About

About PS
"Powerful Signature was created to share the passion of handmade fountain pens."

The history 

PS Powerful Signature was established on 1 January 2017 after a year of experimenting with pen making.


My name is Rob van Nigtevecht, artisan fountain pen designer and owner of Powerful Signature.

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.

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.

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. They are made the old-fashioned way, with real handwork 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 ensures worldwide availability.

The plan is to keep doing this for a good 20 years, providing people with good-quality writing tools.

'Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!" Job 19:23.

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 lifes 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 rtransferrable purposes. Clay tablets harden in a fire, while other documents would perish, clayy 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.