There hasn’t been much activity here in the past few days because I was hardly at home last week.  Almost every day I had appointments which involved travelling.

I love these little Lady Patricia Watermans for their design, for their patterns and for their nibs.  The name hints at a relationship with the famous Patrician but the design is quite different.  The clip flows like lava and the cap band continues this flowing theme.  We always talk about Art Deco with regard to 1930s pens but we rarely have as good an example as the Lady Patricia.

This set is in the Persian pattern.  The pen, of course, has discoloured as they almost always do due to the decomposition of the sac.  Without the sac, the pencil shows how the pen would once have looked, though I must say it isn’t as badly discoloured as many I have seen.  Received wisdom would have it that you should put a silicone sac in pens that are likely to discolour, but there is more to consider here.  This pen uses the Waterman lever box and swing pressure bar.  These lever boxes can and do crack in the middle due to the pressure of constant refilling.  The latest silicone sacs and the PVC sacs that we once thought were silicone are both quite inflexible in comparison with a latex sac.  That causes greater pressure to be brought on the lever box, so I have stuck with the latex sac.  My view is if that you wish such a pen to retain its colour you’d be better taking the sac out and just treating it as a collectable object rather than writing instrument.  Me, I would much rather write with a Lady Patricia than keep it in a box.

The reason for that is that these pens have some of the best Waterman nibs there are, and that’s saying something!  Not only are they flexible but they snap shut instantly after being flexed to their fullest extent.  That makes them a total pleasure to write with.  Though the Patricia is a small pen, when it is posted it is a surprisingly adequate length.

These, then, are a precious pair.  It’s just a pity that they don’t have a box but that seems to have disappeared.