The mechanism

There are two ways to get ink onto paper from a metal tube. You can push a button, which is fast and sounds like an office. Or you can turn the barrel half a revolution, which is slower and sounds like nothing at all. We make the second kind.

The mechanism is a brass cam running against a steel spring — eleven parts, no plastic anywhere in the path. It is not a new idea; it is roughly the 1920s idea, machined to a tolerance the 1920s could not hold. When it wears out, and it will in about thirty years, we replace the cam rather than the pen.

What that means in the hand

1. Half a turn clockwise deploys the nib. Half a turn back retracts it. There is no click and no button.
2. You feel the detent rather than hear it. The cam seats against the spring with a soft stop, not a snap.
3. Each barrel is machined, not moulded. It starts as a solid bar and ends as swarf and a pen.
4. The brass and copper are unlacquered on purpose. They darken where your fingers sit, and the pattern is yours.
5. It takes a refill you can buy anywhere. Standard D1. We sell them, but so does the shop on your corner.

Where they are made

Everything is turned, finished and assembled in a workshop in Kadıköy, İstanbul. The bar stock is European, the springs are made two streets away, and the boxes are folded by hand because nobody has found a machine worth the money.