With a single exception I have had poor luck with John Bull pens. This was partly the luck of the draw and partly that their quality was variable. My one really good John Bull was an eyedropper filler which I wrote about here some years ago.
This is a later pen, 1925 – 30 at a guess, and in nice order. There’s a bump on one of the cap bands and if that’s the worst that’s happened to a pen in almost a century that’s pretty good.
I’m assuming that this is celluloid with a chasing pattern in memory of its hard rubber predecessors.
There has been much discussion about the manufacture of John Bull pens, most of it ill-informed. It has been asserted that the pens were assembled at the company address from parts made elsewhere. The manufacture of the pens has been attributed to Conway Stewart, Mabie Todd and De La Rue – all without a shred of evidence. Looking back over the last 15 years or so, I’ve probably added to that myself.
In any case, this appears to be an enviable John Bull with its replacement warranted gold nib which has a European provenance. It would have had a 14ct warranted nib originally.
Many thanks to Alex of antiqueendeavors. Listing is at https://rb.gy/y6c286
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Just to add another name to the mix; I believe that John Bull pens were made by Unique after the war. The nib with its unicorn branding is a Unique.
Hi Peter,
So you take that nib to be original?
Hi Deb,
Yes, I think it probably is. From about 1920 Norman Canter was manager of John Bull’s pen department at 89 Long Acre, WC2. Norman Canter also happened to be the brother-in-law of Robert Richard (the European selling agent for Unique).
Apparently they were both also friends and associates of JW Hamilton-Jones, managing director of Eversharp Ltd. and Unique went on to make the Kingswood pens for Eversharp in the 1950s.
Thanks for that, Peter. Quite a tangled web, the British pens of the twenties!
Sorry I’m late to the party with this.
Firstly, there is a definite connection between Conway Stewart and John Bull in the early 1920s. This came to light in the 1922 fraud trial of Horatio Bottomley, owner of John Bull magazine at the time, in which it was revealed that John Bull Ltd were proposing a £7,000 investment in British United Pen Works Ltd, whose MD was Frank Jarvis (founder and also joint MD of Conway Stewart). This was recounted (though the report is not very well edited) in Fountain Pens for the Million p38.
Secondly, regarding the particular pen pictured here, Conway Stewart revived a number of models in a black chased finish in the second half of the 1930s. The few I have seen were black vulcanite, though there may also have been celluloid models. There is a 1937 advertisement reproduced on p119 of Fountain Pens for the Million which shows several of these, including a CS475 which is near identical to the pictured pen apart from the two narrow cap bands. Unfortunately, the pictures here don’t show the details of the lever or the clip which would be an aid to further identification.
Thank you, Andy. Helpful and illuminating as always. It’s so good to have actual evidence!