China Syndrome

This pen was a gift from a fan of the newly renovated Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. It has the appearance and attributes of a pen made in Denmark, but it is actually made in China.


There was something not quite right about the way it felt and looked. The bubble in the liquid raised my suspicions, but it was when the clip bent to the side that I checked to see where it was from.

The clip is made of a soft aluminum instead of a harder metal such as the type used by the Eskesen company on the real floaty pens.

The ink tends to create mini blots on the paper. The image is very pale.

This pen is a troubling find. It means the purist floaty collector must be ever more vigilant against the incursion of substandard pens.

Santa Barbara and Los Angeles

Some of the best floaty pens are the ones that come from art galleries and museums. It wasn't surprising that California was a great place to find floaty pens, but it was surprising to find such a unique pen as the one with the pilgrims floating in front of the mission in Santa Barbara. The Huntington pen and the Getty Center pens were great finds.

Seattle sights

Seattle is one of the most pleasant cities I've visited. The pens pictured above represent the Space Needle, Monorail, Pike Place Market and Seattle Art Museum.

The Space Needle and the Monorail are modernist science fiction sites.

Pike Street market proved to be a pen bonanza, although I didn't buy any of these pens there. I got a couple of California floaty pens and a pen filled with volcanic ash from Mount St. Helens.

Floaty pens

These are just a few of the pens in my floaty collection. I'm not sure how many I have because whenever I attempt to count them, I lose track.

The top pen in the picture is based on Edvard Munch's "Scream" and I bought it at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2006. The Michelangelo hands are from the same time and place.

The second one down is based on John Steinbeck's novel "The Red Pony." The green one is representative of Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." I bought both of them in Salinas, California, at the John Steinbeck Center. I saw the house where he was born too.

The mummy pen I bought at the British Museum in London in 2007.