IPSUMSTUDIO
One-of-one fountain pens,
designed and made
by hand. Every pen
is made once.
I started making pens as a teenager, self-taught on wood and metal lathes, long before I studied design. IpsumStudio is where I still do the work I love most: traditional product design, from raw material to the pen you write with.
Most of my pens go to collectors, mostly through the Dutch International Pen Show. Some go to people who need something special to sign with. Last year I sold 30.
Wood that grew wrong, made to last forever
My favourite material is the burl: a growth where a tree was damaged by insects or disease. The grain goes wild. It’s the most beautiful thing nature makes, and far too soft to use as it is. I stabilise it under vacuum and pressure until it can hold a thread.
My second love is ebonite, vulcanised rubber that feels warmer than any plastic. I stopped using acrylic and hybrid blanks. The plastic takes away from the feeling of wood in the hand, and that warmth is the reason people buy these pens.
Threads in walls of one millimetre
The hardest part of a pen is the part you never see. I turn and thread ebonite sleeves, inner and outer threads, in walls of one millimetre or less, then set them inside the wooden body. Get the cut slightly wrong and the wall tears out.
It took a lot of broken parts to get a machining flow that works every time. Every failure ended in a fix. That’s the habit I bring to every project now.
Mine: everything but the nib
Bodies, caps, threads, sections and every fit are made in my workshop. I buy only what a specialist does better: nibs and feeds from JoWo in Germany, and the filling systems.
Tools: wood and metal lathes, vacuum and pressure stabilisation, milling, and CNC and 3D-printed jigs and work holding I design myself.
04 / Signature commission
Nine sides for Nippon Sanso’s retiring CEO.
Complete creative freedom and one brief: make something no one has made before. Stabilised ebony, fully sleeved in ebonite, faceted nine times with a jig I designed for it, and a 14K gold nib engraved with the company logo.
- Time~3 months
- WorkshopAalto University
- New toolingFaceting jig, ebonite milling process
“Collector or client quote goes here: one or two lines on what the pen means to them.”— Name, collector
