(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.)
Mark Storch’s first fountain pen came to a surprisingly dramatic end.
“I started using a fountain pen in high school. I had such a death grip on regular pens that it was almost leading to a deformity in my hand. My mother got me a fountain pen, just something maroon and plastic, nothing special, but it was so comfortable. Unfortunately, that pen met an untimely end against a cinderblock wall, when a friend who’d just been dumped by her boyfriend borrowed my pen and then took her frustration out on an innocent writing instrument. An early lesson in not lending your pens to non-pen people!”
That pen was replaced by a Rotring 600. “I used that fountain pen through high school, and on and off in college, but got lazy, and used other things for quick notes.” The bug didn’t go away, however. “Once I got actual jobs, I got a Pilot Myu. I had the wrong ink, I had bad paper. I didn’t enjoy it until I got real ink and good paper.” The Myu reminds him of an old TV commercial for a sporty Nissan, where a cop writing tickets said, “It looks fast standing still.”
As a child he built models, and in school he had done technical theater, but the “actual jobs” were in fields like technical writing, business analysis, material science, and strategic planning. He was even the CEO of a specialty chemical startup. “In none of those jobs did I produce any actual thing you can hold in your hand.”
Somehow, Storch came across the idea that “you can get a pen made out of any material you want,” so he started accumulating various rods of material with the idea of commissioning pens for himself. He attended a pen show before he thought about ever making pens. “My first real show was Baltimore. I didn’t know anything. I came into the hotel and met Brad Dowdy at the bar – I made friends with the people first.”
Like many pen makers, for Storch the lockdown period of COVID led to some new ideas about what was possible. “My mother passed away right before the lockdowns. I was the executor for her estate, then when that was done I kind of thought, ‘Now what?’” At the same time, the real job was losing its charm. “I got disenchanted with startups. I made a deal with my wife, if I would clean out the basement I could turn it into a shop.”
At this point, his connections from pen shows came to his aid. “People at shows understand what goes into making a pen.” Rich Paul, of River City Pen Company, was nearby in Pittsburgh, and invited him to the shop to walk him through making a pen. Jonathon Brooks did a video call shop walkthrough to show him what tools and equipment were required. “I got a lathe. I watched a lot of videos online. I broke a couple of inserts and a few pieces of material. But I hit a stride, and now I feel pretty confident that I can turn what’s in my head into a pen.”
In 2024, Storch jumped into the show deep-end, signing up for a table at the DC Pen Show. “I got a message from the organizers while I was cooking dinner. I turned off the burner and ran right upstairs to respond.” At first, he was assigned to the “third room,” around the corner from the other two spaces, and having been there, he knew that he would need to do a little extra to draw attention to himself. “I worked with a vendor on Etsy to get a neon sign with my logo. I was going to make sure you knew I was there! But I really wanted to be in the ‘maker room’ with the other makers I knew who had helped me get set up, and thankfully they were able to move me there.” The neon sign stayed, though.
Tooling has been something of a journey for Storch. “I followed my mom’s advice to get the best you can afford, right at the beginning.” He is always conscious of safety and aware that your tools really are trying to kill you. “It’s kind of zen, actually. You have to have complete focus, most people may not appreciate how quickly things can go wrong.” He now uses a metal lathe – “I’m not comfortable using a chisel with a wood lathe, I have rheumatoid arthritis in my fingers” – but realizes that the machine has limitations he has to work around. “Round ends are harder to do on a lathe meant to do right angles. I built a ball turning tool at first, then developed a better method using specialized tooling.” He’s adding a milling machine to do things like faceted shapes, and also a CNC lathe – “there’s quite a learning curve, I need to put in the hours to learn the tool.”
His favorite material is cellulose acetate, for how it cuts and polishes, and he’s purposely selecting bright colors. “My personal collection skews darker, but I’m the new kid, I need to catch your attention and I need my pens to catch your eye from five or six feet away so you’ll stop and look at my table.” He’s been a little tempted to try his hand at making blanks, but as it turned out, his wife needed a creative outlet to balance her professional life, and he encouraged her to take up blank pouring; she showcases her blanks as @betwixtbetweenstudios. “We are a little unique. By working together we can do a completely custom pen, from material design all the way to the shape of the pen.”
Like all makers, Storch is thinking about that “fingerprint” or signature all the time. “What can I do when there are fifty other people at a show doing the same thing I’m doing? How do you do something different?” He wants to experiment with material combinations, like accent rings that are visible when the user is writing with the pen. And he particularly has a focus on sections. “The piece interacts with all the other parts. They take the most work to make, so it feels like some companies get complacent and keep making the same section.” The CNC will allow him to experiment with new and different section shapes. “As a maker, you get to make the pens you like. Every maker has a signature in their designs. I want someone to be able to look at a pen, and say, ‘That’s his.’” His signature is the attention to the details he feels lead to the best writing experience. “The step from barrel threads to the section is less than a millimeter, it’s purposely made that way so you can hold your pen however is most comfortable for you. I don’t want to force you to write a certain way.”
The name of his pen company came from a chance remark at a show from John Foye, the proprietor of St. John’s Pens. “I showed him a prototype pen I had been working on, and his first reaction was, ‘That’s fantastic!’ I want everyone to react like that. And the name keeps you honest – it’s an implicit promise. You have to make a quality pen, or the bad review almost writes itself.”
What favorite pens does he have, that he personally enjoys using? “I have a big collection – when I stopped carrying everything around in pen cases I bought two of those Toyooka boxes!” He has a number of the world’s most classic pens – a striking Tibaldi Impero, a rare Montblanc 149, a Pelikan M1000, and a couple of prototype pens from Omas, one of his favorite brands. But two others stand out in his mind for personal reasons. “My dad had a sterling silver Waterman Gentleman that he got when he was working at the Commodities Exchange. He loved that pen, it quickly replaced the Parker 75 his parents gave him when he graduated law school. Unfortunately, even though it came into my collection when he passed away, it is still one of my most treasured pens.” The other is something quite different. “At the first Baltimore show we attended, my wife was working with Jonathon Brooks on getting one of his Cenote pens. This left me standing there eyeing up an unusual pen he had on his table. It turns out it was actually a celluloid material, Tiger Tail I believe. After I stood there with nothing else to do but look at it for so long, it ended up coming home with me. It was and still is quite special, being one of the first maker pens I owned as well as coming from someone who has gone on to become a good friend and mentor in the community.”
Storch says he is “in the expanding phase – I have a laundry list of things I’d like to try. I keep a notepad by my bed to write down new ideas, thoughts I have at the end of the day. There is so much to explore. I’m not getting bored with being a fulltime penmaker anytime soon.” He is working on collaborating with an ink maker to create an exclusive ink to go with his pens, and he wants to do more shows. He attended Chicago this year and would like to have a table there next year. He is building an expanded line of pens for the DC show.
Shows are in some ways his favorite thing about being a pen maker, because he gets to interact directly with customers. “Someone will pick up a pen and you can see their eyes light up when they find one they absolutely fall in love with. The pen isn’t all that you’re buying, you’re buying a piece of the maker’s vision, and it’s a great feeling when that resonates with someone.”
Mark Storch’s work can be seen at pen shows in Baltimore and DC, and on his Instagram @fantasticpens (“I’m planning to be better at posting there, I swear!”). His website FantasticPens.com is a work in progress.
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