17-October 19, featuring Shawn Newton of Newton Pens and Lisa Vanness of Vanness Pens. Additional details and an exact schedule to follow.

If you enjoy our content (whether here on the main website, Instagram, YouTube Channel or elsewhere), and would like early/extra access to shop releases and special promotions, consider supporting us via Patreon. The T.G.S. Patreon includes early access and discounts on exclusive shop releases, a monthly updates newsletter, and of course our monthly meetups. Patreon supporters also have access to the first two episodes of a new podcast experiment I’ve been working on with Lisa Vanness of Vanness Pens. More on this later, but for the time being the initial episodes are Patreon-exclusive.

My Favorite Ink Swatching Tools and Techniques (Yes, I'm Becoming a Glass Pen Person)

With the dozens of different colors we stock in the shop and the 100+ bottles in my personal collection, ink swatching and indexing becomes critical because you quickly forget what colors look like, and the color swatch on a bottle label can be inaccurate. Since I found myself working on new shop swatches this morning, I thought it might be fun to talk about my personal swatching process and some of the tools I use.

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I had to add ink swatches of the recently released Colorverse Colorvent “Top 3” inks from last year’s Colorverse Colorvent Calendar, and thought it might be fun to document the different techniques used.

Each ink swatch that I do (for both the shop and personal collection) has two components: (1) a darker “swab” that showcases different tones in the ink as it pools on the paper, and (2) a writing sample. My format hasn’t really changed much since the early days, but my tools have evolved. I currently have three main setups and techniques that I use, depending on my mood and the type of ink that I’m working with.

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Colorverse Christmas Star, a glistening gold orange, shown here with a Kakimori brass dip nib.

Primary Setup: Glass Cocktail Stir + Dip Pen (Glass or Metal)

For most inks, I use a glass cocktail stir to create an ink swatch, and then a medium-to-broad nib dip pen for the writing sample. The actual writing sample is the most important for me, since I generally use pens for work or personal journaling and I like to see what the ink will look like on the written page with my everyday fines and mediums. As discussed above, the ink swatch is used more to see the underlying tones, which will come out in wetter nibs like broads and stubs.

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Many thanks to Lisa at Olive Octopus, who tipped me off to the glass stir technique! She also recently did a post on her own ink swatching tools and techniques, and comes at things from a different perspective as she sketches a lot and also uses brushes and water to bring out the different ink properties.

I have a couple different dip pens that I love, but my current favorite is this broad glass pen by Glass Studio Aun that I picked up at this year’s San Francisco Pen Show. Up until recently my tool of choice was the Kakimori brass nib - which is still a great option that allows for plenty of line variation - but that was before I had written with a really nice glass pen, and to be honest this broad glass nib makes everything else feel like writing with a nail on a chalkboard.

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Colorverse Milky Way Glistening, shown here with my broad Glass Studio Aun Glass Pen.

Alternative Setup No. 1: Folded Nib Pen

If you have an ink that benefits from having a LOT of ink on the page, you can choose to do an ink swatch or writing sample with a folded metal nib. These can be a lot of fun to play with if you enjoy highly stylized writing that will not necessarily result in clean lines. (The “splatter effect” is a feature, not a bug!) I enjoy using folded nib pens when I’m doing a full-on ink review, not just a simple swatch, and I’ll do a full page of writing on multimedia paper and really get a sense of how the ink looks when it’s REALLY wet, especially those inks with heavy shimmer and sheen.

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Colorverse “Pulsar Pulse,” a super sheener. You can do an ink swatch card with a folded brass nib, but it’s much harder to write smaller text. That said, folded nibs can really bring out the sheen in super sheening inks simply because they apply a LOT of ink in one stroke.

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A folded metal nib in action. You can also really see the color shift that occurs in high-sheening inks like Pulsar Pulse. Here the ink is fresh, but the red/purple really comes out once the ink dries.

