Brown Marbled Wyvern Perfect Pen No81

Wyvern numbering puzzles me more than a little.

This is a Wyvern Perfect Pen No81. So is a more slender, longer pen. How does that work? Anyway, though they can be troublesome in some respects, I have a soft spot for Wyverns. They tend to lose gold plating on the clips, like this one, and not infrequently they display gaping lever apertures. This one has a touch of it, but it isn’t too bad. What makes up for these faults is that they make a pen that’s shaped well for the hand, comparatively wide in the centre of the barrel, narrowing just a little at each end. Then there’s that brown/gold/black pattern which I’m very fond of.

Finally, they have these beautiful nibs with the perky little Leicester dragon. They’re not just for looking at, those nibs. Some, like this one, are flexible, with excellent return.

6 thoughts on “Brown Marbled Wyvern Perfect Pen No81

  1. Please, it’s not a perky little Leicester dragon. It’s a perky little Leicester wyvern, the clue is in the name.

    1. Your tone is rather sharp, Tom. I am well aware that it’s a wyvern. Also, the wholly-imaginary creature the wyvern is frequently regarded as a subset of that other wholly-imaginary creature, the dragon. If you use Google, you will see that the Leicester Wyvern is most often referred to as the Leicester Dragon. You will also see that in my many articles about the pen I at least equally refer to the thing as a wyvern. Tone it down, man!

  2. There’s an easy way to distinguish between a wyvern and a dragon: a dragon has four legs; a wyvern only has two.

    I speak as a resident of Leicester where wyverns are very common, often to be seen peering into the street from roof gables. [See https://u3asites.org.uk/leicester/page/86801%5D
    We also have one in our garden…

    Another distinctive feature is the wyvern’s barbed tail which is echoed in the barbed lever on some of Wyvern’s pens from around 1939 and later.

    Hope this is useful. Seeking to spread illumination, rather than heat…

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