Here’s another Mordan pencil.  It looks and behaves like silver but I suspect that it’s just silver-plated.  It’s a natty little thing of about 9.8 cm.  I’ve checked such information as I have but I find it quite hard to date these things.  I’m guessing that it’s about 1930.  It works well and has a piece of lead loaded.  It also has several spare pieces of lead in the reservoir at the butt end, which is useful because Mordan pencils use 1 mm lead which isn’t always easy to find.

It’s the simplest of pens.  There is nothing there to be seen that doesn’t add to the way it works.  The function dictates what the form will be.

Many pen companies have passed through several hands and as a result have quite a complicated history.  Few if any, however, are as complex as Osmia.  The company was started by George Bowhler in 1919.  Though the company did well initially declining sales left it open to the Parker pen company’s acquisition.  In 1929 Parker sold the company back to Bohler.  He sold the nib manufacturing factory to Degussa.  A W Faber-Castell invested heavily in the company from 1935 on and finally the company over in 1951.

There is more to it than that but enough’s enough.  It’s enough to make your head spin.  This beauty is an Osmia 883.  It measures 13 cm capped.  The cap and barrel are in a subtle wind green colour and both are semi-transparent.  The gold-plated clip is a little reminiscent of those used by Pelikan and it has a medium gold cap band.  It doesn’t actually say “Osmia” anywhere on the pen, which suggests to me that it’s quite late, after the Faber Castell takeover.  The name Osmia continued to be used for a few years but afterwards these pens were turned out under the Faber Castell name though they are identical to the earlier ones imprinted Osmia.  The large nib has a sun inside a diamond which was Osmia’s trademark from the outset.

It’s a piston filler, working well and holding a considerable amount of ink which can be seen through the semi-transparent barrel.  The nib is medium and very flexible.  This is a splendid pen both aesthetically and in use.

I bought this tiny jewel of a pen out of curiosity, never having seen anything quite like it before.  There is no manufacturer’s name on it, just “800” on the clip and a “D” on the lever.  It isn’t hall-marked so it’s probably silver plate.  It’s quite tiny at 8.8 cm long capped.  Nonetheless, it’s a practical pen.  It took a bit of hunting around in my boxes but eventually I found a sac small enough to fit this pen.  The small warranted nib is semi-flexible.

I can find no clue as to who made it.  The warranted nib is stamped “14ct” which suggests to me that it was British made, but it has a blue transparent section which I’ve never seen on a British pen, though they are common enough on the continent, particularly in Germany.

Recently, I have seen people putting forward the opinion that silver pens and pencils have a patina which should be preserved.  The only metal that I am aware of that takes a true patina is bronze, which becomes coated with an oxidised layer which protects the metal underneath and enhances its appearance.  Silver, on the other hand, becomes tarnished.  This is no patina, but an accumulation of dirt and oxidisation which is quite unattractive.  Anyway, I dug out the silver polish and gave it a rub and it looks 10 times the pen it did when I got it.

If anyone has an idea who manufactured this pen or even what country it came from, let me know.

If the Pilot Capless (Vanishing Point) didn’t exist the Lamy Dialog 3 would be the wonder of our age.  It does, though, and comparisons between the two are inevitable and, to my mind, come out in favour of the Capless in almost every respect.

I bought the Lamy out of curiosity, because I wanted to compare it with the Capless which I have found to be almost indispensable.  It’s worth saying that it’s a fairly expensive way to satisfy one’s curiosity as the Dialog comes in at £159.68, on top of which I had to pay an import VAT duty of £25 and a clearance fee of £13.50.  In my book, that’s serious money!

Having got it, though, I’m not disappointed.  It’s a great pen.  I won’t go through the rigmarole of describing the packaging to you.  It’s nice packaging but you don’t write with it.  The pen is, I suppose, for want of a better term, minimalistic.  It’s a matte black cylinder with rounded ends. Parallel lines run from the clip to the base and there is the Lamy logo.  Twist the barrel and the shiny nib cover moves aside and the nib is displayed.  I must say I prefer the Capless’s one-handed clicking action to the twist action of the Lamy.  When you retract the nib, if you overshoot in the turn that you make you begin to unscrew the barrel, so it isn’t particularly positive.  I have been told, though I’ve yet to experience it myself, that if you leave it for a couple of days it will dry out.  That’s not true of the Capless.

Filling it is quite an inconvenient procedure.  First you unscrew the barrel, then you unscrew the entire converter and nib unit out of the pen.  Dip the nib in the ink and fill the piston style converter in the usual way.  That’s a less convenient method of filling than any other pen I can think of.

When it comes to writing, the Dialog’s nib is wonderfully smooth.  Mine is described as a medium but it seems more like a broad to me. The pen is very heavy – around 50 g – and the grip takes a little getting used to.  I don’t think I could write with this pen for a protracted period.  It’s just too heavy and awkward.  Having said that, the nib is so good that I would wish to try to persist.  It isn’t flexible but it’s springy which makes writing with it pleasurable.

