Pelikan Piccadilly January 2006 Stylophiles Online

Piccadilly Circus has bright lights
By Anna Lawson

Six or eight years ago, maybe even a decade or so, brighter colors began to supersede the neutrals prevalent in earlier eras. Throughout the design world, in clothing, furniture, interior design, advertising and other areas, colors began first to peek out slyly from the wings and later to leap boldly onto the stage.

Now they tend to crash onto center stage in a bright spotlight, grabbing us by the ears and screaming, "Look at me!"

Having grown up in a backward area where trends and fads arrived a year or two after they'd died everywhere else, I notice when groups are slow to adopt change.

Coming late to color trends is far from unusual in pen companies and others whose major business is among a largely conservative audience, such as lawyers and doctors (and many, many pen collectors are of those two persuasions). Two or three years ago, a few of the smaller pen companies began to experiment with brighter designs and materials in their primary products and they found enthusiastic acceptance, which provided some encouragement for older, more established (read: stodgy) companies to try something new. Conway Stewart in particular has become notable, as a longstanding company, for adopting bright, colorful materials in its regular-production pens.

Now that we're all used to seeing bright colors everywhere, in every combination and pattern expression (and trend predictions are actually looking at paler, more toned-down and tertiary colors), one of the world's most conservative pen companies is getting on board with color.

Pelikan is extremely conservative in a conservative industry -- it wasn't but a few years ago that it introduced first blue and a year or so later red stripes into its lineup of traditional, "stripedy" pens, all of which still had the usual black caps. Before that, black or green-striped-and-black pens were the norm, from Pelikan's early days right down to the present, with few variations (the LE Kirin, Caelum and Austria and the inexpensive school pens come to mind as remarkable exceptions).

Some of Pelikan's Cities of the World limited-edition pens took on brighter colors and materials (notably the New York pen with its black-and-white patterning that many people thought resembled a Holstein cow), but most of those were fairly conservative, too.

This new limited edition, Piccadilly Circus, is not by anyone's definition conservative. Such that, I'm told, it far out-colors the Piccadilly Circus for which it was named.

Built on the standard M600 model, which is at the large end of Pelikan's smaller range of pens (or, if you prefer, the smaller end of the large range, which includes the M800 and the really, really big M1000), Piccadilly Circus is composed of a material containing swirled and folded pearlized gray and pearlized blue, with a flat opaque rose color folded throughout for contrast. Even though the gray and blue are fairly muted in lower light, under office light or sunlight, the colors practically leap out and grab your eyes to make sure you notice this pen.

Complementing this color scheme is silver trim -- a wise choice, though I seldom like silver trim, because it blends nicely with the cooler colors that form the majority of this pen's body.

My only complaint with the Piccadilly Circus is that the nib, which is Pelikan's usual 600 nib, has a two-toned gold-and-silver appearance, and I think plating the nib with an all-silver-colored metal would have made for a more coherent presentation. I know the designers were thinking details, because the logo is silkscreened on the cap end in silver (it's normally in gold). (And while I'm on that, Pelikan, if you're listening, please bring back the old-style cap logos!) The box is even tailored to the pen's color scheme, with a new blue, sort of air-brushed oval design and "Pelikan" in silver on its surface (though that could have happened a while back). It beats me why they missed this one.

As far as functional or performance complaints go, who can have any with a Pelikan? This model has been around for many years and any bugs were worked out long ago. It's light in weight, perfectly balanced, feels equally comfortable either posted or not, and the piston works smoothly and provides a good ink capacity. Not long ago I had an email from a collector who was having performance problems with a fairly new Pelikan.

"These just don't have performance problems," I told him, and suggested he clean the nib and feed thoroughly. That took care of remains of manufacturing oils and it, like every other Pelikan of my acquaintance, was fine.

Leave a Pelikan uncapped for a time, and it'll start right up. It's sturdy (though breakable -- don't leave it in your pocket when doing laundry!). It won't skip, blob, scratch, flood or otherwise behave badly unless seriously provoked, and if it does, you should send it back to the seller or distributor for repair or exchange. It will be a constant, steady friend who'll be there when you need it, doing exactly what you need it to do.

Like all other M600s, this one is about 5 3/16" long with a cap measuring about 2 7/16". Weight is about half an ounce, empty, and it can be found at all Pelikan dealers and in Pelikan's full range of nib sizes.

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