Whether you’re an artist, a calligrapher, a snail-mail penpal, a creative bullet-journaler, or another kind of inkthusiast, we want you to feel the weight of centuries, the care of craftsmen, and the vibrancy of a growing garden in your work.
Our Story
Athendale Pen and Ink Company sprouted from the calm and awe of misty walks through the hedgerows of a hometown, the devotional peace of lettering the ancient texts of Christendom, and the delight of uncovering hidden glory in the overlooked abundance around us.
Colleen Franklin began making handcrafted inks as a way to keep a classroom of restless high schoolers engaged in a botany course. The subtle, magical shades that they drew from a simple bucket of walnuts were mesmerizing. Wandering the hedges and creek banks near her home, Colleen found herself noticing colorful plants and wondering “will this make ink?” “What about this?…”
Eventually, she began offering bottles of her handmade colors to calligrapher, iconographer, and fellow educator Grant Kelley. His reverent lettering blended perfectly with the gentle richness of botanical inks. Combined with the warm feel of his own hand-turned wooden pens, the experience was inspiring: deeply grounded in centuries of tradition yet as fresh and local as flowers from the farmer’s market.
Athendale Pen and Ink Company exists to share that inspiration with you. Whether you’re an artist, a calligrapher, a snail-mail penpal, or a creative bullet-journaler, or another kind of inkthusiast, we want you to feel the weight of centuries, the care of craftsmen, and the vibrancy of a growing garden in your work. The subtle comfort of a hand-turned pen and the shimmering magic of handcrafted colors call us deeper into our art—and maybe our art deeper into us—every time. We think the feeling is worth sharing, and we really hope you’ll love it too.
About Colleen
Starting from the biological horticulture program at UC Santa Cruz, Colleen’s quest to experience God through his spoken creation has led her to garden all over the world, from the dry Mediterranean climate of the central coast of California, to the beautiful and wild west coast of Scotland. She currently lives in an antique house with shelves full of art books and cultivates a shady garden full of lightning bugs and summer rain in middle Tennessee. These two loves, art and gardens, are encapsulated in the practice of ink making. When not gardening, reading, or making ink, she can usually be found teaching horticulture to high schoolers or tending her husband and two nearly-grown children with the same tenderness and delight that she brings to her plants.
About Grant
With a nod to C. S. Lewis, Grant sums himself up as a citizen of the Silent Planet. His calligraphy and drawing strive Godward with its devotional themes and deep ties to historic Christianity while remaining honest and affectionate toward his place in the created Planet Earth. He is a humanities teacher in the classical tradition, and his art is heavily influenced by history, literature, and theology. The ideas and activities interwoven throughout human history are intrinsic to the architecture and literature they produce; thus these monuments and figures preserve human narratives in both stone and the written word. In his drawings, Grant seeks to cast shadows of these monuments using the permanence of ink.
When I garden, earth and earthworm pass between my fingers, and I realize that I am made of the same stuff. When I pinch the cucumber vine and the water drips from capillaries to the soil, I can feel the blood coursing through my body. Man is a microcosm in whose flesh resonates and reverberates the pulse of the whole creation, in whose mind creation comes to consciousness and through whose imagination and will God wants to heal and reconcile everything that sin has wounded and put in disharmony.
–Vigen Guroian, Inheriting Paradise