1. Introduction to the world of special fountain pen nibs: get to know the 2. Architect, a 3. Music and the 4. Fude 5. nibs!
A 6. Horizon Zero Dawn 7. and many other similar stories set in the future, where our future fellow humans misunderstand the objects of the past with sincere naivety. This often comes to mind when I see that the production pressure demanded by digital media results in a lot of posts and videos that, to put it politely, are the result of less thorough research. And if something rare is written about foolishly, then almost only misinformation spreads on the internet.
8. Today, we will talk about three rare, special fountain pen nibs for which there is partly little, partly very poor information available on the internet. I do not claim to have the whole truth, but let's at least clarify the obvious mistakes.
9. The „Architect” nib
10. Someone thought that if there is already a fountain pen nib that is wide but flat („stub”), then what if we made one that is thin but tall:
12. However, I couldn't really find out why this is called the „architect” nib. It is certain that architects have never used such a nib 13. (despite what some blog posts and videos claim by now). They mostly do not even know it, and there are several reasons for this: 14. Architects (and technical drawers) drew with ink, not with fountain pen ink, which would immediately ruin fountain pens as it dries.
- 15. The earliest traces of such nibs I found date back to the sixties. They may have existed earlier, but they were hardly widespread. However, architects have documentedly used tools like.
- 16. ink pullers for hundreds of years: 17. There is something called "architectural style lettering," but in this case, the letters consist of lines of completely uniform thickness. Most "architectural" fonts also have equal line thickness, among these I did find an American "draftsman" font that seems to have been written with such a pen, which has thin vertical and wide horizontal lines, perhaps this is what led to the naming of this type of nib:
18. Image source: identifont.com
Recently, by the way, it has become quite popular for bored, rich people to have all sorts of strange mountains polished for them for a lot of money, but you can also buy them cheaply, from Aliexpress, or the Fountain Pen Revolutions-from.
The „Music Nib”
There is an extreme version of the wide, flat (stub) nibs, the „music nib,” which is not only wider but also has one more „branch” in most cases (instead of one, it has two parts):
Some are even a bit flexible.
The music nib differs from just a wider nib in that it is intentionally designed to flow very well, almost to pour ink out of it. In this video you can see the result: the ink completely soaks the paper.
In true hand-written music notation, unless someone is calligraphing music out of passion (I cried watching this video, seeing how they do it), you have to (have) keep moving, otherwise, it’s incredibly slow. One doesn’t have time to patiently draw little blobs; you need a pen that you can press against the paper enough, possibly pull a minimal line, and it will create a note head. If someone looks at, how a professional writes music today, say with StaffPad, it’s clear that they don’t blob, they just dot/pull and that’s it. A true handwritten score resembles this; you can easily write something like this with this pen (don’t be misled, this was almost certainly written by a machine, this type of score exists in Sibelius and other music notation software):
Furthermore, music nib fountain pen nibs are not simply very wide. If that were enough for music notation, then the Pilot Parallel Pen should be an excellent music pen (it also flows ink properly), but it’s not. This video thoroughly explores the topic, and shows how much it matters that the music nib is 1. a bit flexible and 2. not completely flat. This allows for quickly writing the note values and other things. 1. to draw and to make thin lines as well.
2. Another interesting fact is that sheet music was not only written by hand with a fountain pen; since better quality felt-tip pens have been available, many sheet music copyists have used them. We, in the music elementary school (45 years ago), mostly used a soft pencil. As a farewell, here is a score that was definitely copied by hand, even from the sixties:
| 4. While researching, I managed to find a post where someone wanted to try if it was possible to fill a fountain pen with blood. After the initial obvious failure (the blood clots immediately and won't flow out of the pen), even after weeks of experimenting with anticoagulants, they concluded that blood only remains unclotted in the pen for at most 2-3 days, and until then, it’s not really possible to write well with it. |
5. The „Brush” nib (6. fude 7. nib)
8. This pen nib is also very strange: it either breaks at an angle or is bent:
10. There is usually a big misunderstanding regarding this nib. There are countless videos on YouTube where various people try to write all kinds of Latin letter texts 11. with this type of nib. It might be possible if absolutely necessary, but this pen nib 12. is not meant for that. 13. The word (筆) means brush in Japanese, and this type of nib tries to imitate the property of a writing brush that allows for very thin lines, very thick ones, and everything in between.
A 6. fude 14. Here you can see the basic features of brush calligraphy. 15. (it is clearly visible how to draw thinner lines, and how much more vertically they hold the brush than we do a pen). 16. This video illustrates perfectly. 17. how extreme the difference can be with such a "brush" fountain pen nib (but precisely the, 18. – Chinese characters – that the Japanese man writes at the end are very ugly). 14. Szabolcs, during his scholarship, carrying a shrine at the Takasago-chō matsuri festival 19. Thus, on one hand.
Thus, on one hand extremely suitable for calligraphic writing of Chinese/Japanese texts (I sweated blood to find such a video, these nibs are not used so frequently in these mountains, the usual solution in Japan is the brush pen and the brush fountain pen, yes, brush tip fountain pen), on the other hand for drawing (well, there are already plenty of videos and pictures about this).
Plus, this nib also spills ink, so it's not ideal for plain note-taking or writing for that reason alone.
In conclusion: you are your own master if you are stingy
Besides the three types of nibs mentioned above, there are many other types of nibs, essentially everything imaginable: broad (stub), oblique (oblique), reverse oblique (reverse oblique), flexible (flex), and I could go on. If someone is interested in the stranger nibs, is sufficiently enthusiastic and loves to experiment, and doesn't mind spending a lot of money on expensive pens and nibs, then indeed, for a few thousand forints, you can buy: cheap nibs, or even inexpensive pens on Aliexpress, and fine diamond polishing cloths (better not from Aliexpress, I have Japanese and 3M brands). This is made from a two-dollar, M nib Chinese pen reverse oblique, turned out much better than I expected:
But if it accidentally doesn't work out, or doesn't prove effective, then one doesn't feel terrible that they threw away/destroyed tens of thousands of forints. (It's precisely the oblique nibs that solve all previous problems for some people in an enlightening way, while another part just tears up the paper with it. A third part… meh.)
1. If a person acquires a fountain pen that can be fitted with a standard-sized nib, such as a #5 nib (there's no need to spend a fortune on it, for example, the oversized Jinhao x750), then they can cheaply obtain these interestingly designed nibs on the aforementioned sites (Aliexpress, Fountain Pen Revolutions).
2. And if someone 3. still 4. wants something more special, then flexible nibs can come into play, but that's another story... 5. Szabolcs's further articles can be found in the Budapest Pen Show magazine
6. Music nib here!
