Review of Lamy Joy Calligraphy Fountain Pen

I have had a disappointing experience with Lamy before (see here) but I decided I would give the brand another go and get myself one of their calligraphy pens in the hope that I would get on okay with it and that it would fit in the pen loop of the leather covers (see here for my review of them).

Fail.

Fail.

I neither got on with it nor did it fit in the pen loop.

Am I the only person in the universe who hates Lamy pens? They seem to get rave reviews everywhere and people saying they would have a zillion of them, yet I find them designed for a hand that does not match mine.

The Lamy “Joy” (it was no joy for me...) Calligraphy came in a somewhat oversized box, with a blue cartridge. I also ordered the converter that allows you to use bottled ink as I have a lot of lovely ink and a dislike of most blue cartridge ink. Duly excited by a new pen, I loaded it up with some Poussière de Lune by J Herbin and had a go.

Pen and over-sized box

It was horrible. The moulded area near the nib was too far back for where I want to hold the pen and it dug uncomfortably into my fingertips. The weight was okay and the flow to the nib was good, but, the grip... I tried valiantly, writing a couple of sides of A4 with it and then gave up with sore fingers and scrappy-looking writing.

Anyway, for fullness of review, I’ll describe the pen. I ordered the black version, with an aluminium lid. The barrel has a ‘squared’ design, with two of the sides flat and the other two curved and the barrel tapers from tip to nib-holder. There is a firm screw connection between the nib-holder part and the rest of the barrel. There is an ink-viewer window in the barrel. The nib-holder is moulded and it was the end nearest the nib that did for me as the moulding is quite chunky and with quite sharp edges. I ordered the 1.1mm nib. The pictures below are taken from the Bureau Direct site to try and show the moulding.

Here is a comparison of my writing with a variety of nibs (both calligraphy/italic and normal). I vastly prefer my writing with an italic/calligraphy nib but given the choice between uncomfortable italic/calligraphy or comfortable non-italic/non-calligraphy, I would go for comfortable every time.

Overall:
No stars as I can’t use it. Maybe one star for the look of it, but that’s being generous.