One of my most valuable hobbies is journaling with a fountain pen. I started in 2023, after getting my first job upon graduating. My collection has grown since then, and I’ve been quietly enjoying this hobby for the past three years, though I had no idea there was a real fountain pen community out there until recently.
Over a month ago, I got a life-changing surprise when a friend reached out about the hobby. An old friend from high school saw a story I’d posted about disassembling and cleaning my fountain pen.
She told me she knew someone who was part of a fountain pen community near me. All these years I’d been enjoying this hobby in silence, so of course, I was surprised to find out there was a whole fountain pen scene nearby.
It didn’t take long before I was added to a group chat full of people in the same hobbyspace. None of the members were familiar to me, so beyond the initial introductions, I mostly kept quiet. I did enjoy following the daily discussions about fountain pens on the side.
Wait, There’s an Actual Fountain Pen Community?
I hadn’t realized how much structure existed around something I’d only ever done alone at my desk. Turns out there’s a whole calendar of pen meetups built around this hobby.
None of this is complicated. It’s just people who like the same small, slow thing finding excuses to do it in the same room. Knowing this existed made the whole hobby feel less like something I did in isolation, and more like something I’d just never been introduced to yet.
A Month of Firsts
I said yes to the group chat, and I did not expect what came next. Within a few weeks I went from lurking quietly to attending four separate events, back to back, with people I’d never met.
The first was a quiet Sunday afternoon at a local coffee shop, where a small group of collectors laid out over thirty vintage pens, some older than my parents, for anyone to hold and write with.
I brought my sketchpad along out of habit more than anything. By the end of that afternoon, one of the collectors there offered to buy one of my paintings. I said yes before I fully processed what was happening, and just like that, I’d sold my very first piece of art.
A few weeks later I found myself at one of nine crowded tables inside the National Museum of the Philippines Iloilo, gouache in hand, trying very hard not to let the other forty-something artists in the room see how nervous I was. It took about two hours of painting before my heart rate matched the calm I was supposed to be feeling.
Then came the ink-stained afternoon before our first Pelikan Hubs gathering. One table did bookbinding, another was covered in ink bottles for swatching, and somehow half the room turned out to be people I already knew from school or work, without either of us realizing it.
The month closed out on National Heroes Day, sketching outdoors at Plaza Libertad while gray clouds tried to cut the session short. We did one last Lapag, our own name for laying every sketch out together at the end of a session, in the middle of the plaza. Among everyone there, I ran into yet another familiar face from high school.
How to Actually Find a Hobby Community Like This
If you’re the type who’s been quietly doing something for years without realizing there’s a whole group of people doing the same thing nearby, here’s what actually worked for me:
- Post about your hobby, even casually. Mine started because a friend saw an offhand story about me cleaning a pen, not because I went looking for a community.
- Say yes to the small, low-stakes invite first. A coffee shop meetup with eight people is a much easier first step than showing up to a 40-person event cold.
- Bring what you enjoy, even if you weren’t asked to. I brought my sketchpad to a pen meetup out of habit, not strategy, and it ended up mattering more than I expected.
- Expect overlap. Hobby communities in the same city tend to know each other. Several people I met turned out to be classmates, coworkers, or friends-of-friends I’d never have connected with otherwise.
Quick Answers
How do I find a fountain pen community near me? Ask around casually first, mine started with one friend who happened to know someone. Local Facebook groups and Pelikan Hubs chapters are also a solid starting point.
What is a “penmeet”? An informal gathering where fountain pen collectors bring their pens to show, trade stories about, and sometimes write or sketch with together.
What does “Lapag” mean? It’s what our sketch group calls the activity where everyone lays their finished sketches out together at the end of a session so we can see each other’s work.