Lamy’s flagship pen is the Lamy 2000.
The Lamy 2000 is a pen that I have been lusting after for the longest time ever. It is not a new pen, having existed since 1966, but I have only gotten to know of it when the stainless steel Lamy 2000M was launched in the year 2012, which drew my attention to the classic Lamy 2000 fountain pen.
The Lamy 2000 was designed by Gerd Alfred Müller, a German industrial designer well known for designing Lamy products and Braun electrical equipment. In fact, he even won multiple awards for designing Lamy pens, and in particular, his Lamy 2000 won him the International Forum Design Award in 1978. He was involved in the Bauhaus movement, which combines artistic and industrial elements in a design, and this explains why the Lamy 2000 fountain pen looks like this:
At the time when Müller created the Lamy 2000, he used a special material called the Makrolon®, which is polycarbonate and a registered trademark of Bayer. The pen body has a very nice brushed effect which is what attracted me in the first place! The Lamy 2000 comes also in sleek stainless steel, which I also find very attractive, but this black version appeals much more to me.
Unfortunately I do not own this pen. It was loaned to me by a fountain pen friend, so thank you, Conrad, for lending this to me and fulfilling my wish of playing with a Lamy 2000!
Lamy 2000 uncapped
When you uncap the pen, you can see that the grip area is silver coloured (metallic?) and distinctly different from the rest of the body. The section ends in a slim hooded nib, and you cannot see the breather hole nor the place where the nib slit ends. Like some other Lamy pens, this one has an ink window around the barrel where the polycarbonate is semi-transparent.
On the other end of the pen is the screw thread system – this pen is a piston filler! Piston filling fountain pens are pretty easy to fill with ink. On this Lamy 2000, the sleekness and smoothness of the pen body makes it hard to distinguish the exact location of the screwing system, unless you scrutinize it carefully. Both the metallic nib-side and the black polycarbonate piston-side start from about an inch away from each end of the pen. The transition between the pen barrel and both of these ends is so very minute. This is called precision engineering!
Piston unscrewed
Another interesting feature of the Lamy 2000 is its cap. The cap is a pull-off type which requires little effort to remove and cap back. On the side of the barrel, there are two metallic protrusions that are supposed to help the cap click in place. This helps to maintain the almost uninterrupted flow of the barrel while allowing a place for the cap to attach to.
Circled in red is the metallic protrusion at the side of the barrel, for the cap to click in place
The clip is likely also made of lightly brushed steel, quite like the grip area. It has an angular shape with precise edges and very clearly gives the feel of a premium product. The brand name “Lamy” is engraved on one side of the clip. One can pinch the top of the clip to “open up” the clip like a lever or a peg, making clipping the pen on things easier.
Inside the clip there is also a depressed rectangle, inside which the phrase “Germany 1” is engraved.
The cap can be posted at the back of the pen. When posting, you can feel the cap slipping smoothly onto the barrel, but it posts with enough friction to keep the cap there. So, no worries about the cap flying out or rattling about while you write. Also, the smoothness of the barrel makes one feel more “secure” posting the cap, without needing to be worried about posting scratches over time. In fact, the whole polycarbonate material feels so hardy that I suspect this pen may be quite difficult to scratch! As this pen does not belong to me, I am not planning to do any scratch test on it. 😉
Some vital stats:
- Length capped: 13.9cm
- Length uncapped: 12.4cm
- Length posted: 15.2cm
- Width at widest point (I take it to be where the rim of the cap is): 1.4cm
Now for the writing experience. The pen is very well-balanced and lightweight when uncapped and in your hand. When you post the cap, the pen becomes a little top-heavy, which may either improve your control or topple it, depending on your own preference. The nib is platinum-coated 14K gold, and this pen I borrowed has a fine nib. While writing with Pelikan 4001 Violet ink on Rhodia Dot Pad, I feel some resistance of the nib on paper (because it is a fine?), although the writing was not scratchy. Also, I’m not sure if Conrad has done anything to the nib or not, because I felt like there seemed to be some kind of line variation bestowed by the pen upon the paper.
I am not entirely satisfied with the nib performance, but as you know, nibs can be adjusted to suit your writing habit! The only two other things I don’t like about this pen is that:
- If you look at the picture above, the metallic silver section area is slightly discoloured, seemingly by ink when you dip the pen into a bottle to draw the ink up. Or maybe some inner mechanism of the cap caused this. Despite washing the pen after I used it, I did not manage to get the stains out. I guess that’s an issue with brushed designs…
- You cannot dismantle the whole pen to clean the insides properly. Yes, it is a piston filler and piston fillers make pen cleaning easy. However, with the translucent ink window and the inability to be fully dismantled, one can never know if the pen is full clean inside or not.
But despite of the above disadvantages, I still feel that the Lamy 2000 is an awesome pen. Combining functionality and design, this is really a very well-made pen. Get your own black or steel Lamy 2000 from Amazon or your local dealer!
Read also this thread on the Fountain Pen Network about Lamy 2000 and Müller’s product design characteristics.
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Chemist by day, slacker by night, fanatic of stationery all the time.
I write with my left hand, but can also do the same with my right hand – it just won’t look very pretty.
Actually, you can dismantle the pen pretty easily: SBRE Brown has a good video on his Disassembly Line. I’ve done so with one of mine, cleaned it up nicely and put it back together again with no difficulty.
Ah, I see, I will check out that video. I dared not play too much with this pen as it belongs to someone else!