Reynolds Ministere...an unexpectedly good looking FP...and a good writer too...

I didn’t know the existence of this Reynolds fountain pen, though Reynolds is well-known in India for their ball-pens. It is also ironic because quite a few traditional fountain pen makers in India attribute the shutting down of their units to the soaring popularity of Reynolds ball-pens. I remember seeing a Reynolds fountain pen-ball pen set long back in a stationery shop here, but the FP did not impress me much (I later found out that it was called Reynolds Accent). A couple of years back, Reynolds (India) opened their showroom in Hyderabad in Prasad’s Multiplex. I had gone there to watch a film and I had some time to spare and decided to go in and see what they stocked. I saw this very good looking fountain pen available in 2 colours, marbled green and marbled blue. The price was not too high, so I decided to buy the green one. They said that this FP was an imported piece!! That settled the matter (ha ha ha…)…No model name was written on it anywhere. I came back and tried their website to get the name of the pen…no luck. The Indian Reynolds site doesn’t list this pen at all…the French Reynolds site was under construction (and still is)…Anyway…I started using this pen and I was very pleased with its performance… It looked good in my shirt pocket, especially if you are wearing a light coloured shirt…the gold plated clip and bands gleam with glee!!! This FP is not available in other pen stores; you have to buy it from their showroom, which is called ‘Write Site’… and the Reynolds India site lists the locations in India… and I visited the Hyderabad Write Site recently to buy a similar pen for my friend on his birthday…I bought the brown one for him… he is mighty pleased…and it was after a couple of days later that I happened to read the payment receipt and noticed that this pen was listed as ‘Reynolds Ministere’… I again tried to cross verify on the web… no reference anywhere to this model name… I don’t know if this is the model name of this fountain pen…but, it writes well…and looks good…

And since Prasad’s is a place that we visit on and off, I was there a month back and ‘sneaked’ in to Write Site and bought the marbled brownish coloured FP…I was looking for the marbled blue, but it was not in stock…it is really stunning...

Jayasrinivasa Rao