ASA Pens, Chennai
At the age of eight, L Subramaniam began collecting fountain pens inspired by his paternal uncle, a fountain pen collector. After working for 21 years in the corporate sector, Subramaniam decided to venture into entrepreneurship and founded ASA Pens in 2013.
“Making fountain pens was a natural choice,” he says, explaining how his pens are made using a traditional lathe set-up, and the “shape, design proportions, and polishing are done by hand”. Crafted from acrylic or ebonite rods, he says the rods are first cut to the required sizes and then turned in traditional lathes by hand to achieve the desired shape for the pen’s barrel, cap, and body. “These handcrafted parts are then assembled by cutting threads in the parts to join them and hand-polished. The final assembly involves fixing the nib, clips, bands, etc. On average, a complete pen will take anywhere between three to four hours, and more for complex designs,” says, Subramaniam, who is now working on his sought-after model, ASA Galactic. A ‘jumbo acrylic’ pen with a translucent finish and an enormous ink capacity, it is one of their bestsellers, he says. The team is also launching a new lacquered pen series which they showcased at the Kolkata Pen Show earlier this year.
