Holiday Palette I: Red & Green, Pelikan Style

December 23, 2014 By Joshua in Pictorial Tags: Fountain Pen, Green, Pelikan, Red 3 Comments

After an exhaustive look into the M6xx family of pens over the last several posts and with the upcoming holidays, I thought that it would be fun to shift focus to something more festive. As we look at the world around us this time of year, we often see the characteristic colors of the season. Vibrant reds and rich greens coexisting along deep blues and bright whites. Regardless of what holiday you may choose to celebrate personally, we are surrounded by this inescapable landscape of color. When I reflect upon my Pelikan fountain pen collection, one of the things that I am drawn to is the wide array of colors that have been introduced over the years. In Pelikan’s home country of Germany, conservative blacks have always prevailed according to the popular sensibilities of the culture. The export markets have been delighted, however, to receive a vast rainbow of colorful pens, some of which are not commonly seen these days. As we lead up to the final days of the holiday season, I would like to provide you with the last two posts of the year. The first will be a pictorial celebration of reds and greens curated from my collection. To follow this up, I will feature pens of blue and silver/white in another post. Fun posts for this festive time of year as we get ready to look ahead to 2015. I’m sure that Pelikan will have many more exciting announcements in store for the new year. I wish all of you a happy holidays and hope that you have enjoyed the content and discussion of the site thus far. Until next year….

Click Here to Continue Reading

News: Ink of the Year 2015 – Amethyst

December 19, 2014 By Joshua in News Tags: Edelstein, Ink, Pelikan 7 Comments

This week has been very exciting as Pelikan rather unexpectedly announced two new pens to be released in 2015. The new products coming out of Hanover aren’t limited to pens though as they have also announced the Edelstein (pronounced EY-dell-shtine) 2015 Ink of the Year. This upcoming year will feature Amethyst, marking the twelfth addition to the Edelstein line-up and the fourth Ink of the Year.

Click Here to Continue Reading

News: M200 Café Crème Due In 2015

December 18, 2014 By Joshua in News Tags: Cafe Creme, Fountain Pen, M200, Pelikan 10 Comments

M200 Café Crème

It certainly seems that Pelikan is in step with the holiday spirit this season as new product announcements continue to roll out of Hanover ahead of the new year, much to the delight of Pelikan aficionados. It was just this past Monday when Pelikan announced the M805 Stresemann which introduces a new anthracite binde paired with a very complimentary rhodium trim. The early chatter seems to indicate that the pen community has received the news of that new model quite enthusiastically. Now, just three days on the heels of that announcement, Pelikan is at it again, this time with a new pen in their Classic line. Their last release in this line was the M200 Cognac Demonstrator which debuted in 2014. It seems that the upcoming year will bring us another beverage inspired model, the M200 Café Crème.

Click Here to Continue Reading

News: M805 Stresemann Due In 2015

December 15, 2014 By Joshua in News Tags: Binde, Fountain Pen, M805, Pelikan, Stresemann 15 Comments

M805 Stresemann

In the early morning hours of Saturday, December 13th Pelikan announced to the community via its Facebook page for Pelikan International that something new was coming. It was described as the reinterpretation of a classic and an image of just the silhouette of a pen was provided with a short caption. Of course, this generated no shortage of speculation and commentary throughout the weekend. I saw quite a range of guesses as to what was in store, many of which seemed to be hoping for some new variation of tortoise. Thankfully, Pelikan did not keep us waiting for long and, just 48 hours later, they have made the announcement that in 2015 they will be releasing an M805 with a new binde (pronounced BIN-duh) dubbed Stresemann. Binde is a German word that describes the colored/patterned sleeve that is fitted around the outside of the barrel of a pen. It is more of a historical term as the old birds had a barrel with a separate binde to provide the coloration. I believe that this is still the case though for the M8xx series and up but does not hold true for the smaller Souveräns.