Alternative Setup No. 2: Plotter + Drillog

While larger card-sized swatches are often the most practical, especially for comparing colors under washed-out fluorescent lighting in pen shops and pen show hotel ballrooms, I also like to keep a second set of swatches for personal use in one of my Bible-sized Plotter binders. Most of these are what I internally think of as my “micro swatches”: small color swatches followed by a writing sample that are portable enough to carry with me for quick comparisons. For these, I’ve been using my recently acquired Drillog .5mm dip pen. As I mentioned in an earlier post-San Francisco Pen Show Post, the Drillog 2.0 fixes many of the issues with the original Drillog, including issues with consistency of ink flow and smoothness. I’ve found this to be an excellent ink swatching tool and can see myself using it for most of my personal ink samples going forward.

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My micro swatches. Eventually this will be a full page of Colorverse.

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My micro swatch sheet of Taccia standard inks, done with the Kakimori brass nib. This would have been much easier with the Drillog, as the Kakimori pen can sometimes drip and it can be difficult to write consistent thin lines.

A Note on the Ink Swatching Paper

For my ink swatches, I use two papers. The first is Col-o-ring Paper made by the Well-Appointed Desk, which is sold in a wide array of convenient formats that can also be trimmed down or adjusted to however you would like to store them. The cards shown here are sold as part of a set with card holder pages and a Bible-sized Binder, which is what I use in the shop because without the plastic sleeves the swatches tend to smear from so many different people handling them. For my personal ink swatches, I typically use Midori MD Cotton Paper, since it’s my preferred paper for personal writing and I like to see my ink samples on paper I use on an almost daily basis.

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The TGS in-store ink swatch album. Yes, we sell these. They are made by Papier Plume. The ink cards included with the album set are Col-o-Ring, though you can also use the Iroful paper cards.

Fountain pen ink preferences are highly personal, and swatching is no exception. I tend to be a lot less strict in terms of things like format and technique than some people. For example, I have hundreds of ink swatches that I’ve accumulated over the years, many of which were not even done by me as they were gifts from friends, and none of them look the same and are on different-sized paper or even in a Rolodex. For my purposes, this is perfectly fine, but many prefer to have a uniform format that they can easily search. If you feel like sharing your technique, please do drop a comment or send a message.

The Gentleman Stationer is supported entirely by purchases from the T.G.S. Curated Shop and pledges via the T.G.S. Patreon Program. If you’re interested in shopping fountain pens, inks, and more in person, come see us at our brick-and-mortar shop located in Nashville, Tennessee.

Thursday Drops: TWSBI ECO Carrara with Onyx Pre-Order, an ECO Serpentine Bronze Restock, and Yes, We Still Have Anterique!

That was quite a week! Topping off our one-year anniversary as a brick-and-mortar store, we had a rush on Anterique Ballpoints, combined with a new TWSBI pre-order opportunity for the Carrara + Onyx ECO Fountain Pen. The Carrera + Onyx model features white resin with a black swirl, and follows on the heels of the ultra-popular ECO Serpentine Bronze. (We currently only have the Serpentine Bronze in Broad and 1.1mm stub, but have more on the way, after I was concerned that they had sold out.)

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We’ve also restocked on many favorite iLootPaperie Washi Tapes, and have added tapes from other brands including CoraCreaCrafts and Well-Appointed Desk. We’ve also dramatically expanded our selection of sticky notes, index tabs, and document flags, just in time for planner season!

We will be open this week for normal hours, including from 1-6pm Thursday and Friday, and from 10am-6pm on Saturday. You can always check the main store page for updated hours and announcements regarding special events.

1. TWSBI ECO Carrara with Onyx Fountain Pen (Pre-Order). The latest TWSBI ECO release is now live and available for pre-order. This latest addition to the “Swirled Resin” collection features a gorgeous white with black swirl inspired by marble.

2. TWSBI ECO Serpentine Bronze Fountain Pen. I’m not sure that I’ve seen a TWSBI fountain pen fly off the shelves faster than the Serpentine Bronze fountain pen.

3. Anterique Ballpoint Pens. The Strategist strikes again! We’ve had a run on both the standard and brass versions of the Anterique ballpoints, which feature a .5mm Japanese low-viscosity ballpoint refill. You can read more about these from Tuesday’s posts, including links to the article in question.

