About ....

Steve Hull is the acknowledged authority on the fountain pen industry in the UK, having spent nearly 40 years collecting and researching the history of English fountain pens. His interviews with the families and friends of many of the important personalities involved in the founding and development of these companies have given him a unique insight into the way they operated.

Steve's latest publication The Ideal Pen is his fifth solo title, and he has also co-authored books with Andy Russell and Mike Bryan. Further books can be expected in the not-too-distant future!

Steve has been a member of the Writing Equipment Society since 1982 (and a Vice-President since 2009). During the last 30 years he has contributed dozens of articles (amounting to over 500 pages) to the Society's Journal on a wide variety of subjects relating to the English fountain pen industry, many on lesser-known pen-makers, such as 'Who the Hell was John Whytwarth?', 'Stylomania', 'The Unique Pen' and 'The Totus-Securus Pen'.

Andy Russell first met up with Steve at a London Pen Show c2003. A few years later, he was persuaded to photograph the pens for Steve's first two books about Burge, Warren and Ridgely and Conway Stewart. This somehow led to him learning the desktop publishing software Adobe InDesign so that he could also do the layout of the books, starting with Onoto the Pen published in 2016, and this collaboration has continued ever since. After producing a number of articles for the WES Journal on various aspects of Conway Stewart history, Andy's first book, 50 Years of the Dinkie was eventually published in 2018 and he most recently co-authored Smaller English Pen Makers 1890-1930 with Steve.