Short +

Among the fountain pens I have come to own is the Waterman 52 1/2, a celebrated design. Some were fitted with clips, others were ring-tops — meant to be threaded onto a ribbon or a chain and worn at the neck, or fastened at the waist. A small fountain pen. The "1/2" in its model number marks the slender diameter. From the very beginning, it was made to be worn and used.

And it still writes. A fountain pen does not outlive its purpose, not even after a hundred years. It is simply a little inconvenient for the way we live now — that is all.

So I began with "Short," inheriting those proportions just as they were. And yet, made only in colored ebonite, it never quite felt like my own. Tracing a dimension faithfully, and making a pen truly mine — they seem alike, but they are not the same thing at all.

Inheritance alone does not make a continuation. That is where my own interpretation began. At the center, a material whose figure differs from one pen to the next. That quiet touch of play, little by little, makes the pen my own. As I kept working, it became neither a reproduction of the 52 1/2 nor an extension of Short, but something altogether different.

The "+" of Short + is the mark of that interpretation. My respect for the original remains untouched; what follows is a continuation only Tuduriya could draw — a small pen that began from hundred-year-old proportions, now finding a new expression in your hand.