So much has happened since I attended my first fountain pen show in Atlanta in 2023, it's hard to believe it's only been two years. After venturing to that show on my own only knowing a handful of names/screen names from the internet, I'm so thankful to have gotten to know so many people in the community that by this year, I was on my way to the show to see friends again—and of course put a few more faces to familiar names.
Like in Arkansas, one of my first stops was to visit the Darail Penz table to look through the Colorverse inks, since there are always more Colorverse inks I'm interested in.
I picked out a dark gray-green ink called Do-dong Forest, which will be a pretty good color for the chatoyant green pen I got from Darail Penz last year. I also decided to pick up the 2025 Year of the Snake ink, Blue Green Snake, with Glistening Green shimmer.
I met Scott of Tri Star Studio at a few Middle TN pen events a while back, and love seeing all the beautiful pens posted on Instagram. I'd heard from another friend that he would have a table at the show this year, and sure enough I ran into Scott in line at registration early on Friday morning!
Between the resin pens with elegant metal accents and wood pens with “surprise” resin pairings, I looked at all the pens for a good while before making a shortlist. Since I don't have any wood pens, I was leaning toward those, and all the woods were beautiful and interesting so it really came down to the resin pairings.
The colors in the pen I ultimately picked included blues and yellows (which I've really been into lately)—it reminds me of the colors in Starry Night. This was my only pen purchase of the show.
Last year my sister surprised me by reaching out to Tracy Cullen on Instagram to get one of her amazing nib mugs for my birthday. It's my favorite mug, (and I have a lot of cool mugs!), and I love seeing all the new designs she's been creating. Since Tri Star Studio brought a lot of her pieces to his table I knew I'd leave the show with something!
While I would have happily taken home any of Tracy's mugs, this oversize mug in earthy greens and browns with the luna moth accented in gold over a fiery red and orange background was eye-catching to say the least, and it reminds me of a happy memory. I also grabbed a couple nib-shaped pen rests with beautiful green and metallic brown and black glaze. These will be great for photos but also very helpful in keeping all these pens without clips or rollstops from rolling around my desk!
It was so nice to see Smruti Pens at the show, even though Akhila was not able to attend and was greatly missed. I spent some time looking through all the ink swatches and picked out a few Dominant Industry and Wearingeul inks, plus another Dominant Industry A5 plain notebook.
Last year at the Atlanta Pen Show I picked up a Smruti Pens Evoke notebook with 100 pages of Tomoe River paper. The now slightly worn cover is a mark of how this has been my main pen show/pen meetup notebook for the past year, filled with writing samples of different nibs and nib grinds, ink swatches, stamps, writing and sketches from others who tested a pen or an ink—a whole year of information and memories filling the first half of this notebook that will continue to journey with me in the pen community.
The table of T. Wyitt Carlile stands out with an array of wands that are pens, wands that are not pens, pens that are not wands, a colorful menagerie of resin creatures, and other interesting bits and bobs. At this juncture I was not in the market for a wand but I was not going to let another year go by without picking up an octopus friend.
This octopus reflects a rainbow of colors with the holographic sparkle across the surface while the clear, lightly sparkly, resin inside captures the light. Is this ghostopus?
I was so surprised to see NFP Design from Turkey with their handmade pen storage boxes and trays at this show. I started following NFP Design when the Vanness Pen Shop had some of their pen storage boxes, and had really been liking the pen tray designs being featured on Instagram—especially the earthy green, orange, yellow, etc. color palette.
It was tempting to pick up several pieces, but I decided to start with a compact 4 pen tray that won't take up too much space on the desk, in a lovely dark wood with dark green pen insert.
If there's an ink swatch book at a table, chances are I'm going to flip through it. While doing so it was nice to chat with the folks at the Florida Fountain Pen table and pick out a couple Robert Oster inks, Wind (to complete the set with Earth, Fire, and Water) and another muddy ink called Muddy Sand. I also got my first bottle of Navalur ink, a rich green with gold shimmer called Jade.
The Lighthouse Paper Co. is a stationery shop in Melbourne, FL who attended the Atlanta Pen Show for the first time this year. They brought a wide range of stationery goods but the unique thing that really caught my eye were these themed watercolor project notebooks by Emily Lex Studio. I picked the book with a dozen different birds to paint, plus a roll of MT washi with black cats.
For each bird in this book there is a page of watercolor paper with an outline and instructions for creating the color palette and painting the bird as shown. I think this book will be an interesting way to compare painting with traditional watercolor paints, the pigmented Derwent "Inktense" paints and colored pencils, and fountain pen inks—which is something I've been wanting to do on my Sunday art streams on Twitch.
I had made a late afternoon appointment on Saturday to visit Kirk Speer for nib grinds in advance of the show, but I stopped by fairly early on Friday to look through all the special engraved nibs while the selection was good. Despite having an engraved black nib and/or the 2025 Atlanta Pen Show nib in mind, I ended up picking something completely different.
First I couldn't stop looking at these nibs with a subtle iridescence when rotated in the light. Each one was a little different so I had to compare until I found one I liked that also had enough tipping for a grind—which ended up being this Jowo B. I also really liked the coppery look of this other Jowo B with Kirk's Nib Wolf logo, so I purchased the nibs and matched them with some empty pens I'd brought to bring to my appointment on Saturday.
I love Carola's flower paintings so I also picked up one of the 2-pen Rickshaw sleeves with the Pen Realm and Carola flower pattern that I had first seen at the California show, and a sheet of stickers.
I'd already got Kirk's Scythe grind on a Schmidt nib in a Benu Euphoria which I've loved using, so this time I got the Jowo #6 with the Nib Wolf logo ground to a Scythe that I can move around to more pens.
