Parting Shot in Chicago

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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Once a pen show winds down and John Hall and I have packed up our cart like the Grinch’s sleigh, delicately navigating through the aisles and out to the truck is a complex operation.

If it wasn’t a rule from the Bro Code on How I Met Your Mother, it should have been: A Bro Never Makes Two Trips.

I remember that we had everything loaded and we were carefully picking our way out of the hotel, I still had to stop . . . fully loaded cart right in the middle of the aisle . . . when this distracted me on Paul Kovanda’s table:

Morrison is something of a closet obsession of mine - I’ve even got a little collection of Morrison pens, tucked away in the second-from-the-bottom drawer of a printer’s cabinet in the museum:

One of the things I like about the company’s offerings is that they are packed with visual interest.  These are just plain cool, with those stripes on top, the deep chasing and distinctive clips:

I usually like the imprints on these, and I’ve searched high and low for a pencil with the “Black Beauty” imprint to match these pens (you might have noticed a few Black Beauties in my pen drawer):

This set is as mint as they come, complete with a price band every bit as cool as the imprint:

But alas, the pencil may be packed with style, but not with an imprint.