4. Blackwing Volume 292: The Keith Haring Pencil. Blackwing’s latest release features Keith Haring’s famous dancing figures, paired with Blackwing’s balanced “Pearl” graphite. This is one of the better Blackwing collaborations I’ve seen, from one of my favorite artists.

5. Blackwing One-Step Long-Point Pencil Sharpeners. Easily the best-selling “curved” long-point pencil sharpener in our store, this not only leaves an exceptionally sharp point but has a receptacle to hold shavings.

6. Blackwing Pencil Essentials Set. This pencil essentials set includes one of each different type of Blackwing Pencil, as well as a long-point pencil sharpener and a Blackwing pencil cap - the two most popular Blackwing accessories. It’s a great way to experiment with the different graphites in the Blackwing lineup.

7. Viarco Vintage Pencil Set. Made in one of Europe’s last functioning pencil factories, Viarco pencils come in a half-dozen different designs inspired by Viarco’s creations from 1950s Portugal. You can grab a dozen of each with these sets.

8. iLoot Paperie Washi Tapes. We are restocked on nearly all of the iLootPaperie Washi Tapes, including many of the different snail mail and letter-themed designs that have proven popular over the years. We also have stationery and analog-themed enamel pins and buttons!

9. Laconic Tokyo A5 6-Ring Binders. Looking for a higher-capacity binder than some of the other options out there? This Laconic binder can work as an “archive” notebook to complement brands like Plotter and Filofax, or it can serve as a larger stand-alone planner binder.

10. Laconic Tokyo A5 6-Ring Binder Inserts. While we’re still waiting on the arrival of dated planner inserts (coming in October), we have plenty of stock of Laconic’s diverse array of undated A5 binder inserts in formats such as planners as well as “To Do,” Think, and other lifestyle and productivity layouts.

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Cloth & Paper Mosaic Sticky Notes

State of The Gentleman Stationer: One Year As a (Brick-and-Mortar) Shop Owner, Plus Upcoming Events!

The other day a customer asked how long we had been open, and it hit me that a YEAR had passed since the physical T.G.S. Shop opened its doors on Kenilwood Drive in Nashville. So how has it gone? Despite an “eventful” 12 months, I have zero regrets about making the decision to start a brick-and-mortar shop and grow The Gentleman Stationer further. It’s not only helped me to fulfill a lifelong goal of operating and running my own business, but has given me the opportunity to create a space in my hometown that I’ve always wanted to exist: a local shop exclusively focused on high-end stationery for actual writing. I figured today I should take a bit to reflect on all I’ve learned over the past year, and also share some exciting new developments and news on upcoming events!

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And to think this is where we were a year ago!

Five Things I’ve Learned from Running a Brick-and-Mortar Stationery Store

1. Your Local Pen Community Is Important. While it may seem as though all hobbies - even analog ones - are moving online these days, I can’t imagine doing this without my regular customers and pen club members who continue to show up every weekend like clockwork. Their patronage and enthusiasm not only supports the shop directly, but directly contributes to growing our local community as a whole. Having regulars hanging out and talking in the store spreads the word about things like pen club, pen shows, new products, and events, which not only translates to return business but a growing local pen community. Middle Tennessee Fountain Pen Club meetings and annual events such as the upcoming Pelikan Hub seemingly draw more attendees every year!

2. My Online Presence Is Equally Critical. Even for local businesses focused on local customers, having an online presence is crucial because even those who want to shop local use the internet to find their local stationery store. And while there will always be a few things I wish I had done differently, growing the retail business online before attempting a brick-and-mortar store is not one of them. Everyone advised me that it would take 6 months to a year for customers to really start to “find you,” and while the physical shop more than funds itself now, having the online business provided a safety net that helped me sleep at night during those first months.

