Our friends over at Goldspot Luxury Gifts sent us this loaner Edison Collier Fountain Pen in the Silver Marble pattern, with Steel Broad Nib. There are also other colors available as well as multiple nib sizes in both a steel and 14k gold, so head on over there and check them out…AFTER you read the review that is. Also as a side note for full disclosure, as I said, this pen is a loaner, so I’ll reluctantly pack it up and send it back to Goldspot, however they did send over a complimentary bottle of Noodler’s ink with the pen that is mine for the keepin’.
The Edison Collier fountain pen is made from an acrylic resin and measures about 5.875″ with the cap on, and almost exactly 5″ from end to the tip of the nib with the cap off. The body and cap have a unique translucent yet a bit cloudy appearance to it, and the layers of icy blue, gray and pearly white give it a very wintry look and feel which I really like. As you will notice in the picture, the back end of the pen does not have much of a taper to it, so you are not able to post the cap with this pen.
One thing I’ve had issue with on multiple pens is the overly aggressive branding that companies sometimes feel the need to plaster all over what would otherwise be a great looking pen. You all know who you are, and I can tell you one thing, you should take a lesson from Brian Gray. I didn’t even notice the branding and name (see above close up photo) on the pen until after a day of use and an hour or so after my photo session when I started to edit the photos. In short, I love it…subtle, serves its purpose, and most importantly it doesn’t take anything away from this fantastic looking pen.
Another great thing about the Edison Pen Company brand is the design of their logo (click the above photo for a better view) which sits prominently on the nib. In an homage to Thomas Edison, the Edison Pen Company uses an image of a nib, that is threaded to look like the bottom metal part of a light bulb. It is a very clever design and concept in my opinion.
A fairly obscure thing that I really like about this pen is how the otherwise smooth and flowing pattern of the blue and gray swirls are interrupted (for lack of a better term) on the threading. It kind of reminds me of an old school TV that had that abrupt fuzzy picture interruption thing going on. For some reason I actually find myself uncapping the pen occasionally just to check out that zigzag pattern, and I even found it fun to try to angle it to just the right position so the zigzags actually appear to smooth out again…maybe I have too much time on my hands?
So now that I’ve picked apart some pretty minor details that I really like about the pen, you are probably wondering if I have anything to say about how it writes? I typically stick to fountain pens with Fine and Extra Fine nibs, but going into this, I knew it would just be a loaner for me, so I decided I’d give the Broad nib a try. I definitely expected it to be smoother writing than any Fine or Extra Fine, and that was absolutely the case. Because the cap does not post, the body of the pen doesn’t extend much past the space between my thumb and pointer finger when I write with it, so the balance is perfect with no top heavy feeling. Grip-wise, it is subtle but well done with a minor concave slope that allows you to put just enough pressure on the part that flares out at the bottom to keep control of it as you write.
As I mentioned a few hundred words ago (sorry, its easy to talk about such a cool pen) Goldspot sent over a complimentary bottle of ink with this loaner pen, which I used in the writing sample for this review. The ink is Noodler’s Black Swan in Australian Roses, which I expect to do a full review of next week. Being that this was my first experience with a broad nib, I had to adjust my writing style a bit so I actually did a bit of sample writing in addition to my usual which includes trying the pen out at work. Admittedly I probably couldn’t use this for every day note taking because of my tendency to try and write really small, however the writing experience is so fantastic that I wanted to use it every opportunity I got. One thing I always find myself doing to test the feel of a new pen is that I obsessively sign my name because to me, that is the most natural and easy flowing thing I could ever write, and with this pen I eventually found myself with multiple sheets of my illegible flailing signatures plastered all over it. It became somewhat of a guilty pleasure to just grab for this pen and start scrawling my name with it. If I were famous, this pen would probably be the contributing reason for a sudden over-supply of my autograph, leading to a sharp decline in its value.
There never seemed to be a hiccup, skip or splotch with the buttery smooth nib on this pen, and I even flipped it over to write with the “wrong” side of it a few times with the same super smooth feeling. The broad nib on this pen also helped to accentuate the unique shading that you can get with this particular ink. I noticed a negligible amount of nib creep, but nothing to worry about, and honestly I think it is just enough to give it that “used” look that I like anyway.