This year I also decided to bring my favorite workhorse pen model, a TWSBI Eco, to get my go-to grind, the Katana. This is dangerous, because I really like how this turned out, and I have a lot of TWSBIs! I also got a Katana grind on the iridescent nib.
These quick writing samples show how these grinds change the shape of my letters compared to an unmodified nib with the usual round tipping. The ground nibs all started as a broad and remain relatively wet writers so the line variation isn't as stark as it could be, but I do think the difference is noticeable—I definitely feel the difference when writing.
The Katana grind makes the vertical stroke narrower and the horizontal stroke more broad. The Scythe grind is a curved architect, which gives a thin vertical line and thicker horizontal line like an architect, but the curved edge allows for a greater range of writing angles.
At this point I'm basically a walking Rickshaw Bags advertisement, between the quintessential "pen show bag" Banzai and/or Large Soho Tote I had with me all weekend, filled with Rickshaw pouches of ink swatches and ink pony sheets, and multiple Sinclair pen cases stuffed with pens and more single or two pen sleeves. All of these pieces are beautiful designs, made well, and have held up fantastically through heavy use.
Mark Dwight, founder of Rickshaw, attended the show and brought these awesome Atlanta peach single pen sleeve lanyards, with the fuzzy plush on the outside as well as the inside. I ended up chatting with Mark for a bit late on Saturday night, which was a privilege.
I still can't really believe that the Ink Pony Club has persisted past being a stream title pun turned into a little painting activity, but I'm delighted it has. Making time for analog creativity has been so transformative in my own life, sharing the experience of exploring fountain pen inks on paper with a brush, especially with people who've never tried anything like that before, continues to bring me joy.
I found bulk packs of small water brushes and plastic paint palettes that I can easily bring to shows or meetups. On Saturday I filled small dropper bottles with inks I picked up at the show (plus one from Gourmet Pens to expand the palette with some purple/pink) and invited people to try painting an ink pony right there at the show.
Several ponies were painted beautifully over the weekend, and I was able to send blank pony sheets and painting supplies home with others.
I remember the Pengineer3D table from last year and was curious to learn more about the new and updated items this year. In addition to some slight design improvements to the pen and ink sample roulette wheels, there was a new product called an Ink Station.
The Ink Station is cleverly designed to securely hold ink bottles or sample vials of various shapes and sizes securely at an angle for filling, or you can remove the bottle holder from the base and use it separately if you don't want the angle. The station also includes a small sponge to wipe the nib on after filling, or re-wet a nib that's hard starting. The roulette vial or pen holders can also slide into the Ink Station base for lots of customization possibilities.
I picked out an Ink Station and a two slot tray with two ink vial roulettes, items that I thought would be particularly useful for managing ink bottles and sample vials on stream when I'm trying to manage limited desk real-estate and not accidentally knock anything over! I look forward to giving these a spin (pun intended).
On Sunday morning I hopped on the list for Mark Bacas, the Nib Grinder, who I had not gotten nib work from before. I was interested in his blade grind and an architect, and brought two pens I'd set aside for nib work. After a brief discussion, it was decided to put an architect grind on the Kaweco Sport with a BB nib, and the Blade grind on a Bock BB nib that was in a London Pen Co pen.
The BB Bock nib with the Blade grind has now been moved to my new pen from Tri Star Studio.
The architect on this Kaweco Sport BB nib is really fun to write with.
In this writing sample, the blade grind that started as a BB now has a line width similar to the TWSBI medium on the vertical stroke, but a much wider horizontal stroke. The line variation on the architect is more distinct, with an even narrower vertical stroke and wider horizontal stroke—this was tuned to be fairly wet (because I like ink!), a dryer line/ink would likely show even more variation.
It was really nice to get to chat and share pens with Inkdependence Mike over the weekend, but also we exchanged some inks! I brought some samples of recent interesting or long-time favorite inks for Mike, and I got his recent Pennonia inks and the happy surprise of samples of three new Diamine Inkdependence inks that will be releasing soon. I've been saving this particular page in the Dominant Industry Ink Archiving book just for this occasion!
This weekend I had a chance to swatch and paint with all these Inkdependence inks. The Pennonia inks started as celebrations of beloved pet cats with Mr. Nose's Peepers and Toe Beans, but a color difference in the first batch resulted in two additional inks, Hens & Chicks and Navy Beans. And, if you've joined any Inkdependence livestreams on Twitch or YouTube in the last year or so, you probably already know the age-old question: Trust a Bivalve or Don't Trust a Bivalve.
For now, the Atlanta Pen Show remains my "home show" as it's the closest drive, and it will always hold a special place as my first show. There are a lot of opinions about how an established pen show like this should grow, attract, and support new attendees, but I was most disappointed by a couple things that were a step back from my experience attending the last two years—the lack of website updates, specifically never posting a vendor list for 2025, and the absence of any classes or seminars.
From my perspective as a returning attendee, the actual show itself seemed to be pretty much business as usual. A few regular vendors were not there, but there were other vendors at this show for the first time. The Friday night cookout and Saturday night pizza and Pen Show After Dark events are community events unique to this show that shouldn't be overlooked among the shortcomings. I heard from several people how much they care about the show and are willing to step up to help support it. I was even prepared to volunteer my time and materials to host a free seminar or "lounge" space related to ink swatching and/or painting, maybe next time. I personally didn't see an insurmountable lack of care, just an unfortunate number of missed opportunities.
Like so many others have said, for me pen shows are becoming so much more than making a few purchases—it's about seeing friends, connecting with more people in the community, learning new things, and sharing things I've learned. Bottom line, I had a really great time with people at this show.
Here's a few cool stickers from some of the people I met, or got to know better, this trip.