Douglas Vicary proudly shows off his Kamakura Pens LE at the Mont Blanc boutique

I stopped at the Mont Blanc boutique at Beachwood Mall in Cleveland. I Mainly went to the mall for Chic-Fil-A, which I desperately miss since my move up north. But that MB Jules Verne has been slowly growing on me. I didn't like it at first, but the more that I see it the more I like it. It's starting to look less and less like an overblown version of my blue guilloche Sheaffer Targa.

In any case, while I was talking to the sales associate, an older woman came in to pick up her pen. Looked to be an older model 144. She had the nib exchanged to a broad. She saw me looking over the Jules Verne FP and asked why someone as young as I would be interested in a fountain pen. We got to talking and she asked if I had any pens she could see.

I showed her my new Kamakura Pens Maki-e Music Pen from Ron Dutcher. She wasn't the only one impressed, it made all the boutique salespeople take notice as well. Probably not too often someone pulls out a Maki-E pen in there.

She was particularly interested in the bold music nib. I wrote a bit with it, and she looked at my writing sample, then at the salesman, and said 'That's what I wanted!' Apparently she was after a bit of line variation. I assured her that MB broad nibs have a nice amount of line variation (which they do- some can almost be stubs) but that the music nib was handcrafted by a nib master in Japan, and not mass produced in a German factory.

She played with her newly broad nibbed 144 and seemed a bit disappointed that it was no music nib. In fact, I had a bit of a tough time getting my Kamakura LE back from her- she seemed to be getting a bit attached. I was going to tell her about the Zoss list, and Mottishaw and Binder and Kamakura Pens, and all the other fun stuff. But the first question I asked was if she had a computer. Of course, the answer was no. And I don't have any numbers off the top of my head. So I referred her to the Border's next door to get a copy of Pen World. Would have been nice if it had been Stylophile's, but you have to work with what you've got. Hopefully she'll see something interesting and maybe call FPH to get one, and they'll send her a catalog, and then she'll get really hooked. Maybe I'll run into her next time I'm down there, harrassing the poor salesman about why they don't make a nib with good line variation like the Kamakura pens LE..

-Douglas Vicary