3. Steady Growth Is Better Than “Going Viral.” I’ve intentionally focused on steady growth of the business at a pace that I find both sustainable and enjoyable to run. Yes, I could invest heavily in cultivating a presence on every social media network, attending multiple pen shows and out-of-town events per month while others ran the shop in my absence, and bringing in every trendy new pen or ink line that comes my way, but that’s not the kind of business I want to run. I enjoy being in the shop personally, and my business model is focused on heavy curation and offering those products that I understand and can recommend coherently. We’re expanding, but at a pace I’m comfortable with.

4. I Actually Enjoy Running Events. More on this below, but I really enjoy organizing and hosting gatherings. Every Saturday in the shop feels like a pen show! I’d like to expand the T.G.S. in-store experience to include things like brand takeovers, trunk shows, classes and workshops, and even analog-themed community events like pen club meetups, game nights, and/or book clubs. We are adding additional space and reorganizing our current location to make it easier for us to play host, so look for additional details and announcements in the coming month as we are getting closer to making this a reality.

5. I Need 36 Hours in the Day. For anyone who has ever worked for themselves, this is self-explanatory. Even at a “sustainable” pace, there’s always something else to do, and for me it poses somewhat of a risk to my mental health and stamina because when I’m really enjoying a project I want to work on it all the time. Finding more of a balance - and a true day off - is going to be a focus for the year ahead.

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For our initial event - and hopefully to kick off our new shop location - Shawn and Lisa are coming to visit! They’ve both been invaluable friends and colleagues over the past year, and I’m looking forward to hosting!

A Special Announcement for Next Month: Lisa Vanness and Shawn Newton In-Store October 17-October 19!

So what’s next? Now that the growth phase has slowed down a bit, as mentioned I want to start holding some in-store special events. First up is a weekend takeover featuring my friends Lisa Vanness of Vanness Pens and Shawn Newton of Newton Pens, who will be in-store the weekend of October 17 through October 19 so save the date if you plan to be in Nashville! Lisa will be bringing exclusive inks and other uncommon items from Japan (among other things), and Shawn will of course have his Newton Pens lineup. Please stay tuned for exact details, including possible special/expanded hours.

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Want to Hear More Stationery Talk and Behind-the-Scenes Stories? We’re Launching a Podcast!

Those of you in the T.G.S. Patreon likely already know about this, since you’ve had access to the first two “pre-episodes,” but Lisa Vanness and I are launching a podcast that will be released 1-2 times per month, focused not just on the retail side of stationery but on more in-depth discussion of the stationery we personally enjoy and how we use it. For now, the episodes are Patreon-exclusive but look for a public release sometime during the fourth quarter of 2025.

A special huge thank-you to all of you who have supported the Gentleman Stationer going back to 2014, and who have made all this possible, especially our Patreon Supporters who believe in us enough to provide monthly support via the T.G.S. Patreon Program. Support goes beyond the monetary contribution - simply knowing that there is a dedicated group of people who believe in you and show up every month makes this worthwhile.

New Arrivals: Anterique Restock, Including the Brass Version!

Do you all remember when the New York Times/Wirecutter reviewed the Penco Perfection Ballpoint pen earlier this year, causing the pen to sell out instantaneously nearly everywhere? Well, the same thing happened last week, with an article by New York Magazine’s “The Strategist” prompting a run on longtime site and shop favorite Anterique. These vintage-style “clic” ballpoints come in dozens of colors, in both a standard plastic, bicolor, and brass-barrel versions. Mini versions and mechanical pencils are also available, along with extra refills. There are even highlighters that look like paint tubes.

I even did a YouTube video highlighting this brand. We were ahead of the times by a few years!

The brass pens had been out of stock for some time, but we recently received a shipment and we now have most colors available in both full size and mini. While these are in demand at the moment, we have a large stock so you should be able to get one even if certain colors run low. To read more on these excellent low-viscosity ballpoints, check out our past reviews and write-ups, in addition to the video linked above.

The Gentleman Stationer is supported by purchases from the T.G.S. Curated Shop (our online store) and pledges via the T.G.S Patreon Program. Come see these and more in our Nashville shop, where we are open from 1-6pm on Thursday and Friday, and from 10am-6pm on Saturday!