Say design without saying design
We wrote twice about the Kaweco, cursorily, and now it’s time to go deep into the text with it. Kaweco is a weird brand. It’s now owned by a big conglomerate, but it tracks as “design,” so you’ll see it at every single boutique on the planet that has design stuff. In this way, it is like Hasami, acting as the writing instrument of the white noise band for in-the-know design kids. There are other brands like Kaweco & Hasami, and some of them are good. Kaweco is occasionally good. Its lines have become distended to the point where “good” is not the point. You buy a Kaweco to color-match your wardrobe. You buy it because it’s plastic, cheap, and consistent.
The plastic ones are almost objectively not good. They possess the aura of a lipstick case and cost $27. It looks like overtightening could break the cap, probably, or the threads could strip. A clip is sold separately. The Safari costs three dollars more and works substantially better along almost every parameter you could possibly care about. But hey, a fountain pen for $27.
But then you upgrade to the aluminum models, and oh. $40 extra gets you a purer expression of the thing, one that you can really work with. Kaweco becomes almost perfect when you throw out budgetary considerations and consider durability as the main axis. I’ve owned one of the black aluminum models in rollerball form for 3 years, and it wears so well, first the finish going soft and then the vertices brassing a little. The logo popped off at some point and I can’t even care. I swapped the stock refill for something else and haven’t looked back.
Most rollerballs charge for the barrel, and most of your experience writing with the thing is all about the cartridge. So if you get the right cartridge, you just want to think about what barrel holds right for you & communicates the right fashion statement. There are, of course, alternatives, and they all say “design” louder and come from smaller companies. But Kaweco just hits when they do the materials right. They remain the standard, and you can live with them for three years without a hitch.