Functional Jewelry

"Diamonds or Pearls?" a recent Getting-to-Know-You survey asked. I answered garnets, but my honest alternative would have been: Skip the jewels and give me a beautiful fountain pen any day of the week.

I have, my entire life, had heart palpitations over a good pen with good ink in it. While you're at the jewelers, I will be browsing at Crane Paper, or Staples. Heck, I can't even walk by the school supplies in Target without detouring down the office supplies aisle.

My love of pens runs deep. My Grandfather collected pens. He wove elastic thread through pegboard and covered his garage with pens. One wall of his office area was also adorned with pens, shelves, erasers; I can remember running my fingers across them, pulling them out, returning them, playing at his desk for hours on end.

A few years ago, the cousin that ended up with all of those pens, upon hearing of my love for them, gifted me one of the 8-foot pieces of pegboard. One board containing 600 pens.

I removed them from the board, separated those valuable or restorable from those novel. Some are displayed in my curio cabinets. The rest, pictured above, are put away, I'm not sure what will come of them. There's a warehouse somewhere with thousands more.

So, through my Grandfather's influence, I came to love writing. Drawing. Pens. Ink. I love filling my own pens with any serious or whimsical color of ink I choose. Private Reserve's Hot Bubble Gum Pink, and Aquamarine are my favorites.

A good pen doesn't necessarily equate to an expensive pen. I have a few costly pens that write very well: A Mont Blanc, a Pelikan, and the pen pictured above, a Platinum pen colored as a koi fish, are some of my favorites.

However, my all-time dependable, never-dries-out, never-leaks, old faithful, is a $27 Waterman (found in any Office Depot or Staples). It's a real workhorse of a pen, I actually have several, and have given several away as starter pens.

I've picked up a few over the years that have history, and though I don't use them, I love them also. Some have been gifts, one called a Packard, given to me by a friend and auto collector. Another was recently found about 2 years ago, along with about 2000 others, in a wall in Germany, believed to have been hidden from the SS during The Holocaust.

One more was among my Grandfather's, I sent it to Vintage Pens & Sales in Columbus, Ohio, to have it restored. Filling it involves blowing a few puffs of air into one end, while the tip sits in the bottle. I tried it with trepidation and didn't do a great job of filling it....so it sits in in a pretty little velvet case.

My pens adorn my hand, and beautify my handwriting. I get more compliments on my pens, in a public venue, than ever I did any ring around my finger or bracelet 'round wrist.

I really do consider them "Functional Jewelry."