People ask me about the meaning of my company name, Atelier Lusso… Its simple but requires a bit of an explanation. The first part is easy, Atelier is a French word that means a home studio, like an artists loft. I do all my work out of a studio attached to my home in Southern California. The second part is Lusso and is an Italian word that means luxury. I feel that having a hand crafted, bespoke fountain pen is a genuine luxury, and one that many fountain pen lovers aspire to, but the word also has a special meaning just to me.

When I was an impressionable 16 years old, my father took me to look at, and drive, a 1964 Ferrari 250 Lusso Coupe. The car was only 4 years old at that point and was available at a very reasonable price. Seeing and riding in that car changed my life. I had inherited my father's love of cars, but when I saw this car I realized that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and riding it, with that amazing V12 engine singing through all those carburetors, provided a near religious experience. To this day the Lusso Coupe is my lifelong ideal of both great design and engineering working together, and this is why I chose to name my Atelier after it.

I hope you will appreciate the passion that I put into my pens, the same passion that nearly overwhelmed me as a teenager experiencing this ideal of industrial art and design.

As an epilogue to the story, my father didn't buy that Ferrari, even though I prayed that he would, as he found his ideal car that day as well. Sitting in the showroom was a light metallic blue Ferrari Superfast with a white leather interior. That was the car he fell in love with, but unfortunately, couldn't afford.