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I visited the Getty Center the other day, and saw their exquisite little installation of Giovanni Bellini. An early master of the Venetian Renaissance whose work bore an odd similarity in style and composition to Hieronymous Bosch - maybe Bosch on meds. But the reason Im posting was the beautiful little ink drawing in the exhibit. A lovingly-hatched Holy Family in sepia (not unlike the R & K ink I use). As I studied the drawing I was impressed by the range of line weights and I began to wonder if Bellini used a single pen or several to execute the drawing? He probably used quill pens, and I imagine he might have used several at a time, and perhaps in several sizes. But does anyone KNOW? I throw it out to the knowledge base, and heartily recommend taking in the exhibit if youre in the area.

I remember the good old times when I was a child and I would get a new fountain pen: whatever its writing features, it was always good. I used to write with some horribly scratchy nibs. Yet after thousands of hours on the FPN, after reading hundreds of reviews and watching tens of videos about fountain pens, I also developed what I call the "buttery smoothness obsession": an overwhelming majority of collectors seems to believe that a nib is not "good" unless it glides on the paper like a piece of ice wrapped in silk thrown over an oil-covered glass. Influenced by this behaviour, I started freaking out every time a pen shows the minimum sign of tooth. Only recently (and thanks to my Auroras) did I realize that a nib doesn't actually need to be "buttery smooth" to be enjoyable; quite the opposite: buttery smooth most of the times means dull. And if you think with a bit of perspective, when has humanity ever treasured "buttery smoothenss"? Were dip pens smooth? Not at all. Were quills "buttery smooth"? Even less so. Is any single one of my vintage pens (up until the 1950s) "buttery smooth"? No way. They were all toothy, feedbacky, even to some extent scratchy. So why are we so obsessed with this feature? Why do we measure the quality of a writing experience based on how similar it is to that of a... ballpoint pen???