There's a particular deep purple in nature you see just before a storm breaks, or in the after-image of a meteor crossing a night sky. LAMY has bottled that colour into the Meteora, a special edition of one of the most recognisable fountain pens ever made.
The Safari needs no introduction to anyone who has spent time with fountain pens, but the Meteora gives even longtime users a reason to look twice. Where the standard Safari has a smooth barrel, this edition is finished with a fine engraved checkered texture across both the barrel and grip section. Run your thumb over it and you'll feel the difference immediately: less slip, more control, and a genuinely pleasant tactile quality that changes how the pen sits in the hand during long writing sessions.
Design and build
Designed by Wolfgang Fabian for LAMY in 1980, the Safari shape has barely needed to change in over four decades, which tells you something about how well it was thought through the first time. The body is made from durable ABS plastic, keeping the pen light without feeling cheap. The Meteora's deep purple is paired with black accents throughout, including the clip and the nib, giving the whole pen a cohesive, considered look rather than a single flash of colour.
The clip itself is the same spring-loaded metal design LAMY has used since the beginning: strong enough to hold firmly to a shirt pocket or notebook cover, flexible enough not to fight you when you're taking the pen on and off. The triangular grip section, one of the Safari's most distinctive features, guides fingers into a natural writing position and is a large part of why this pen is so often recommended to people learning to hold a fountain pen properly for the first time.
Nib and writing performance
The Meteora is fitted with a black-coated stainless steel nib, available in extra fine, fine, medium and other widths depending on your writing style. LAMY's steel nibs are known for consistency out of the box, and because the Safari uses LAMY's interchangeable nib system, you can swap nib sizes later without needing a new pen.
Filling system
This is a cartridge and converter pen. It comes with one LAMY T10 ink cartridge in blue to get you writing straightaway, and it's compatible with the LAMY Z28 converter (sold separately) if you'd prefer to draw from bottled ink. For those of us who use bottled ink daily, this is the sensible way to run a Safari long-term, and it opens the pen up to the full range of LAMY and third-party inks.
Dimensions
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Length capped: 13.9 cm
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Length uncapped:12.9 cm
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Cap length:6.5 cm
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Weight: approximately 17 g
Why the Meteora
This isn't a pen bought for ceremony. It's a pen bought to be used, refilled, dropped in a bag, and pulled out again the next morning still working exactly as it should. The Meteora edition adds a genuinely striking finish to that reliability, in a colour and texture you won't find on the standard Safari lineup.
