Open Elective.. Fountain Pen

National Institute of design has a fantastic provision of "open electives" in which students are open to choose ANY of the modules offered irrespective of their streams of studies.


My open elective was Objects of Desire:Writing instruments. 
We were given the brief to design a fountain pen, adhering to some theme, which has some characteristics to elevate its market value( in simple terms, increase its cost ). This characteristic could be its genuineness, uniqueness,handwork,concept... etc.
I made a fountain pen out of rosewood. It was a nice experience working in the workshops. I made the carvings with hand,searched the entire market for a few days for just a small green colored bead... which i did not got till end ! 
My theme was INDIAN OCEAN. The characteristics which I tried to hightlight through my pen are as follows-


1. Indian ocean is the 3rd largest ocean.
2. It is the only ocean named after a country.
3. It is the only ocean with green waters.
4. The ocean has plenty of CORALs and splendid life forms.


I initially wanted to show the above stated characteristics in acrylic, but found that it was not feasible to work with acrylic for 3 reasons-

• It was costly
• I wanted to drill an acrylic rod to make a hollow cylinder, but that was supposed to render it opaque ( if not done some post-process)
• Limited time of one week

Another option was softwood, which was easily available in the workshop; but then I stumbled upon rosewood. It looked much richer in quality than its counterpart and I had to make a pen that looks expensive.So I decided to go for rosewood. 


Interpretations that can be drawn-

• The carvings represented CORALs
• The liquid represents ocean.
• Green liquid represents green color of Indian Ocean.
• "Rudraksh" on the Clip stand for India.
• The carving are 3 in number, which stand for " 3rd largest"
• Rosewood represents supremacy