Not surprisingly Francis Underwood (played by Kevin Spacey) in House of Cards uses an Underwood typewriter. But what pen does he write with? Suggestions welcome.
*
![]() |
Pencil of Anish Kapoor - Secret Pencils |
![]() |
Pencil of Mike Leigh - Secret Pencils |
![]() |
Pencils of David Rock - Secret Pencils |
![]() |
Pencils of David Shrigley - detail - Secret Pencils |
![]() |
Pencil of Sir Peter Blake - Secret Pencils |
In Millbank prison, "they were all wild for paper, paper and ink. When they bring you to the gaol... they make you put your name upon the page of a great black book" and this is the last time you hold a pen and write your name with it.
But to want a sheet of paper, only to write one's name upon it, so that one might feel oneself conjured through it into life and substance -It seemed a very little thing to want.I took the note-book from my pocket, opened it to a blank page and placed it flat upon the table; and then I offered her my pen. She gazed at it. and then at me; she held it in her hand, and clumsily unscrewed it - the weight and shape of it, I suppose, were unfamiliar. Then she held it, trembling, above the page, until a glistening bead of ink welled at its nib; and then she wrote: Selina. And then she wrote her name in full - Selina Ann Dawes. And then the christian name alone again: Selina.
![]() |
Margaret forging her brother's signature |
![]() |
Margaret writing her journal. |
![]() |
pencil from the Sacco and Vanzetti factory as seen on eBay |
The social task may be to provide the words for a song for the Red Army men on their way to the Petersburg front. The purpose is to defeat Yudenich. The material is words from the vocabulary of soldiers. The tools of production - a pencil stub,
Building barricades in Petrograd during offensive of General Yedenich, 1919. |
![]() |
Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David, 1793; oil on canvas |
Jacques-Louis David painting The Death of Marat in his atelier in Andrej Wajda's Danton (1983) |
![]() |
Death of Marat by Vik Muniz for his documentary Waste Land. Marat was created from landfill waste. |
![]() |
Arthur Schopenhauer holding pen, portrait photograph 1859 source: Wikipedia |
I see my hand holding a pen just as I observe its movements and the letters appearing on the page. My hand is a representation just like everything in my visual field. But unlike other representations, which appear as surface phenomena, I have a unique experience of my hand, because I experience it from the inside, as it were. I experience my hand, my body, unlike other representations. The pressure I feel of the pen in my hand, the resistance I sense as the pen touches and moves on the page, the meaning I strive to express through the series of words appearing on the page, and the pain I feel as my hand clumsily slides across the edge of the paper, resulting in a paper cut on my hand and small drops of blood on the page, are toto genere different from my experience of the interior of my hand. And if I lacked these experiences of the interior of my hand, Schopenhauer would say, it would appear simply like the pen, letters, blood and paper. It would not be my hand, but simply another item in my visual field.
![]() |
Arthur Schopenhauer as youth, unknown artist Source: Wikipedia |
Schopenhauer consistently failed to write in a fashion that pleased his father, who constantly provided recommendations for improvement, such as avoiding fancy flourishes in his penmanship and observing capital letters more carefully. He advised Arthur to copy his mother's letters and to learn "to hold the pen in such a way that one can move it just with the fingers without moving the hand, and wield it lightly." This, he claimed, is the entire secret of writing with a good, clear hand.