Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 3, 1993 TAG: 9311030276
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By AMANDA KELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium
She cuts the nib edge and slits the point before peeling off the lower quarter of the vane, the flat part on both sides of the shaft, to make room for a writer's hand. Finally, she files the quill.
"There, see how even that is?" she said, looking at the back of the nib - or writing point - after her minute's work.
Floyd, 57, working from her garage bench, turns out thousands of goose feather quill pens each year. She inherited the business, Lewis Glaser Inc., and its most prestigious client, the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1986.
She'll hand-deliver 600 pens to the court this month, and meet its two newest justices, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The court gives a pair of pens to each lawyer who argues a case there, and justices give pen sets as personal gifts.
Floyd sells the pens by mail only. The British Embassy ordered a set for Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and Floyd made pens for Queen Elizabeth's calligrapher.
Daniel Hawks, a curator at the Jamestown Settlement Museum, said the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation will use Floyd's quills when it re-creates the 375th anniversary of the founding of legislative government in the New World. The General Assembly met for the first time on July 30, 1619, at Jamestown.
Mildred Morris, executive director of the United Way in Bristol, said her organization buys about 20 pen sets a year as gifts for its Signature Club of donors.
"It's a perfect tie-in, and it's very traditional," she said. "It is a very attractive award and it's easily recognizable."
A set of two pens, one curving left and one curving right, and a pewter inkwell sells for $80. A pair of pens cost $16, and a shorter "John Marshall" pen with the feather cleaned off one side is $8.
Floyd worked with Lewis Glaser, a goose expert who began making quill pens in 1943, for seven years at a downtown Charlottesville shop.
He taught her how to prepare and cut the pens, including waiting two weeks for the pens to dry after washing instead of using newer methods such as hot sand or microwaving.
"We just let ours wait," Floyd said. "And ours work better."
by CNB