Pen review: Drewnem Pisane Orion — Zlatibor
Or how I am that cool I got a pen that looks like the place I met my wife
I didn’t want to be corny but it kinda tracks. Anyway —
Once upon a time in 2015, I met my wife in a beautiful mountain cottage. Of course, she wasn’t my wife at that time, because that would’ve been silly. Nay, we just met, and we stayed in touch, and I discovered pens, and she supported my pen addiction obsession love by getting me pens, sometimes smuggling1 them, sometimes sending them in care packages that would inevitably be delayed, almost lost, almost turned around, almost stolen, and end up on the doorknob of my family apartment. Yes, you read that right. One time, my first Platinum Preppy was left, packaged, on the damn doorknob in an apartment building where weirdos stole lightbulbs if they could.
Anyway. The cottage in question is located on mountain named Zlatibor (which you might’ve figured out by now) and it was super cool back when it wasn’t as horribly urbanized and before people built a mini city of skyscrapers the size of a football field. Stupid, I know. But back when we met, it was quaint, and beautiful, and amazing, and all those other yucky romantic stuff. Gross.
The thing is, this mountain is also the place my dad is obsessed about, and even though he thinks this blog is silly and “Why would anyone read about pens”, I kinda still think he’s a good guy. Bonus points, we2 got engaged there too. TLDR, basically, this place is super special, and there’s a specific photo of the place I absolutely love, and that’s the photo you’ll see here and also — the photo I sent to Drewnem Pisane team.
Drewnem Pisane is yet another brand that I wasn’t familiar with 30 seconds before I followed them on Instagram. I’m not even sure how I stumbled upon their page, but I realized immediately they’re absolutely, undoubtedly, and fully different from most other makers.
Firstly, they’re not based in the US, and yet, they managed to attract a significant following here. Secondly, despite the name, they don’t do only wooden pens but also hand crafted resin pens embedded with flowers that they pick themselves. I believe they named that line of pens ‘Magic Garden’ — so you can see their Winter Magic Garden pens, for example, or, in my case, Magic Garden Zlatibor (and that one, my friends, is unique).
The process is super cool too, and they’ve shared it on IG reels before. The flowers are dried, gently placed in the mold, and then resin is poured over them with special attention to leaving a bit of a clearing in the middle, which ends up serving as an ink window. As I said, super cool.
Although they have their own ideas and products to match, they do commissions. I don’t even remember how we started talking about a potential pen that would end up looking like that special place where my wife and I met. From our conversation, though, I quickly realized they’re extremely happy to accommodate requests and they’re as excited as their customers to make the pen that you’ll fall in love with. They were so happy to hear my story and to compare the photo I had sent them with the resin they had made. Out of their blanks, they specifically picked the only one blank that had small, brown flowers on the bottom, which ended up emulated the look of the little cottage in the snow and under bright blue winter sky.
However,
wouldn’t be themselves if they didn’t want even more, so Drewnem Pisane even included an extra grip upon request. Namely, I can’t pick between Bock (standard for them) and Jowo nibs, so I wanted two grips that would be interchangeable and that I can swap whenever I felt like changing nibs from one company to the other. I mean, come on. How could I pass the opportunity of being able to add this badass nib to a pen that is this special?
Idipbananasintocoffee has their own little banana nib. My sincere gratitude to Carolina Pen Company.
After my conversation with Drewnem Pisane peeps, I went about my business. They did mention several months of wait time, which I was perfectly fine with, as I overspent on other pens. Besides, why get a winter themed pen in the fall? And yet, one bright sunny day (I assume, I wasn’t in Poland that day), they reached back out with a photo and a video of the pen. Me, not expecting such a beautiful surprise, was at a loss for words. It was basically a dream come true in the shape of a pen.
But of course, as one does when they’re presented with a beautiful pen, I said heck yes, paid, and waited patiently until this bad boy showed up in my mailbox a few weeks later.
I didn’t cry. Why would you think that? Oh, side note: the card isn’t paper nor plastic. It’s metal. Yep. It’s that cool. And it serves me well as a bookmark, thank you very much.
The pen was neatly and securely packaged, there was a lovely note to it, and I believe that the price was absolutely appropriate for what I received (I believe it was around $230 with shipping, give or take).
The pen fit in my hand so perfectly I had to have other people snatch it from me so I’d go and nurse said hand back to health. It’s not a small pen, and yet, it doesn’t feel chonky or unbalanced. It merrily rolls across desks if you’re not careful, of course, as it doesn’t have a rollstop/clip, which, honestly, if we’re not making them out of wood, we shouldn’t even put on this pen. There is an ever so slight a step from the end of the cap to the barrel, and when you uncap it (two full rotations), you get to see that the grip is a round cylinder with a little baby taper at the end, so barely perceptible that you wouldn’t even know it’s there until the tips of your fingers rest on it and not, you know, go grip the actual nib. Here are some other pens just for size comparison:
Left to right: Pilot Cocoon, Tailored Pen Company Churchill (Rave in the Honeycomb woooooo), Drewnem Pisane Orion (Zlatibor), TWSBI ECO Blossom Red, Sailor Pro Gear Angel’s Delight. As you can tell, it’s bigger than the rest, but I still wouldn’t call it a huge pen.
The nib, by the way, is Bock #6. Mine’s a medium (again, odd for me, as I am a sucker for fine nibs), but it writes on the finer side. Now, I’ll blame the shimmer ink I put in it, but it writes a bit dry. With a bit of pressure, it will put down a wetter line. Regardless, though, the nib writes consistently and without feedback. And, again… I can swap the grips and put my banana nib in the pen. Another super awesome detail is the fact the grip for the Jowo nib doesn’t look the same; the finishes match the pen, of course, but there’s a visual difference, so there’s no way for me to mix them up. So I get to pick my nibs and be on my merry way.
Because I am just that cool :winks with both eyes:
I do want to say that there is one small imperfection on the pen that I absolutely do not mind, but it’s there and I don’t want to not mention it. Invisible by the naked eye, and only slightly tactile, there’s a bit of a bump made by one of the embedded flowers in the cap. Basically, I can feel one of them flowers if I were to rub that particular part of the cap. And that’s it. That’s the only bad thing I can say about this pen.
The flowers are cute as heck, and I believe there are some metal shavings in the pen which remind me of snow and ice. The rest of the resin looks like a snow storm waiting to happen, and it fills me with joy to just sit and look at the pen. The flowers themselves look like they’re frozen in a stalagmite, and if that’s not the most amazing thing ever, I don’t know what is.
If you haven’t yet checked them out, I implore you to do so. I’ll drop the link for their website3, but you shouldn’t have a problem finding them on Instagram. You’ll recognize them by my spamming their page with likes.
I am sure this is beating a dead horse at this point, but I absolutely adore this pen. It’s all I wanted and then some.
Note: this review reflects my own opinions on this pen. I was in no way compensated in order to write the review, and the pen was purchased with my own money. I just like the pen. And the people.
I am joking. A gift is a gift. You can’t smuggle gifts.
Come on, my WIFE and I. Not my dad and I. Geesh.
https://drewnempisane.pl Checkem out yall.