Pelikan

Alsterhaus in Hamburg

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A recent family trip to Hamburg [1]which was my first ever trip to Hamburg included a trip to Alsterhaus, a posh department store that very much reminded us of Harvey Nichols in Manchester.

Excuse the wide angle distortions of the photo but because of construction work I couldn’t move further away

The Alsterhaus sells many posh brands (think Armani, Chanel, Hermes, …), but unexpectedly we also found an extensive selection of stationery brands on one of the higher floors.

Some brands, like Graf von Faber-Castell, S. T. Dupont and Caran d’Ache take up large parts of the stationery corner’s luxury corner, but pens from other brands, like Pelikan and Kaweco, are also in stock.

Despite Alsterhaus’ general focus on luxury brands you can also find affordable stationery items for office and school use.

This includes a great selection of Lamy pens.

Faber-Castell, Leuchtturm and more were also available.

Thanks to my wife I walked away with Caran d’Ache’s Nespresso pencils (more about them at Pencil Talk) and my first ever “Les crayons de la maison” pencils (more about them at Lexikaliker, who discovered that this series is not quite what it is made out to be).

Prices were comparable to what you pay for these items in other shops or online.

This set seems to be the tenth edition, created together with Mizensir, a Swiss parfume firm.

When opening the plastic wrapping you can smell the strong smell from these pencils.

At this stage it is not completely clear whether the different pencils have different smells that are indistinguishable because they were together in sealed packaging or whether the different pencils have the same smell by design.

References

References
↑1 which was my first ever trip to Hamburg

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Pelikan Hub Bremen

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After recently moving from the UK to Germany, this year I was involved in the Pelikan Hub Bremen, rather than the Preston Hub that used to be my home hub.

The Pelikan Hub took place in a Greek restaurant in the North of Bremen. The location was chosen as it was close to public transport and also offered a big car park.

Some numbers linked this Hub: Unfortunately, three of the participants who signed up didn’t take part. There were also another three people who didn’t sign up but wanted to come along. In the end, however, they couldn’t make it. That left us with five participants which means that this was probably one of the smallest Hubs…

Despite the small number of participants I enjoyed the Hub very much. I wonder how long other Hubs went on for. This one lasted around four hours.

Thanks to Pelikan the participants got bottles of the ink of the year, nice notebooks and postcards.

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Lamy xevo

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What has the world come to?? A blog post about a ballpoint pen at Bleistift.blog‽

Well, it is a very good looking ballpoint pen: Lamy’s xevo in lightgrey (I find the black version more boring looking, so ordered the lightgrey version).

I bought this pen for £7.90 from Pen Heaven. The price in the USA is $10 and in Europe it is €7.90.

The Lamy xevo

First impressions

I didn’t realise this until I actually held the pen in my hands: It reminds me very much of the beautiful Lamy Colani, with similar organic shapes. Especially the triangular front section with its flowing shapes, but also the matt-ish off-white plastic, bear some resemblance.

The Pelikan Colani mechanical pencil

The pen is extremely well made for a pen in this price range. You can see the mould lines in good light, but that is not an issue. For comparison: on my xevo [1]I assume thanks to good quality control it will be the same on every xevo. the mould lines are not more obvious than on a Lamy Safari.

The clip is also very well made. It looks like solid sheet metal clip, but it is actually made by bending the material on the outside, i.e. it is not solid like the one you’d find on the Lamy scribble. Just like on the Lamy 2000, a mechanism holds the clip which means the clip can swing outwards instead of relying on the clip’s material to bend when clipping it onto something.

The xevo’s metal clip. You can also see a mould line on the plastic body.

Size

Size-wise the xevo is quite big. It is roughly similar in size to a BIC four colour ballpoint pen and certainly bigger than many other ballpoint pens that aren’t multi pens, like the Caran d’Ache 849.

Top to bottom: Caran d’Ache 849, Lamy xevo, BIC four colour multipen

The xevo is so long that in my typical shirt pockets I have to clip it in towards the middle of the pocket. The middle tends to be slightly deeper. If clipped in on the outside (like the Perfect Pencil in the image below) it would only be clipped in for a few millimetres, so would more likely fall out or get lost.

The Lamy xevo (next to a green Perfect Pencil 9000) in a shirt pocket

Altogether an excellent and beautiful pen for the money. My one issue is that it only accepts Lamy M16 refills, so it is nearly impossible to use a gel refill. I discuss this in more detail in the video below.

Other blog posts

If you want to read more about the xevo look at these other blog posts about the xevo (listed in chronological order)

The Pen Addict (12/2021)

Unsharpen (12/2021)

Prices: June 2022

References

References
↑1 I assume thanks to good quality control it will be the same on every xevo.

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£10,000 per night, including pencils

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If you want a holiday in style (and with nice pencils!) check out the Grand Resort in Bad Ragaz, featured in the BBC TV series Amazing Hotels.

A night there can set you back £10,000, but this will get you 600 m2 of floor space and some nice pencils: You get three Caran d’Ache Edelweiss pencils in HB, a Staedtler Mars plastic eraser and a Pelikan ruler.

Caran d’Ache, Staedtler and Pelikan (Image © BBC)

Luckily, these days the Caran d’Ache Edelweiss pencil is much easier to find than in 2012 when I did a review here on Bleistift – There seem to be several online shops inthe USA and in the UK selling this pencil now.

You can watch this episode on the BBC iPlayer (if your location allows). The screenshot was taken at 22 min and 58 seconds into the episode.

I believe that the use of the screenshot, taken from the BBC series Amazing Hotels, falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service

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Old

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This is the book our son got from his school yesterday. Every day the children get a different book to read as homework.

A record player, a dip pen, an ink bottle and a typewriter

Here are two items I keep on my desk at work.

Here’s another thing I keep in my office.

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