Our Story

We are Anna, a former Solicitor and Martin, a former Engineer and we have always loved pens and stationery! The fountain pen has been the writing instrument of choice for both of us and we love to write with different coloured inks.  We are not your typical retailer we won’t sell anything that we don’t like or would not use ourselves and if we can repair your pen rather than replace so much the better.

We are often asked how it all started.  In the summer of 2000, we came across a lovely stationery shop, in France, stocked with items we could only dream of. In particular, they had the full range of J Herbin inks that were, at that time, not available in the UK. Anna had been on maternity leave, following the birth of our first child, and had just resigned from her job due to a lack of suitable part-time hours. Hence, we decided to set up an online pen business!

In fact, Herbin inks were one of the first product ranges we stocked after importing them directly from the manufacturer. The Writing Desk was born and we pride ourselves on being one of the first online pen shops in the UK and definitely the first to offer a range of fountain pen inks online.

Anna ran the business almost single-handedly (whilst also looking after two young children) until Martin joined full-time in 2007 after his employers closed their UK operation and made him redundant. We expanded our product ranges, adding many more UK firsts such as Private Reserve, TWSBI and Edison but always concentrating on fountain pens and related items.

Ten years later in 2017, we opened a real brick-and-mortar shop in the historic town centre of Bury St Edmunds where we live. During this period we had the pleasure of meeting our customers face to face and it became clear just how many of you own cherished pens that need a repair or service or just some advice on how to keep them functioning properly for future decades and/or generations. 

Unfortunately, the pandemic and subsequent global issues meant that when the shop lease expired we decided to close the shop and return to being an ‘online-only’ business again. During this time there had been a step change in consumer attitudes with a growing desire to shop more sustainably and even own less.  This has increased demand for pen servicing and repair and a growing demand for custom nib work. 

Dedicating time to these new services alongside the online shop had become a challenge. Realising we couldn’t do everything we decided to focus more on sustainable writing: the supply of good quality durable fountain pens and more time dedicated to the service and repair of customers’ pens. So in 2024, we made the hard decision to no longer stock some of our favourite products but to offer products and services that are more in line with our values - we believe a good quality fountain pen should last a lifetime if well cared for and we were pleased to bring many back to life.