This book has received a bad press within the hobby. I can’t argue with its detractors; there are egregious errors of pen identification and the information given about some pens is wrong. Also, the text from one page to another doesn’t follow on in a couple of instances, which I assume is a layout issue.
Nonetheless, I like this book. It takes a more discursive form than other fountain pen books. It stands back from the minutiae of the subject and comes to conclusions of its own. It’s profusely and beautifully illustrated, with many examples of pens in art that you won’t see elsewhere. Lots of advertising posters are illustrated too, though sadly few of them are dated. Still, it’s good to see them and quite a few are unique to this book.
There are, I think, around a hundred pages of individual pens from the beginning to the present day. The selection is eccentric and the information unreliable in this section, making it useless as a reference. The illustrations here, as elsewhere, are excellent.
I don’t regard this book as an essential for the pen enthusiast, but it is entertaining and may give the reader pause for thought. Priced at £29.40 new, it isn’t worth the money, but it often appears second-hand for very much less. If you get it cheap enough, I think you may well enjoy it, despite all its faults.
Paradoxically, though fountain pens feature large in my life nowadays, I rarely have an occasion to write with them. I restore fountain pens, sell them, write about them, talk about them, advise on them, but I hardly ever apply one to paper except for testing.
In reality, of course, few of us hand-write much at all these days. When I entered the world of work, there were armies of clerks charting production, commerce and finance by filling ledgers with advancing columns of figures. Since the late seventies, the hosts of pen-pushers have been replaced by a radically smaller number of keyboard jockeys. Even in those days, though, it wasn’t fountain pens the clerks used (I’m not quite that old); it was the ubiquitous Bic ballpoint. The hand-written business letter disappeared long ago, and social correspondence is conducted by email. This is not a complaint, by the way, or a yearning for the good old days that never were. It’s a huge and unalloyed benefit that people’s lives are no longer deadened by the crushing boredom of being a progress clerk or a commercial assistant, condemned to spending days shuffling figures from one ledger to another. That’s what computers are for; tedium doesn’t poison their lives. Email’s a lot quicker and more reliable than airmail, too.
I was rather lucky. In quite recent years, I had use for fountain pens at work. In one job, the use of a fountain pen with indelible ink was actually statutory, so that a permanent and unalterable holograph record was created. That function disappeared around 2003 when the powers-that-be concluded that the Portable Document Format file was equally secure and moved the work onto computer. Our £20.00 pens were replaced with £500.00 PCs in the interest of cost saving. You and I might be aware of how trivially simple it is to hack even a signed .pdf file, but my superiors and betters closed their minds to this possibility and progress marched inexorably on.
In a later job, I had colleagues and superiors who were tempted to edit my decisions and reports in pursuit of their own agenda, so I left my laptop closed and reverted to my fountain pen. It may not be impossible, but it’s well-nigh insuperably difficult to alter a handwritten script produced with a very flexible stub Onoto that leaves a line almost as individual and characteristic as a fingerprint.
Now that I restore pens for a living, I have neither time nor opportunity to write much. On the pad by my keyboard rests a Pentel Liquid Gel pen to scribble the odd note I might have to take. My correspondence is done in OpenOffice Writer and my accounts in Excel. All these wonderful old pens pass through my hands and once I’ve established that they write as they should, they’re flushed out and laid aside.
When was the first English Swan lever filler made? Authorities vary in their opinion; some give 1916, others say the first self-filler did not appear here until 1921. On grounds of style, I would favour the earlier date but I have no way of being certain. Technically, the SF1 and SF2 pens are very modern, and already bear many of the attributes that remained recognisably Swan throughout the brand’s existence: the long-tined nib with the heart-shaped breather hole, the ladder feed, the long, slender lever with a rounded end, the high quality of manufacture and the attention to detail. They differ from later models in style, in the number of turns needed to secure the cap (a full two and a half!) and in being clipless, though some later SF1s and SF2s had fixed clips.
To my mind, the SF1 is a little too slender for comfortable use in a modern hand, and it’s also a little fragile to repair. The SF2, though, is a large, robust pen at 14.4cm capped and a long 18.5cm posted. It’s as practical a daily writer as any more modern pen. Aimed to suit all pockets, the SF2 came in various guises, from the unadorned black chased or mottled hard rubber to those with gold-plated barrel bands, cap bands and even solid gold overlay. This one has a plated cap band and a plated cover over the end of the cap, a configuration I haven’t seen before. The plating is good quality and shows very little wear. Despite the metal on the cap and its great length, the pen is not overbalanced and it sits very well in the hand.
Though clearly well-used, the pen is in excellent condition. There’s very slight fading of the black chased hard rubber and there’s a little wear of the scalloped chasing on the barrel, though the pattern remains clear. The cap and barrel imprints are sharp.
