There’s the nib

The first thing John Sorowka does, after shaking my hand and asking about my journey to Oxford on this wet June morning, is pass me a black A5 softcover notebook. “You won’t be recording this interview,” he says, opening one of several cases on the table in front of him and presenting me with a dozen exquisite fountain pens. “You’ll be making notes with these. You remember everything better when you write it down.”

I’m in this coffee shop quite by chance. A few weeks earlier, I read a short online article highlighting what the author referred to as “a nibmeister, a person who can remake the nib of your pen more to your liking (different angle, better flow, etc)”. I have no interest in fancy pens, but the idea that such a niche job existed in the age of screens tickled me, so I found a contact for one of the very few nibmeisters in Europe, John Sorowka, and sent him an email.

A guarded reply came back two days later. As well as expressing a dislike of publicity, Sorowka was horrified by the term “nibmeister”: “It is an appalling Americanism, a chimeric word that is neither fish nor fowl,” he wrote. “I make no claim to be master of anything; nib specialist; grumpy bloke that works on nibs, whatever you like, anything other than nibmeister, a word that I regard as in the same vein as fartmeister and other supposedly humorous terms of 1970-90s American comedy usage.”

We spoke on the phone the following week. In the interim, a friend I hadn’t seen in several years told me he’d developed a pricey fountain pen habit and had just suffered a nib breakage after lending his Waterman 42 “Safety” pen to a heavy-handed judge. I told him I knew a man who could help.

Over the phone, Sorowka was more cheerfully cantankerous than I expected, with a weakness for puns. He explained that, now in his 70s, he was officially retired and worked on nibs as a hobby. He agreed to meet, but when I asked if I could see his studio he said he’d sooner let me rummage in his knicker drawer.

In the cafe, I opened my new notebook and picked up an ultrafine Pilot G-Tec ballpoint, self-conscious about my jagged scrawl. Sorowka emitted a choking sound. “You’re pressing too hard,” he said. “But we can fix that.” He handed me the first of several dozen pens from his personal collection, a Parker 51, and nodded as my jagged edges became more fluid. “Easier?”

Sorowka started using fountain pens when he was four. Aged 13, he was taught how to repair nibs by his future brother-in-law, who worked at the Oxford pen shop RC Phillips (now Pens Plus). He went on to do a variety of jobs, including building motorcycle engines, only returning to the pen world in the early 2000s. His wife had just died and he needed something to occupy his mind. A friend said he could make good money from grinding nibs. “I said, ‘Don’t be bloody stupid.’ But that’s what happened.” As well as repairing nibs for individuals, many of them cartoonists and illustrators, he worked with companies around Europe on custom-made pens – a nib ground by John Sorowka is a selling point, he suggests.

After the Parker, Sorowka hands me a pocket pen by Yard-O-Led of Birmingham. Then there’s a remarkable specimen crafted by John Twiss of Nottinghamshire from Irish bog oak and silver. Most of the other pens are made of lesser materials – acrylics and acetates – but each has design features and craftsmanship that delight Sorowka, who customised the nibs himself.

At first, all my attention goes on the bodywork. But gradually my eye is drawn to the nib and ultimately the tip, which is Sorowka’s true domain: that millimetre of metal where pen meets paper. He might bend or straighten the nib, or change its thickness or flexibility, or a variety of other things. If you’re lucky enough to write with an expertly ground nib, you’ll notice how frictionlessly it glides across the page. You may even be able to rotate the pen 180 degrees and write with the back of the nib, giving you a finer line – a signature Sorowka touch.

Over nearly two hours I’m hit with a barrage of technical terms: piston fillers and tipping pellets and roll stops. Sorowka insists he’s not a pen snob. In fact he has greater respect for “cheap pens that work” than expensive pieces of “pocket jewellery” by luxury brands that often don’t. Pens are tools, he believes, and they should be used, not “babied along and kept in air-conditioned boxes”.

At the end of our conversation, I ask him the obvious question. Why, when our entire world is mediated through digital technology, should we bother using a pen? “Because you think better as you write,” he says. “You send cards and letters to people you care about. It’s aesthetically pleasing.” He gestures at the rows of pens, the ink bottle, the thick napkin we’ve been using as a blotter. “Why won’t AI take over from all this? Because it’s personal. You’re putting effort into it. When you write, it has more connection.”

As we’re parting ways, Sorowka hands me a silver Parker 45 from the late 1960s. “It’s yours,” he says. Earlier, he had promised to get me hooked on fountain pens and I’d dismissed the idea, thinking I wasn’t the type of person to fixate on such fripperies. But after a couple of weeks with this sleek, understated, immensely satisfying object that writes like a dream, and which makes my digital devices seem both clunky and ephemeral, I’m beginning to think again. 

Illustration by Oscar Ingham/Observer Design