They do one thing and they do it brilliantly. They sell every kind of pen, pencil or refill imaginable, ranging in price from a pound or two to hundreds. The descriptions are very thorough, so you know, for example, what brands of refills will work for a particular pen. They also manage to be very friendly, letting their own opinions come out. Comments like "Sorry - Red standard cartridges have been inexplicably discontinued by Parker" make you realise that the descriptions are compiled by people taking a real interest, rather than bored temps. As their about us page says, they love pens and pencils. I've had occasion to mail them a few times with queries about discontinued models, and they always respond speedily, helpfully and knowledgably.
They also have a very sensible and quite generous postage policy - you only have to spend £10 to get free delivery.
The highlight of today's parcel - ordered on Sunday evening, arrived Tuesday - was a bottle of Diamine ink in China Blue, one dozens of colours available at the very reasonable price of £5.95.
It comes in a very classy bottle, taking you back to a pre-biro and computer keyboard era. I bet my grandfather, who was an architect with the most beautiful handwriting I've ever seen, used ink from a bottle just like this.
I'd been wanting to try Diamine for ages and agonised about which to pick first. In trying to choose a colour, I came across this excellent review of the individual colours. I can feel another order coming on soon - perhaps I'll go for the tasty-sounding Damson or Pumpkin next. But there's a danger that I'll start collecting them - and there are 80 colours in the range, with new ones launched from time to time so I'd better resist the temptation...well, perhaps I could just get one or two...
1 comment:
Good site on pens but the idea of ink reviews is a bit nano, it only leads to too much time spent ordering envelopes.
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