I had to know more, especially as the pens continued to appear, and the maker dubbed himself Apprentice, puzzling out clues left behind in the Maker’s abandoned workshop. Magic bells. Spinning blue lights. Flowers in clear running streams. I reached across time and space (i.e. I sent an Instagram message) to find the answers.
Google Meet opened a portal, and the Apprentice, known to me as Jesse, spoke to me from a workshop in Colorado hung with handmade guitars.
He got hooked (sorry; I’ll see myself out) on making things as a fishing-obsessed child of ten, turning fishing lures on the lathe in his father’s workshop. “I get hyperfocused on hobbies, and go really deep.” Taking up music in high school led to building custom electric guitars. “It takes about eighty hours to make a guitar and uses lots of toxic chemicals, so I reluctantly gave that up.”
A busy career in health care and behavioral science didn’t put a damper on the creative drive. Jesse did portrait sculpture (“the MESSIEST form of art you can imagine”) and painting. He grew up with journaling, reading, and creative writing, so between that and the need to take notes at meetings, a pen was often in his hand. “I wanted to make writing more special. One day I thought, ‘Are there other ways I can write besides this Bic?’” The answer, of course, was YES.
The rabbit hole, as we know, is steep and deep. “I tried the big brands. Watching ink dry was therapeutic – to watch the line appear and dry. I tried a variety of nibs.”
This past spring, he made his first pen. “Whenever I get involved in something, I try to make it.” His lifelong love of fantasy literature merged with his love of pens to create a whole world.
“I was looking at a beautiful pen and imagining a story where the major characters used writing to overcome challenges in their lives. I was using pens to overcome some neurodivergences, and I had most of the equipment already, so I ordered some blanks and made a pen. It was ok! I decided to create the things that inspire me.”