Of course, the capless pen isn’t a new concept by any manner of means, and the twist action is probably the oldest way of achieving that.  It reminds me of the old safety pens – though only in its action!  In appearance it’s something quite new.  I had a look at some reviews before I wrote this, and most people seemed to like its appearance, some even going so far as to describe it as “very sexy”.  I wouldn’t want to associate myself with those remarks.  People live their lives in their own way and it’s none of my business what they do.  I’ve no wish to be prudish about this but I will restrict myself to saying that it’s a nice pen.  And leave it at that.

Joking aside this pen would be a market winner were it not for the fact that the niche it occupies is already claimed by the Pilot Capless.  The Capless is lighter, its action is one-handed and more convenient, it’s slightly easier to fill, it has a better grip and all in all, it is the better pen.  But I’m very impressed with this pen too.  Such faults as it has are very minor ones with the exception of the filling procedure.  For someone with bigger hands and no arthritis, this might be the pen of their dreams.

I’m going to open the sales site again.  Unfortunately, as the problem has not been solved, it’s only really going to work properly with PCs and laptops, so far as PayPal payments are concerned.  There is a glitch at point of sale with mobile devices using PayPal – mobile phones, iPads etc.  What happens is that someone using a mobile device will find that their basket has not been cleared, giving the impression that the sale has not gone through.  It has, but lack of connecting code means that the basket never empties.  Furthermore, and worse, the item or items that have been bought are not removed from the site and still appear to be available for purchase by another buyer.  This has happened once or twice but luckily I’ve been there to manually take the item down before someone else gets disappointed.  However, I do have to sleep occasionally.

So the story is, so long as you use your PC or laptop the sale will be fine using PayPal or credit cards.  Mobile devices are fine using credit cards but not using PayPal.

I can only apologise for this.  I’m sorry for my customers who have been denied access to the site for a long time.  I’m sorry for myself, as my business has been frozen during this period.  I’m sorry also for my reputation which is inevitably damaged by a website that doesn’t work properly and that’s infuriating because I did everything right.  The people whose reputations should be damaged are osCommerce Solutions (who should be known as No osCommerce Solutions) and osCommerce, who haven’t bothered to get off their lazy backsides to solve this problem for my site and the great many other sites that are affected.

I’m still trying to work with these people to put this right, getting gradually less polite with every day that passes.

During the First World War Mabie Todd’s British manufacturing effort was turned over to munitions manufacture and the associated company in the USA provided stocks of Swan and Blackbird pens to supply the British market.  I say “associated” because during 1914 the USA still held the parent company but at the end of that year a new British company was established to take over all non-US operations.

The companies maintained links with each other and it is my assumption that these pens continued to be supplied throughout the war.  In any case, it makes them rather easy to date: they are either 100 years old or just a little less.  This particular example could have been made yesterday.  The black hard rubber is as dark and shiny as the day it was made.  The chasing is crisp and the pen is remarkably free of the scratches that accrue over such a long time.

It’s a nice example of allied cooperation, and the words “made in USA during war” make the pen a little special, particularly from the point of view of a collector.  Otherwise, it’s as simple and straightforward as a pen can be.  It’s not quite two straight tubes; the barrel is slightly tapered at both ends.  The section has impressively deeply cut threads which keep the ink were it’s meant to be – inside the barrel.

The nib is fine and a little pressure will invoke noticeable line variation.  I find, when I use a pen like this, that I wonder if all the “progress” in the last hundred years is just superfluous.  What more do you need than a pen that writes as well as this one does and holds as much ink as this one does?

Here’s a pen I haven’t written about before: the Altura.  Despite this slightly foreign-sounding name, it’s a British company, one of the oldest ones and one that produced a great many pens.  So why haven’t you heard of it?

The Altura Pen and Pencil Company Ltd was established soon after the First World War and though it usually had a pen or two for sale under its own name, most of its production was for other manufacturers and own-brand wholesalers.  You may well have handled and used an Altura pen without realising it.  Certainly, if you have written with 1930s English-made Waterman pens, you’ve written with an Altura-made pen.  Though they remained independent during world War two they were coming ever closer in a relationship with Waterman, and in 1946 Waterman acquired Altura.  For a couple of years they continued to make a few of their own pens but after 1948 they were heard of no more.

This black hard rubber example is the Altura 752, probably dating from the 1930s but possibly earlier.  The most obvious thing about it is the mid-cap clip, something that had a spell of fashionability in De La Rue in the 1920s.  The pen measures 12.8 cm when capped but becomes a long 16.2 cm when posted.  The nib is warranted.  There is a tiny “RG” at the top of the clip.  I don’t know what that stands for.  On the barrel, very discreetly, is a tiny “Altura 752”.  Much more prominent is “Dinsdale’s Ltd.,  Leeds 1” which probably refers to Dinsdale’s the stationer and art supplier, though it’s hard to be certain as there are many businesses in Leeds of that name.

Many of the unbranded pens from the pre-war period that we see were probably made by Altura, though it is impossible to say which ones as, like most pen manufacturers, they could turn out a pen in any style.  Certainly, they made pencils for De La Rue and they may have made at least some versions of the De La Rue pen.  Their own pens, though not outstanding, are decent writing instruments, not without a style of their own.  It is a pity that the company not only disappeared in 1948, but has since sunk into such obscurity that its name is no longer known by most pen fanciers.