Search the Community

Hello, everyone! So I have decided that my next pen is going to be an Italix from Mr. Pen. All of the models interest me and what like to hear peoples on input on which model I should obtain first as my first Italix Pen. No matter which model I choose I am going to go with either a Medium Italic Nib, or a Medium Stub. I'm thinking I should go with The Churchman's Prescriptor or the Parson's Essential.

Purchasers of the popular Italix pens from Mr. Pen in the United Kingdom receive an instruction sheet that recommends the use of Diamine ink. They may not realize that the company also offers a custom Diamine blue ink blend. The ink, Radiant Blue, recently accompanied my purchase of an Italix Churchman's Prescriptor. The ink is a cerulean blue, lighter than both Waterman Inspired Blue and Chesterfield Antique Oxford (itself supposedly a version of Diamine Majestic Blue). The founder of Mr. Pen, Peter Ford, describes the ink as the result of adding four drops of a special ingredient to a Diamine blue ink. This ingredient is a mystery, but a good guess on the base ink is Washable Blue or Royal Blue. His description suggests Radiant Blue was a Diamine color from a couple of decades ago. As a supporter of attempts to recreate legendary ink colors, and as an enthusiastic fan of Mr. Ford's ability to imbue stationery products with uniquely English names and characteristics, I tried it. The ink offers a great deal of shading and a solid, business-like, not-too-flashy professional presence, with well-behaved flow and cleaning characteristics, though with perhaps a touch of showthrough to the other side of a sheet of Rhodia 80 gsm notebook paper. No observable sheen. Written with an Italix medium nib, the ink dries completely after about 20 seconds on this paper. If you like blue ink and enjoy the idea of English ink in an English pen, it may be worth ordering Radiant Blue along with your next writing instrument from Mr. Pen. I forgot to complete the water-resistance test in the accompanying photographs; if you're interested, the ink is not waterproof.

Peter Ford deserves an award for inventing the most evocative, magnetically Anglophile names in the entire category of stationery products. As a fountain pen user, being able to deliver the words Parson's Essential, Churchman's Prescriptor, and Imperium State is worth at least $5. "Wow, that's a shiny pen you're using today. What is that?" "Oh, this? It's called a Churchman's Prescriptor. Comes from a guy in Northwest London." Staples and Office Depot should hire Ford to re-label entire rows full of products. Those notebooks bound from paper made from sugar cane waste, sometimes called "bagasse"? The Staples name for them is "Eco-Easy," which is about as lame, non-descriptive, uninspired, and unimaginative as you can get. Your thought experiment for the next three minutes, while you're otherwise occupied with the reading of a review of a pen you've probably seen reviewed a dozen times previously? Come up with a Peter Ford-like, Anglophile name replacement for those sugar cane paper notebooks. I don't know -- Plantation Journals. Jamaican Logbooks. The Harbormaster's Log. Anything will be better than "Eco-Easy." I've learned that my aesthetic taste in pens is almost identical to a prolific contributor to the Fountain Pen Network named "Ian the Jock" -- a guy who sounds so Scottish that you can imagine him sitting there in a kilt with a dagger tucked into his kneesock. He'll correct this post shortly, provide the proper Gaelic name for daggers, and use some classic Scottish vocabulary like "wee," "belter," and "stoater." Ian's recent review of an Italix Churchman's Prescriptor inspired me to order the pen, and after using it, I must say that the community's enthusiasm about Italix products is warranted. The Churchman's Prescriptor is beautifully crafted, the black lacquer finish is prettier than pictures give it justice, and the nibs are smooth indeed. Ian suggests that the Churchman's Prescriptor has a solid, churchy appearance, and it warrants an Episcopal purple ink. I agree, and I've written this review in Sailor Jentle shigure, an ink that may have been, but probably was not, used by Episcopalian missionaries in Japan. For all I know, and I'm too lazy to look it up on Wikipedia or whatever, Episcopalian missionaries inspired the development of the ink color "shigure." I do have one objection to the Churchman's Prescriptor that I haven't seen in other reviews. There is a brass fitting between the section and the barrel that protrudes more extensively that I expected. It is not painful, and your grip can get used to it, but, well, it's there. Please list your Peter Ford-like suggestions for sugar-cane-paper notebooks in the comments below.