Washington Post article on Fahrney's pen shop

[two2tone]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/14/fountain-pens-fahrneys-shop-dc/

[OCArt]

Sadly it is behind a firewall and not accessible to me.

[Jayebird]

Very cool! I have ordered from them and my dad has been to the store.

[inkstainedruth]

I had the same problem as OCArt.  

A friend of mine (FPN's Uncle Red) has been to the store.  I keep thinking that some day I want to get down to the DC area and go in there (the last time I was in DC, I didn't have a lot of spare time, so I opted for going up to Columbia, MD to the Pen Boutique instead, on the one day I had on my own).  

I do get Fahrney's e-ads, but mostly they're advertising stuff I can't afford.... 😞

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[two2tone]

https://archive.is/FSvxM

 

[Pablo]

Please try https://archive.is/FSvxM

Regards.

[Misfit]

Thank you both for the archive link. 

[Toolattack]

Lovely article. I hope Fahrney's flourish - we need pen shops!

[amper]

It's so sad, the way I've seen all the old time stationers, office supply shops, and art supply stores go defunct in my lifetime. Once desktop publishing and then the Internet really took off in the 1990s, it killed the mass market for these items. It's all niche markets, now, and I'm amazed that any of these companies are able to stay in business, at all, even as pale shadows of what they once were.

Good ink on good paper has proven it will easily last hundreds of years with only minimal precautions. The digital age is going to result in a lot of lost knowledge, because data storage technologies have a very, very brief lifespan, by comparison.

[langere]

It's good to see Fahrney's in the news.  Now they need to do Bertram's Inkwell.

 

Erick

[jchch1950]

Reading the Washington Post article I remember the many occasions that I had been to Fahrney's. It is like they sold  candies , so many pens, stationary and inks;some of my early pen acquisitions from Fahrney's were in the 80s. I still have copies of the old folding catalogs and have very good memories of the staff, they were always helpful and patient. Next time that I will be in Washington DC I will pay a visit and buy a new pen and books.

[Buzz_130]

The article is a nice tribute to a store in downtown DC. When we lived in the area, we went once to shop, but the hassle of downtown DC and parking with our kids in tow made it far more challenging than going to Bertram's.

 

How often have people on FPN told people to go to a shop and hold a pen to see if it fits their hands and is comfortable in their grip? Those experiences are more challenging than ever, and I wish the owners the best of luck in continuing to thrive in DC!

[51ISH]

5 hours ago, Buzz_130 said:

The article is a nice tribute to a store in downtown DC. When we lived in the area, we went once to shop, but the hassle of downtown DC and parking with our kids in tow made it far more challenging than going to Bertram's.

 

How often have people on FPN told people to go to a shop and hold a pen to see if it fits their hands and is comfortable in their grip? Those experiences are more challenging than ever, and I wish the owners the best of luck in continuing to thrive in DC!

 

How often have people on FPN told people to go to a shop and hold a pen to see if it fits their hands and is comfortable in their grip? Those experiences are more challenging than ever, and I wish the owners the best of luck in continuing to thrive in DC!

 

Having spent many years working in various retail B&M stores it saddens me to see so many B&M stores of all kinds closing. (UK)  There was a large privately owned Department Store near to me with a large pen and stationery dept. My boss had bought me a Sheaffer 'White Dot' Fibre tip pen for Christmas one year. I went to the Dept Store to get a replacement refill. The sales assistant told me the refill had been discontinued.  She could so easily have left it there and I would have been none the wiser. But no, she explained if I left it with them, they would send it off for a replacement 'section' so I would be able to use the rollerball refill instead. It took about 20-30 minutes or more to complete the forms and such like, all for a sale of around £3. The section was 'warranty or FOC work.  Forty years on, still one of my best customer experiences I've ever had.