The imprint at the end of the barrel reads “2S-F MED, denoting a No2 medium nib in a self-filler pen. By modern standards, the nib is at the fine end of medium. A delightful writer, it has a little understated flexibility, just enough to show some line variation.
Like its immediate predecessor, the Safety Screw Cap Swan, the SF2 has proved a durable pen and survives in great numbers. As a superb writer with the full range of nib styles, it is much in demand, and the variations in trim make it very collectible.
This is my assistant, Smartpants. Miss Pants mostly looks after the paperwork. She’ll chase a crumpled up tax form for about quarter of an hour. Additionally, she helps by poking pen parts behind things so that I can’t find them.
Good help is hard to find these days so I’ll just have to persevere with Smartpants.
People quite often say to me that they would never attempt pen repair because they fear they would break a valuable pen. Fair enough. Pen repair’s not for everyone, but in truth, fountain pens – all fountain pens – are low-tech and routine repair of the simpler types should be within the reach of us all. That said, it’s important to know before you begin what difficulties you might face, what tools and spares you will need and what method of working is most likely to ensure success.
That’s where this book comes in. Marshall and Oldfield’s Pen Repair will give you all that and a lot more. In the opening general section, all the parts of a pen are discussed, potential problems are listed and repairs are explained. The second part covers the various pen brands and models, giving methods of repair for each type. The final section deals with the more advanced repairs like replacing cap bands and cutting threads. Everything is carefully explained and well illustrated with photographs and drawings. The tools you will need are listed and discussed and there’s quite a bit of pen history here as well.
Numerous pen repairers’ and manufacturers’ service manuals are listed in the bibliography, so this book is the distillation of the work of many skilled professionals. It builds on the work of Arthur Twydle and Frank Dubiel, and surpasses the latter’s work with all the additional knowledge and techniques that have accrued since that was published.
The book is spiral-backed, which makes it easy to keep it open at the page you want on your workbench. It’s now in a second edition with additional information and costs £30.00 plus postage. If you repair two lever-fillers that you would otherwise have sent away, the book will have more than paid for itself. Even if you never repair a pen, the additional understanding of fountain pens that you will gain from this book will greatly increase your enjoyment of them. It’s a must for the bookshelf, and probably the most important fountain pen book to have been published in twenty years.
It’s out of stock at Amazon for the moment, but various fountain pen retail sites have copies. A Google search will quickly find you one.
For more than forty years, tiny pens were extremely popular in Britain. Though several companies produced their own versions, by far the best known is the Conway Stewart Dinkie. It was introduced in 1922 or 1923, depending on who you read, and the first examples were advertised as men’s waistcoat pocket pens, but they soon became the favourite ladies’ pen, whether in purse form with no clip, the chatelaine type with a ring or as a standard pen with a pocket clip. Many of the earliest ones were in hard rubber but they soon became a showcase for the new material, casein, and appeared in an almost limitless range of wonderful colours and patterns. Later, in the post-war period, the 550 range Dinkies became miniature versions of the company’s standard pens, with the same shapes and patterns.
Though they were advertised as “the smallest practical fountain pen ever made”, I, for one, don’t find them practical. Though I have small hands, Dinkies are too small for me to write with for an extended period. What they are, though, is the collector’s pen par excellence. Such is the range of models and the variety of colours and patterns within each model that one could build a very large collection of Dinkies alone. Many of the pre-war models are rare or uncommon and fetch high prices.
The post-war 550 is very common and doesn’t fetch especially high prices. They’re beautifully made, jewel-like objects, and the sets are well-presented in attractive boxes. Popular as birthday and Christmas gifts, the sets often remained unused and frequently appear in first-class condition today.
This example is in what Jonathan Donahaye described as a “wallpaper pattern”.
The pen and pencil are in the “marbled green/black veins” pattern which was issued quite late in the 550 series. The gold plating is immaculate and I suspect that the pen and pencil have hardly ever been out of the box. The tiny nib is an example of the jeweller’s craft and the pen writes with some flexibility.
Though I mostly write about British pens, imports can be interesting too. German pens, for instance, fluctuated greatly in popularity. Their quality was admired but there were periods when it would have been seen as unpatriotic to use a German pen. I’ve had an inexpensive glass-nibbed piston filler German pen that had the maker’s name roughly scratched out, doubtless for this reason.
Throughout most of the period when pens were the main writing tool, there was no market here for French or Italian pens. They turn up, but are not at all common. In the fifties and sixties, as demand for fountain pens plummeted, cheap, poor quality fountain pens from Italy flooded the market.
American pens were popular. Parker, Waterman and to a slightly lesser extent, Sheaffer all had a big presence. Pens like the Duofold and the Waterman 52 sold in huge numbers. Wahl Eversharps sold quite well too, and Conklins were much appreciated in the crescent-filler days. Thereafter, Conklins were pretty thin on the ground in Britain. Perhaps there was no importing agency later, or maybe the pens were no longer sufficiently different from the home-grown brands, but it’s always interesting when one does turn up.
