Lamy

Lamy’s Song Dynasty Safari

When in Shanghai, I like to visit Lamy stores. Unlike Lamy stores in Europe, they tend to offer lots of special editions. My best guess is that I am not only amazed by the quantity of these special editions but also by the quality.

Originally, I was trying to find two specific items: The Lamy Safari Field Green because it looks beautiful and the Hanzi nib because I want to experience how it writes. The Hanzi nib is made for writing Chinese script. I used Google Translate to translate an explanation into English, see below.

Unfortunately, the Field Green Safari was impossible to find in Shanghai: it was neither available in the Lamy stores, nor was it available on Chinese online market places. This came as a surprise because imported pens are often available via online market places at good prices – for example, it was easy and not expensive to get the uni-ball Signo Needle in Japan-exclusive colours. I also got the Pilot Custom Heritage 91 for a really good price.

Back to Lamy: On the trip to Shanghai last year, I bought three different special editions. I will write more about the Hanzi nib another time (spoiler, I got one), but today I want to show you another special edition: The Song Dynasty edition Safari in Jade White. There is also a Sky Blue version available, also very beautiful.

The Song Dynasty edition Lamy Safari

It also came with free engraving, so I made use of this offer. Below is a short video that shows how my pen got engraved. If you look at the barrel of the pen, you can see the characters appearing.

You can also see more of the pen and its packaging in the unboxing video below.

Another special edition is the Lamy Leben set, as seen in this advertising.

Pokemon sets were also still available, but I had already seen these at previous visits.

Some more impressions from this Lamy store.

I hope you liked the look at the Song Dynasty Edition Safari. You can find an overview of other Lamy Safari editions at Stationery.wiki. Please feel free to contribute to the article.

It’s always exciting to find new and unique editions when visiting Lamy stores in Shanghai. To be fair, they are usually just the same pen in a different colour, but if that colour appeals to me I am happy to add it to my collection. In this case the colour is beautiful like the griso and the cream Safari’s colour.

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LAMY 2000 – Set / DEMAG

This is a guest post by Sebastian Becker:

Almost unimaginable today, but: Yes, there was a time when employees spent their entire working lives, from training to retirement, with just one employer. A time when companies lasted and sometimes outlasted whole generations. Corporations and conglomerates with which people associated a degree of identification that went beyond the purely professional.

There is no doubt that Duisburg DEMAG was one of these companies, which lasted from 1910 to 1973, with roots going back to 1819. DEMAG – a name that still means something to many people on the Rhine and Ruhr.

Those who had been associated with such a company for a long time were given a gift, a token of appreciation, on their work anniversary – after 25 and 40 years with the company – in addition to an extra month’s salary.

A famous example of this is SIEMENS; to this day, a very high-quality wristwatch from a German manufacturer is given to mark the anniversary: the Ludwig from NOMOS in the corresponding SIEMENS edition (one of the few companies in the present day that still has such long ties).

What is the exception today was the rule in post-war West Germany: high-quality gifts on anniversaries.

Recently, while walking through a flea market in Duisburg, I discovered just such an anniversary present: a beautiful, originally packaged, actually never used LAMY 2000 gift set, consisting of a piston fountain pen and a biro, both engraved with the DEMAG logo.My father spent his working life in the ThyssenKrupp Group. I remember that when I was a child – the 1990s! – writing instruments, often from LAMY, and also pocket knives (Victorinox) were often given away in a professional context. Whole drawers were filled with LAMY pens and miniature pocket knives. These “normal” promotional gifts often had an equivalent value of € 5.00-10.00; something like a LAMY 2000 was only given on very special occasions.

Back to the flea market in question: The seller himself was not the youngest – but too young to have worked at DEMAG himself. An heirloom from his father? Probably. Written on the box in sharpie: Black fountain pen, black biros” – the beautiful set, it ended up in some cupboard, a drawer, maybe even in the attic, as soon as it was received. A package with obvious contents, after all, the writing instruments are clearly pictured on it, and yet the previous owner felt called upon to note the contents again in full.

In the cupboard, in the drawer or in the attic, this box must have lain for decades until it was sold to me. Why were the writing instruments never used? Perhaps they were “too bad” (although one might argue that it was too bad just NOT to use them). Or maybe they were simply not appreciated and only “archived” because that was the way official gifts were made at that time.

DEMAG existed until 1973, after which some former subsidiaries continued to bear the name – but it is unlikely that the gift was made after 1973. The iconic LAMY 2000, designed by Gerd A. Müller, came onto the market in 1966. The guarantee on the nib until the year 2000 is noted in the set .

Also based on the old LAMY branding, I assume that this beauty falls exactly into that period – i.e. 1966-1973. A wonderful set. And – in more ways than one – a piece of German history.

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Lamy Safari in Solar Opposites

Eagle-eyed Bleistift reader Tomasz Maped [1]I didn’t realise that Maped, the name of a French stationery company, is a surname. from Poland contacted me after he noticed a Lamy Safari in the first episode of the second season of Solar Opposites.

I must have missed that detail when I watched this episode so am especially thankful to Tomasz for pointing this out.


The screenshots in this blog post has been taken from Season 2 Episode 1 of Solar Opposites. I believe that the use of the screenshot shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

References

References
1 I didn’t realise that Maped, the name of a French stationery company, is a surname.

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Strawberry and cream

I used to think that I have all the Safari colours I ever need, but as mentioned in February, Lamy keep bringing out wonderful (and difficult to resist) new colours and editions.

This year’s Strawberry and Cream colours are very much to my liking, so I had to go ahead and got one fountain pen in each of the two colours. They were ordered together with the Lamy xevo I discussed recently. I am currently using the strawberry-coloured one with its smooth F nib as a daily writer. These were bought from Pen Heaven in June 2022 and I paid £21.50 each.

The strawberry-red and cream-white Safaris are definitely in the Top 5 of my favourite colours, with the other colours near the top being the Savannah Green (2021), the Mango (2020) and the Griso / Grey version (which was either form 2010 or 2011, I am not sure).

If you are interested in the Lamy Safari, have a look at the Safari article at stationery.wiki. As far as I know it is the most complete overview of Lamy Safari special editions that can be found on the Internet.

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Lamy xevo

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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