Kenilworth II — Boxwood Burl

Not every stunning pen announces itself loudly. This one just sits there looking quietly magnificent and lets the wood do the talking.

Boxwood is one of the finest-grained timbers you'll encounter on a lathe — dense, hard and extraordinarily smooth, with a texture that almost feels more like ivory than wood when it's been properly polished. The burl takes all of those qualities and adds a whole extra dimension: that fine, almost silky grain swirls and ripples across the barrel in warm shades of golden yellow and olive green, shifting through pools of deeper ochre and amber, with darker figuring threading through it like brushstrokes. The cap section picks up a richer, more chocolatey tone where the burl clusters, giving the pen a natural two-tone quality that no acrylic could ever replicate — because this is just what the tree looked like, right there in that particular piece of wood.

Under light it has an almost luminous quality, the tight grain catching and scattering it in a way that makes the surface seem to glow from within. It's the kind of material that rewards looking closely — the more attention you give it, the more detail you find.

Gun-metal chrome fittings on the Kenilworth II suit it perfectly, giving it a cool, contemporary edge without competing with the warmth of the wood. Sleek, minimal, and very well matched.

Hand-turned and finished in the West Midlands, presented in a gift box

A39