Review: Pelikan Souverän M101N Red Tortoiseshell SE Fountain Pen - Medium @AppelboomLaren @Pelikan_Company

This Pelikan Souverän M101N Red Tortoiseshell Special Edition fountain pen was sent to me to review by Joost Appelboom of Appelboom - thanks Joost! The pen is the third in the series of the M101N releases - there was the brown tortoiseshell (which I think is gorgeous), and the lizard. It's meant to mimic the vintage style of the Pelikans that had red hard rubber caps and tortoiseshell bodies.

Image from The Penguin Pen

ABOUT

Body Material: Resin/Cellulose Acetate
Trim: Gold
Length (capped): 122.6 mm/4.83"
Length (uncapped nib-end): 116.3 mm/4.58"
Length (posted): 155.9 mm/6.14"
Barrel Diameter: 11.7 mm/0.46"
Section Diameter: 9.2 mm - 10.0 mm/0.33" - 0.36"
Nib material: 14K Gold
Weight: 14.7 g/0.52 oz
Fill type: Piston-filler.
Price: €475.00 (excluding VAT. €392.56)
Where to buy: Appleboom

PACKAGING

The Pelikan Souverän M101N Red Tortoiseshell fountain pen arrived in packaging that I actually found quite pretty, which is unusual for me. It's a solid cardboard box with a slide out tray. The box is cream with Pelikan Gunther Wagner, Hannover Wien written on the front in very cool script, along with an old Pelikan logo. It's on what looks like curling parchment, so it's very interesting. The tray has a little brown satin ribbon to pull it out, embedded in the cardboard tray which looks like faux wood.

Inside is a bottle of Pelikan 4001 ink in blue, but the bottle is very cool, written in script to match the box. The ink is nestled in a faux wood cardboard bed, surrounded by a cream faux leather. There's a slant where the Pelikan pouch is, wrapped in brown satin ribbon. Below it is the Pelikan guarantee booklet. Inside the pouch is ... the pen!

That's a lot of packaging, but I find it quite useful. I like boxes like this because they can store my other pens - gel pens, ballpoints and such - or miscellaneous things like paperclips and tape. I prefer not to buy boxes because sometimes pens come in boxes like this!

APPEARANCE

This Pelikan is unlike any of my other Pelikans! It's a relatively slim pen, with a long cap and rounded ends. The finial is red, in a deep red resin, with the Pelikan logo - the mother and baby pelican, matching the piston-turning knob, also a deep red resin.

The cap is discretely engraved with Pelikan Germany, just above the clip. The gold clip is short and starts fairly low on the cap, and it looks different to the other Pelikan models - it is not a defined pelican's bill; instead, it still has the bill shape but is smoothed out. It just looks like a regular clip now and no longer stands out as a Pelikan clip. There are two gold rings at the base of the cap. The section and threads are also red.

The ink window is a translucent amber. The barrel is the eye catcher though - it's an attractive, warm striated pearly cream with amber, dark red, caramel, and warm brown run through the tortoiseshell pattern.

While it's pretty, it's not as crazy gorgeous as the other tortoiseshell patterns I've seen, such as on the M400 White Tortoise. I understand that Pelikan has swapped out the hard rubber of the older models for resin here, and of course all tortoiseshell barrels look different by nature, but the vintage ones are more outstanding, in my opinion.

NIB & PERFORMANCE

This 14K yellow gold medium nib is one of Pelikan's smaller nibs. It follows Pelikan's vintage style and is not so elaborate: It's a beautifully polished nib with Pelikan 585, 14K written on it, along with M for medium. Pelikan is written in a pretty script. I love how the nib shines.

I inked up with Diamine Burnt Sienna because I thought it would match the deep red resin. The nib writes like a western medium - it's a nice line size. I was quite disappointed that the nib didn't write as soon as it first hit the page. A pen at this price point should not have this problem, but of course, it's not unique in this regard - other high-end fountain pens have this problem as well (Montblanc and Conway Stewart for example). It took a little pressure on the nib to get the ink flowing, but once it was flowing, the flow was nice and wet and the nib itself is quite lovely. It's a soft nib and has some spring to it, so it results in a soft, wonderful writing experience, and offers a decent amount of line variation. It looks like it has a little bit of baby's bottom, and combined with ultra smooth paper like Rhodia, the hard starting effect is quite pronounced.

This issue was less pronounced on Leuchtturm 1917 paper, but still happened enough to annoy me. The only paper I didn't experience this with was Field Notes.

IN HAND

Unposted, the pen is so comfortable. I love holding it - it's just the perfect size for me! It's not too wide, it's not too long, and the weight and balance are perfect. The cap doesn't post very deeply, but it doesn't throw off the pen's balance when it is posted. In fact, I rather love it! It's still well-balanced and well-weighted. I use it both ways and I love it.

The threads are very low on the section because the section is small, but they are not sharp and don't bother me when I grip the pen. The section is small and flares slightly at the nib.

As to the construction of the pen itself, I think the pen was put together very well and it doesn't look unfinished. However, I feel that the resin and cellulose acetate doesn't have the same depth and beauty as the Souverän models.

PROS & CONS

OVERALL

While I think this is a really pretty pen, and I LOVE how comfortable it is to use, I was disappointed by the hard starting nib, and by the appearance, because I was expecting the breathtaking beauty of my M400 White Tortoise, or of the vintage tortoiseshells that I long for. They did a good job of recreating the vintage look of the previous models, but I like those better. If this had a flex nib though...

This pen was lent to me for reviewing purposes. I was not compensated monetarily for my review. Everything you've read here is my own opinion. There are no affiliate links in this review.