The obvious question for an article about unusual pen designs is - what counts as unusual? And there probably isn’t a single good answer. Probably one of those things where we all know it when we see it, but we won’t necessarily all agree.
But do we mean just pens that look unusual, or pens with unusual functionality? Well, why not both? We’ll start with some unusual-looking pens, and then we’ll move on to some with unusual functions, or that do things in an unusual way.
We’ll skip the fancy limited edition pens that are often such unusual designs - that makes it so easy it’s pretty much cheating.
Unusual Looking Pens
This is for pens that look unusual, but they function in a fairly normal and expected way.
Let’s start with the Diplomat Aero - the shape isn’t super weird, but it’s definitely unusual, with its dirigible-inspired curves. We’ve been around them long enough that they look fairly normal now, but when we think back to first seeing them, they were definitely a bit, well, unusual. But they’re comfortable to hold, and probably not so unusual that you couldn’t use one day to day in meetings.
The same goes for the Faber-Castell e-motion, with its somewhat similar curved shape. Again - unusual, yes, but not too weird.
After that, we get to Benu. And they are, in a way, the opposite. Pretty normal shapes. But super-weird patterns and colours. Resins in vivid colours, and filled with glitter and metallic flakes.
When the idea of us stocking Benu first came up, we said they could send us some samples, and we’d consider it. They did, and we had a look at the samples, but we concluded they were just too strange - too bright, too glittery. Just too much. Our customers wouldn’t want that. Even though we liked them. We got as far as telling them we’d decided against it, and could they send us the address to return the samples?
They told us to just keep them, they didn’t want them returned. So, a little while later, we started passing the samples around, and using them. At our next meeting, more than half of us were using Benu pens, and we realised maybe we had made a mistake here. If that many of us liked them enough to want to use them, among all the pens we had, there just had to be enough customers who would want them too.
Moving on, we get to Laban next. They’re not usually too strange, with some very nice traditional luxury designs, applying years of experience making pens for other brands to their own designs. But there’s the Skeleton. If you think of the way a dead leaf can go - a delicate mesh where the leaf used to be, just lines making up the shape. The Skeleton is like that, in metal, wrapped over a transparent pen body.
It’s beautiful, and we especially love the version with the rainbow patterned metal skeleton.
Unusual Functionality
Let’s start with Tom’s Studio - a small company based in the UK, making some quite unusual pens. Many of their pens are fibre-tipped, but filled with fountain pen ink - the removable fabric reservoir is just dipped into ink to soak it up, then put back in the pen. Add on plenty of choices for different tip sizes and types, and even dual-tips on some of their pens, and you’ve got a set of functions that nothing else really matches.
Next, we’ll look at one that most fountain pen fans will have at least heard of - the Pilot Capless. It’s a retractable fountain pen, which is still quite an unusual thing now, but it’s been around since the 1960s. Quick and convenient to use, it’s the novelty that attracts many people in the first place, but the lovely and slightly soft-feel nibs that keep people using them.
Eyedropper-filled fountain pens are another relative rarity these days, though they were much more common in the past. Most of Opus 88’s pens are eyedropper filled. At the basic level, an eyedropper pen is just an open tube when you remove the nib and grip section - fill it with ink using an eyedropper or syringe, and put it back together. The design is very simple, and they can hold a huge amount of ink.
Opus 88 add an extra twist, making what’s often known as a ‘Japanese’ eyedropper - a shut-off valve you can close when you’re not using the pen, or even when you are to avoid leaks as your hand heats up the pen. It wouldn’t be our recommendation for a first fountain pen, but many experienced users love the extra control it gives them.
Vacuum-filled pens are perhaps a little borderline, but probably still rare enough to count as ‘unusual’. They hold more ink than piston-filled pens, and are perhaps a bit quicker to fill. Many of them, like TWSBI’s popular Vac 700 and Vac Mini, also have a shut-off valve, like those eyedropper pens.
Another type of pen that’s often called ‘Japanese’, even when it’s not from Japan, is the ‘Japanese pocket pen’ - a design where much of the pen goes inside the cap, to make them short and easily pocketable when not in use. The cap usually extends the length of the pen when writing, making them more comfortable to write with than many other pocket-sized designs.
Oddly enough, the best known example of these is probably the Kaweco Sport, a German deign from long ago, resurrected a few years ago by Kaweco’s new owners. Or if you want to go really pocketable, the Kaweco Liliput is very tiny - even more handy to fit in small spaces, but comfortable enough for most people to use easily.
Another oddity that takes a different approach to pocketable pens is the Lamy Pico - the whole pen extends with a click, but squishes down small again when you retract the tip.
And we should probably mention the Fisher Space Pen - they’re best known for the pressurised refills, which not only let them work in space, but also when held upside-down (good for writing when you’re lying on your back) or on dusty or damp paper. And the most popular ‘Bullet’ design uses the same trick as the Kaweco Sport, with a cap that extends the pocketable design to be more comfortable in use.
Another very handy category is multipens - pens with more than one function - often at least a couple of different colour ballpoints and perhaps a pencil, all in one pen. Some are just basic ballpoints, but with the handy extra functions, but some are really nice, sophisticated designs.
Most of us have used the BIC 4-Colour pen at some point, and they are great, but you might be surprised how nice and sleek some of the pens are that hide away a bunch of functionality.