Year-End Recap: Favorite Posts from 2020

Happy 2021 everybody, and it couldn’t come soon enough! Last week I published a recap that discussed my favorite pens reviewed over the past year in three different categories. Today I’ll close the books on 2020 with five additional favorites, focusing on non-review posts and editorial content. Stay safe, and enjoy this close to the holiday season!

1. Ten Most Influential Stationery Products of the Decade (Jan. 2020). Lost in the shuffle of all that happened in 2020 was the fact that they year closed out a decade. In January I started the year off by looking at ten of what I considered the most influential stationery products of the past ten years. I still stand by everything on this list.

2. Everyday Writers: Choosing the Best Pens and Pencils for Life (Feb. 2020). Back in the “before times,” I spent February preparing for the 2020 Baltimore Pen Show, where I not only set up as a vendor for the first time but taught a seminar on choosing the best pens, inks, and paper for everyday use.

3. The Sad, Strange Saga of Crane Stationery (June 2020). Readers asked me to look into what was going on with Crane, an old American stationery company that in recent years had been severely impacted by changing consumer habits. The pandemic apparently sounded the death knell.

4. When Is a Fountain Pen Too Big? Considerations on Oversized Pens (Aug. 2020). At the time I wrote this piece back in August, it struck me that makers were focusing on bringing “oversized” versions of their standard pens to market. Is this trend sustainable? Is there really demand out there for massive fountain pens? It sure seems like it.

5. Workflows: Resources and Recommendations for Working from Home (Oct. 2020). When the year began, my goal was to reduce my commute from five days a week to four. Never did I think I’d be working remotely full time, and while there’s a lot that I love about it, and wouldn’t necessarily trade the setup for full-time office life even when things “normalize,” circumstances required that I make significant changes to my home office setup and the way I work.