A Brief History
A Brief History
Embedded Files
Cap and Barrel is a personal project dedicated to exploring and documenting the world of fountain pens, their inks, and mechanical pencils. It serves as my evolving reference archive, a place to dive deep into the unique characteristics of these writing implements, share insights, and celebrate the joy they bring to writing.
The Absolutely True and Slightly Inky History of Cap and Barrel
The Absolutely True and Slightly Inky History of Cap and Barrel
Our story, like all great legends, begins in an unexpected place: a dusty, forgotten crypt beneath what was once a bustling stationery shop. There, amidst ancient scrolls and petrified inkwells, a peculiar shimmer caught the eye of a very curious explorer. It wasn't gold, nor jewels, but a gleaming, perfectly preserved Pentel GraphGear 1000 mechanical pencil. Its existence in such an archaic setting defied all logic, hinting at a secret history of writing implements far grander than anyone imagined. This singular discovery ignited the spark that would become Cap and Barrel, a project dedicated to cataloging and celebrating these often-underestimated tools.
Years of painstaking research, aided by the invaluable (and often chaotic) contributions of Dr. E. Ellington, Chief Operations Officer and a renowned expert in ancient scent trails, and Milo Bloom, our Chief Culture Officer and master of strategic napping, led us to amass a vast archive of pens, inks, and pencils.
Dr. Ellington sheltering in our Sofa Desert camp, c. 1919
Our efforts even included a perilous 1919 expedition to the treacherous Sofa Desert, a place aptly named for its shifting dunes that resembled forgotten upholstered furniture, often swallowing unwary explorers whole. We were searching for the fabled Inkwell Flats, a mythical locale whispered to contain oceans of untapped color. Navigating by star charts drawn on parchment and fueled by lukewarm tea, our team braved blinding sandstorms, mirages of shimmering ink bottles, and the relentless heat, all in pursuit of those legendary liquid hues.
Decades later, a daring 1954 venture, seeking a mythical source of pure graphite, led us to a fog-shrouded, uncharted island. The expedition was fraught with peril, from treacherous jungle treks that resulted in an unprecedented number of papercuts (some so deep, they almost reached bone) to battling swarms of particularly aggressive, ink-sucking mosquitoes. Provisions ran low, leading to the infamous Great Notebook Crisis, where rationing forced our scribes to reuse pages, sometimes even writing over ancient, barely legible grocery lists. Just as despair set in, we stumbled upon a lost civilization of master artisans, the sole producers of the world's most exquisite, perfectly smooth paper – a secret they guarded with the ferocity of a thousand sharpened pencils.
We were merely observers, curators of the mundane miraculous, until the fateful day the world faced its greatest existential threat: the Great Dullness, a creeping, monochromatic malaise that threatened to drain all color and joy from existence. Just as hope seemed lost, a sudden, clumsy elbow knock (details are fuzzy, but my inky hands were definitely involved) sent a freshly opened bottle of Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-Yo ink cascading across the control panel. The vibrant, cerulean splash, a pure burst of unadulterated blue, shocked the Dullness into retreat, reversing its effects and restoring the world's brilliance. Since that day, Cap and Barrel has embraced its destiny: to catalog, to celebrate, and, perhaps inadvertently, to save the world, one glorious writing tool at a time.
Remnants of the Tsuki-yo catastrophe, c. 2024
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse