(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)
Récife is a specialty shop in Paris that carries leather goods, accessories, and writing instruments. Today I’m reviewing a soon-to-be released fountain pen in the Récife Special Edition Artis collection. These pens are meant to evoke the works of Claude Monet. My pen utilizes the colors found in Monet’s work, “Le Jardin de l'artiste à Giverny”: purple and pink (Récife calls the color Violene). Récife craftsmen make each pen by hand, so each pen is unique.
I’m not sure if the pen is made of resin or acrylic, but it is extremely lightweight, regardless. It is 5.5 inches (140mm) capped, 4.75 inches (121mm) uncapped, and 6.25 inches (159mm) posted. I found the pen to be unbalanced posted, but I do not usually post pens, so your experience may vary.
The cap’s final and clip are one piece of metal with an art deco motif. The cap band is inscribed with “Modèle Recife déposé Paris,” which means “registered Recife model, Paris.” The cap screws onto the barrel with a few twists.
The grip is made of metal, but it doesn’t add much heft to the pen.
My pen came with a standard international-sized black ink cartridge but no converter. I didn’t see any converters advertised on the Récife website, but it’s likely that a standard international converter would work with the pen.
The nib is a steel medium with scrollwork, “Récife Paris,” a logo (I can’t tell what it is), and the nib size inscribed on it.
The tines are perfectly aligned and the writing is smooth. However, I experienced hard starts whenever I uncapped the pen to write a new page.
The Récife Special Edition Artis Traveler Fountain Pen is an interesting pen with a palette based on Monet paintings. It sort of reminds me of the Visconti Van Gogh pens, but the Récife is definitely not in the same class as the Visconti pens which are made of resin, have magnetic closure caps, and sport much thicker metal trims (they are also more expensive). The violene color is not my cup of tea, but there are other marbled colors in shades of black, gray, green, blue, and red in the collection. I also think the pen is much too small and light, but that is because I prefer heavier, large pens.
You can purchase Récife fountain pens from Récife Paris. The Traveler model is ordinarily 50 euros (= $57.00), but the Special Edition Artis models will be more expensive (around $90.00).
(The US distributor for Récife provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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