About
The history
My name is Rob van Nigtevecht, artisan fountain pen designer and manufacturer, owner of Powerful Signature. The business is located in Consett, which is in a very interesting town between Newcastle upon Tyne, Durham and Hexham for it's industrial and mining history.
I have always loved fountain pens, watches and old machines for their sheer beauty and elegance, such as rose engines or guilloché lathes – incredibly complex machines for creating instruments and engravings. Some still exist and are worth a fortune. The highly skilled workers of the past retained the knowledge in the head rather than on paper, and the knowledge to make ever more complex products grew over generations. And then most disappeared after the Second World War. One day I decided it was now or never to make things myself, for the joy of writing, scribbling and drawing with ink, which I do a lot and with great pleasure. This gives a kind of peace that writing on a computer simply cannot offer. And working on a lathe to make the pens is also very satisfying, it requires a lot of thinking and experience.
I established a small business to offer customer high quality uniquely fountain pen designs, hope to be active well into the time of pension. In 2025 I was diagnosed with cancer and had put it all on hold. Recovering well and with good prospect to continue, I hope to open the site again at the end of 2026.
To celebrate the humble pen and ink, which gives us more than we think, I started making them myself and wondered whether it was possible to produce them from raw materials without buying pen parts. I found that it is possible after a lot of research and a lot of guess work as so much knowledge was not written down. They are made the old-fashioned way, hard craft and a lot of passion. The nibs and converters are sourced, as there are far too complex industrial processes involved to make these standard parts myself. Using existing standard parts also ensures worldwide availability.
The plan is to keep doing this for a good 20 years, providing people with good-quality writing tools.
He lived around 4000 years ago in the days of Abraham as a king and high priest in the land of Uz. The city he lived in was later called Jerusalem.
The ancient people used ink and wrote on documents, used clay and stone for long lasting messages, duplicating much to spread the news where needed. They recorded the lives of Kings but also business transactions, scientific explorations, mathematics and astronomy, recorded stock market activities and the early form of banking. with interest rates. They used parchment for transferable purposes. Clay tablets harden in a fire, while other documents would perish, clay tablets are a kind of secure backup.
Writing is an thousands of years old practise and still, despite the computer and email, a cherished way of sending a personal message or to write in diaries, contemplating ideas. The fountain pen is now also more often used to draw with. People make stunning drawings in notebooks, just for pleasure to enjoy the scribbling. I hope you will also discover the old and romantic pleasure of writing or the art of drawing.
