(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)
You don’t need to talk to Brad Owens for long to find out how seriously he takes the humble pen, and the idea of making one. “You can take something inanimate and, with some skill and attention to detail, turn it into something that created society as we know it.” Even as a teenager he liked having good pens and good paper, although he hadn’t heard of fountain pens.
A classically trained trumpeter who set out to be a music educator, Owens experienced burnout in that field and ended up with his current demanding day job as a teacher in the legal field. “I talk for a living.” Pen making serves as his stress relief. It began when he looked around for a side business and tried woodworking, and found he had a talent for it; but selling pieces was very difficult unless they were commissioned. At about the same time, he heard of fountain pens and found Brian Goulet’s videos on YouTube. His interest was piqued, and he bought a couple of inexpensive introductory pens from Goulet Pens.
Soon after that, Owens heard of pen shows, and found out there was one in Atlanta, not far from his home. He and his wife attended, and wandered into the room where the independent makers were concentrated, ending up at Jonathon Brooks’ Carolina Pen Company table. He bought a pen from Jonathon, the first time he’d seen kitless pens, and ultimately contacted him to ask for help getting started making them. Jonathon said, “Come on up to the house and I’ll show you.” After a day or two, Owens had made a usable pen, and was smitten. A Kickstarter helped him get over the cost of entry into the craft. He sold his first pen in December 2019 – “Not the best time to start a pen business! There were few shows in 2020, and pen makers weren’t getting to the customers. It was the customers who were the ones getting the word out.”
When it came time to have company and model names, Owens thought first of gods and goddesses because of his love of mythology. A number of other makers had already gone that route, so he chose to name his early models after ancient Greek writers. “Creativity in mythology is almost like pen making – there is a mysterious feel you have to get, and it can’t be taught, you have to learn it yourself.”
Owens has slowly been evolving the diversity of his models. The Prime was first, just a straight shape, and the natural progression was to start making some more tapered silhouettes. The vintage lizard-skin cellulose acetate inspired his recently premiered Vintage Series (VS) pens, paying homage to classic fountain pen styles. These models are likely to mix contemporary handmade resins with the hard-to-find lizard skin, and have traditional style clips. The cellulose acetate is not heat-tolerant, and will begin to smell like vinegar if it gets too hot, so extra care is needed in drilling and polishing to avoid wasting it. Even with his increased interest in mixing materials, there is no temptation to make his own – “if someone has already said it so well, why try to say it again?” – but his wife is beginning to express some interest in the art.
Inspiration for Owens is an internal feedback loop. “Inspiration leads to inspiration. I continue to try to get to a level of satisfaction with what I’m making –to finish a thing and feel like it is really good, and be satisfied with it.” Of course, “There’s only so much you can do with a piece of plastic,” so there need to be small ways your “signature” is on what you make. Personally, he doesn’t like square edges, so over time his pens have evolved to have more small bevels and rounded corners.
When asked about a favorite pen he didn’t make, Owens holds up a large tray of maker pens. “I have a lot of favorite pens I didn’t make.” Standouts in his mind, for craftsmanship and detail, are those made by Eric Sands and Ryan Krusac, as well as the urushi work of Jonathon Brooks. “When I see something better than what I did, it inspires me to do better. I like my maker pens better than my Montblanc 149 because I know what goes into them.”
Owens’ other pen endeavor, the penmaking podcast As The Pen Turns, has been going on since fall of 2020 and is up to forty episodes as of this writing. Through Instagram chats with Jason Miller (they still have not met in person), the idea evolved until they just decided to jump in. “It came out of a desire to inspire the community of pen makers. Information about making pens should be available to anyone who wants to try it out. We wanted an outlet to talk about our pen making.” The first few episodes talked through the pen maker’s toolkit, and they interview a maker (of pens, blanks, or related supplies) every other episode. After a year, they were joined as hosts by Jonathon Brooks. They are closing in on a thousand downloads per episode, and are clearly the world’s most popular (maybe only?) pen making podcast.
The podcast website boasts an extensive directory of links to pen makers, material makers, and nib grinders. A community has bloomed around the podcast, through the annual “Super Most Awesome Pen of the Year (SMAPOTY)” and “Blankety-Blank” awards, voted on by the makers themselves, as well as a secret-santa pen exchange. A number of makers have found inspiration and encouragement in the podcast and related activities. “If I help another pen maker out, it helps me out.”
Despite all the hours working alone in the shop, Owens doesn’t think small when talking about what he does. “I want to think I’m contributing to something bigger than me. Preserving the written word is very important. The next great writer could get one of our pens and write something amazing.”
Brad Owens’ work can be seen at the Atlanta Pen Show, as well as at MythicPens.com and @MythicPens on Instagram.
