Gravitas Pens
Gravitas is an Irish-based company essentially run by Ben Walsh. Originator of a concrete pen, most of his current offerings are aluminum with various patinas, electroplating, anodizing and enamels, giving some interesting and original colour ways.
The packaging is striking by its inclusion of ancient Irish line writing (Ogham), perfect for language geeks to geek out with, but the pen itself wasn’t quite as interesting. Design-wise I don’t find much differentiation between the various offerings, all pens mostly fitting into one of two or three general forms: a standard pen, a pocket pen and a wider form possibly inspired by power-lifter Walsh’s endearingly meaty hands.
Walsh often boasts of his use of low-end Chinese suppliers and seems quite proud to produce none of the components himself beyond the prototypes. This does give his fairly high-quality materials a very affordable price-point. However, I find it a bit opaque and would prefer to know how much actual design and production collaboration is happening there and which specific manufacturers and factories he works with. I do realize I’m a big geek here that likes to know things the average consumer may not, however.
Nonetheless, I grabbed one of his entry-level “Entry” pens, and gave it a few weeks’ spin before rendering judgement. In general, I found the pen a bit too slippery in the grip, which shares the rest of the pen’s machined metal texture. The cap also would not stay posted, likely due both to this same slippery machined surface along with the thick unyielding metal base.
I did not especially like the oversized #8 nib, whose only decoration was its ink channel, and which was polished to a mirror finish. Despite ordering a medium, the line was tiny - similar to my .4mm Pilot Juice Up gel pens, if not thinner. I found myself pressing a bit too hard to coax a satisfying line and ended up bending the nib. All in all, it’s a lovely pen to look at and others from the maker are quite interesting, but in general doesn’t quite feel like anything groundbreaking and not especially a good value.
