Let fountain pens flow

In this coldly pixelated age, old-fashioned writing implements make a small but meaningful comeback, writes Miranda Purves

Around 40 people had gathered on a recent weekday evening in SoHo at the Lamy store, a 600-square-foot ground-floor showcase of contemporary Germanic pen design. Packed around a table with notepads and test pens, the group, ethnically diverse but mostly men, lacked the slick appearance you expect of customers at a luxury boutique.

In fact, it quickly became clear that these were nerds. Twenty-first-century pen nerds.

They had come for several reasons. For a pen nerd, there’s endless pleasure in sharing one’s collection of fountain pens, or “fps” as they’re called on the Reddit board where they live when not at shows