Click Here to Continue Reading

Announcement: The Souverän M6xx Now in The Aviary

December 13, 2014 By Joshua in Announcement Tags: Fountain Pen, M600, Pelikan Leave a comment

M600 Vibrant Green

In keeping with my vision for this site, The Aviary continues to grow with the addition of the Souverän M6xx family of pens now available for your reference. Conspicuously, this follows on the heels of my recent in-depth look at the M600 series of fountain pens which I hope was able to provide some useful information on this middle child of the Souverän line-up. The Aviary now includes a page detailing all of the variations of the M6xx family available at the time of this post, including the special editions. You will find write-ups detailing the features of these pens as well as photographs of nearly all of the 41 known variations to aid in identification/reference. Also, in case you may have missed it, below you will find links to my 3 part series looking at the M6xx family. In the future, I hope to grow The Aviary to include a similar treatment of the other members of the Souverän line. Also, don’t forget to check out the M75, M1xx, M2xx, M481, and M101N pages that have previously been added.

Click Here to Continue Reading

Review: The M640 – An Oddity Amongst M6xx Special Editions

December 7, 2014 By Joshua in Reviews Tags: Fountain Pen, M640, Mount Everest, Pelikan 7 Comments

This is the third and final installment of my series exploring the M600. In my first post, I endeavored to explore the differences between both the old and new style M600’s. The second post reviewed those pens from the two different eras in a head to head comparison. For this post, I wanted to focus on another member of the M6xx family, one that defies the usual styling of the series and makes it somewhat of an oddity in the line-up. The pen up for review here is the M640 Mount Everest, released in 2008. This pen is part of the “Beauty of Nature” series which is composed of six pens in total released from 2007-2011. The theme behind these pens is centered upon celebrating the beauty of the natural world around us. What makes this series somewhat unique is that there are several departures in design from most of the other pens in the Souverän series, regardless of model, which I will try to highlight below. This departure in design has polarized some of the fan base as many have found it difficult to embrace certain design elements. The pen being reviewed today is from my personal collection but this review should be able to be generalized to all of the pens in the series.

Click Here to Continue Reading

Review: Old & New Style M600’s Head-to-Head

December 3, 2014 By Joshua in Reviews Tags: Fountain Pen, M600, Pelikan 10 Comments

This is the second installment of what I intend to be a three-part segment looking at the M600. The first post, “A Tale of Two M600’s,” looked back at the history of the M600 and the design changes which occurred in 1997 that forever altered the physical appearance as well as the fit-in-the-hand of the pen. Where that post focused on the origins of these pens, this post will be a direct review, a head to head comparison of the pre-1997, old-style M600 versus the post-1997, new style M600. It is important to look at the two side by side because even though they share the same moniker, they are very different pens and will therefore appeal to different people. Interestingly, years ago when I looked to branch out and try a bigger pen, I decided to seek out an M600, mostly due to it’s more budget friendly appeal when compared to an M800 or M1000. Not knowing much about the pen at all and not having the knowledge of sites such as this one, I purchased an M600 on the used market only, much to my surprise, to find it the same size as the few M200 and M400 models in my collection. I thought that a mistake had been made and, at first, was upset until I learned what I have already shared with you in part one of this series. Once I realized that the confusion was all mine, I was actually very pleased with my acquisition and soon followed it up with the post-1997 variant that I had initially envisioned. Those two pens from my personal collection are what I will review for you today.

Click Here to Continue Reading

A Tale of Two M600’s

November 29, 2014 By Joshua in Reference Tags: Fountain Pen, M600, Nibs, Pelikan 14 Comments

This is the first installment of a multi-part series looking at what I consider to be the middle child of the Souverän family, the M600. This first post will explore the history, features, and variations of the M600. In a follow-up post, I will be reviewing both the old and new style M600 pens in a head to head match-up. The M600 has one of the more interesting histories amongst Pelikan’s Souverän line-up and therefore is also prone to generate confusion amongst collectors. As I’ve described previously, the year 1997 saw many changes to the trim styles of both the Souverän and Tradition series of pens. Perhaps no pen was more affected than the M600 because not only did the trim change, the actual physical dimensions of the pen did as well. The M600 was originally introduced in 1985, a few years after the M400 was debuted. At that time, it had the same exact dimensions as the M400 but included an upgraded trim package. The initially available barrel colors included black (1985), burgundy (1989), and the familiar green striated (1990) variations. A tortoise version also exist but these are much less frequently encountered due to its limited production run.

Click Here to Continue Reading