Carolina Pen Company
This week, I was able to travel to South Carolina to visit one of my best friends Matthew Morse, who lives in Sumter, SC. We were then able to travel together to visit Jonathon Brooks at his home and workshop in Aiken, SC, about 2hr from Sumter. Jonathon is well known for his exquisite artistry in his pen making, pen blanks, and urushi work. The last few months have been challenging for him due to health issues, leaving his lathe dusty from disuse. He has continued to create blanks and do urushi work during this time, however, and turned a pen for us (his first in many months) on this visit out of a prototype material he’d created during the pandemic quarantine. Thank you Jonathon and Shea for opening your home to us and to Jonathon for putting up with us. I am so glad and thankful he had a good day enough to hang out, talk pens, and show us the lay of the land. I am sorry for any days of exhaustion that follow.
Scroll to see more photos from this trip.
Above, Jonathon shows me some of his in progress urushi work. He’s been able to work on urushi with more consistency while he’s been ill. These pieces are going to be stunning when done, and I’m frankly jealous of the future owners!
The prototype blanks Jonathon had made using sheets of residual alumalite from pouring his famous abalone blanks. Shea and I convinced him to turn a pen with this material to see what it would look like.
Jonathon at work turning a Charleston for me, his first in many months. But he jumps right back to it, without missing a step, showing an incredible mastery of his tools. He frankly makes it look easy, though we all know if I tried to turn a pen, it would fly across the room and break things.
Details in his workshop, including ribbons of turned pen material, that I found oddly beautiful.
Jonathon adding the finishing touches to the prototype Charleston he made for me.
He’s quite a big fan of The Leaky Nib, as you can see from his custom, anodized Cosmic Sushi chopsticks. LOVE!
His blank pouring station, complete with a many-layer thick area of drips and bottles upon bottles of custom-mixed pigments. Nothing is stock, he creates all his own colors. His recipes are written in a shorthand only he knows and securely stored in this Top Secret container.
The Prototype Charleston made from the blanks pictured above. It’s a predominantly black pen with subtle ribbons of color throughout. It’s very understated and the photos don’t do it justice. It’s really beautiful and special to me, as a memory of this trip and unique time in the pen community.
A Charleston with a Galaxy raden and urushi motif Jonathon had just finished before we arrived. Naturally, it came home with me. Truly beautiful work!
