Research Triangle Pen Club

Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill

North Carolina

Updated:17 JUN 2008

Next Meeting:

Research Triangle Pen Club News:  Our next meeting will be back at the Mad Hatter Bakery (Main and Broad Streets in Durham, across from Duke East Campus, Swift Ave exit off 147/Durham Expressway) on  Sunday, August 17 at 2:00. Let's talk about our favorite modern pens (1985 or later). 

The Research Triangle Pen Club meets every other month on a Sunday afternoon at 2:00. Meetings are posted on Zoss, Pentrace, as well as the WWW.Rosspens.Com Home Page.

A Little History of the Research Triangle Pen Club:

This was a Club meeting in late 2000, when Fran brought along his digital camera. We were missing a few steady members (Deb Kinney, Renard DellaFave), but we had a good turn out. The group visible in the picture includes (standing from left): Fran DeRespinis, Doug Addington, Ridley Kessler, Mark Anderle. (sitting from left) Krysta Chauncey, Daniel Addington(Doug's son, who was given a Waterman CF for his enthusiasm), Peter Chauncey, Ross McKinney, and Gretchen Schlager. My son Tucker took the picture, but he mainly hit the bookstore looking for a birthday present for a female friend

The Triangle Pen Club was spawned from Deb Kinney's notepad. Deb was the pen manager at the late lamented Sharon Luggage & Gifts  in Durham's Northgate Mall (a Monday evening sort of job), and collects modern pens. In the summer of 1998, Deb and I decided to have a local vintage pen show, and the upper management at Sharon Luggage offered space at the store and a fair bit of print and radio advertising (see above). We set up shop on a couple of tables. I probably had 20 Sheaffers and maybe half a dozen Vacumatics, Deb had some real pens. In a stroke of genius, Deb set a notepad down for interested people to sign up so we could start a club. A few months went by, but we had our first meeting February 21, 1999, at Elmo's, a local restaurant. We thought it would be empty. Ha! We barely had space to sit and compare notes.

Since then, we've met Sunday afternoons at the Regulator Bookstore, Elmos, and the Mad Hatter, all  in Durham, once every other month or so. Sometimes it's more frequent. We've had special meetings - like dinner with Tom Zoss when he came to town, and around the DC Pen Show so we could show off our new pens to each other. The group is interesting and varied - all ages and backgrounds. We've often had themed meetings, like Renard teaching us how to refill rollerball cartridges or our big ink festival (will the Regulator ever forgive us?).


Anyone interested can get on our e-mailing list by contacting Deb (KINNEY@law.duke.edu) or I (ross@rosspens.com).  Membership is FREE, and *everyone* is invited - no matter how far they have to drive!

From a  meeting (April 28, 2002):

This picture was taken by Jim Mamoulides, and shows (around the circle from Jim's unoccupied chair) Mark Anderle, Deb Kinney's eyelids, Glenn Jones, Trish Jones, Frank Kauffman, David Brown, Leigh Moser, Dean Moser, Ross McKinney, Fran DeRespinis, and Doug Addington. Missing is young Daniel Addington.  This meeting was held at the Wellspring Grocery Store cafe, with a theme of unusal nibs (stubs, obliques, etc).  Lots of pens to pass around!

Highlight from a pen club meeting: Adrian Jones very nicely gave me my own Bic Stik. And it works!