This is an Endura Symetrik, made from 1931 until the company was taken over in 1938, and it’s therefore among the last of the high-quality Conklins. Both well designed and well made, the Symetrik is unexceptional at first glance but has subtle features that are unique. The patented clip is spring-loaded and the short lever is attractive. The Endura nib differs from the Toledo in my old crescent-filler in that it is no super-flex, but it’s not a nail either. There’s a little line variation there, just enough to make it pleasurable to use.
This example is basically sound but it has had a hard life. Though the cap rings and the lever are holding up well, the plating on the clip is showing signs of wear. When I got it, the pen was incredibly dirty, as if it had been dipped in something sticky and left to gather dust. It looked like it had been dropped nib-first on a concrete floor, and straightening the nib was a challenge. There are nibbles, particularly on the end of the barrel, but actually all over. I think it had ended its early life as a kid’s pen, poor thing!
Initially, this book surprised me. Not to put too fine a point on it, it’s a very generalist, introductory publication, and the hobby is already well-served by books of this standard. I wondered why Mr. Twydle, a second-generation pen repairer with many years of experience, would choose to write such a book. The answer lies in the publisher: Crowood Collectors’ Series.
The Crowood Press publishes books on collectables, everything from British Army Cap Badges to Vintage Radios, some comprehensive, others introductory. No doubt they have a template for introductory works, and it is this format that Mr. Twydle has had to conform to. Given his background I feel sure that Peter Twydle has a great fountain pen book in him; sadly, this is not it.
The book has chapters on understanding the fountain pen, its history, brief notes on some of the manufacturers, guidance for collectors, pen care, and how to choose a pen to suit your hand and writing style. There is an appendix on Arthur Twydle, Peter Twydle’s father. He was a pioneering pen repairer who taught many of the current generation of British pen repairers and restorers.
With a list price of £19.95, it’s an inexpensive introduction to the hobby for an absolute beginner. It can be found deeply discounted at Amazon Marketplace and Abebooks. If you are completely new to the hobby and would like to see a general overview before you commit, this might provide an inexpensive entry for you. Otherwise, put the money towards something more specific and informative.
Those of you who have a WordPress blog will be aware that digging through the statistical information in the Dashboard page can throw up all sorts of interesting information. I was poking around there earlier tonight and I came upon a referrer. I traced it back and with a little sleuthing found that an entry of mine had been quoted in an eBay auction, essentially to authenticate that what the seller said about his/her pen was true.
I put information up here for public use. However, I do wish to strike a note of caution. When I began this blog, I said that I was no expert on the history of pens. I might get it wrong. I try not to, but better people than me make mistakes, even in the standard works on fountain pens.
So what I’m saying is this: if you sell someone a pen that you have “authenticated” by reference to this blog, and the buyer gets a little fractious about it because it’s something other than what you said it was, you’re on your own. I don’t give permission for my blog entries to be directly quoted or referred to to support sales.
For non-commercial purposes, I’ll be perfectly happy for anyone to refer to the blog or quote from it, provided it’s credited. After all, the information I put up here is for sharing within the hobby. I just feel that, given what has happened, I need to cover my back a little. I like my house and I really want to keep it…
There remains some debate over why Parker chose the name Victory for this series of pens. It is reasonable to assume that this was chosen as an aspirational name, looking forward to an allied victory in World War II. Against that, some have asserted that the first Victories were made as early as 1935, but this seems unlikely. Records appear to indicate that the first series began in 1941, and given what is known of Parker’s developing commercial relationship with Valentine at Newhaven, this seems to be the more convincing explanation.
From my own experience of selling Victories, interest is stronger in America than in Britain. Here, I believe, they are seen as cut-down, poor man’s Duofolds. That’s far from true, as they are clearly a separate design branch in their own right. They began looking somewhat Duofold-like, and the last, Aerometric version does resemble some of the lesser Duofold models, but in between the Victory develops into a unique and beautiful pen, practically and aesthetically as good as any pen produced by Parker at Newhaven.
The various versions take a little sorting out, and I’ve tried to make them easy to identify below. Unfortunately I don’t have photos of all the models.
Mark IMark I
1941 – 46
Not very common now, the Mark I is perhaps the most sought-after of the Victories, appearing in beautiful hatched and marbled patterns with a BHR clip screw and blind cap. The clip is of the Duofold ball-ended type and the cap has either one narrow cap band or none. These early Victories appeal especially to American collectors as they appear in colours that are not available in US-made Parkers.
1946 – 47
The Mark II is quite similar, but now the clip screw and blind cap are made from the same material as the rest of the pen, and it is more streamlined. These pens are self-coloured in burgundy, blue, grey, green and black. There are two slim cap bands on this model. The production run was short with the result that these pens are not especially common.
1947 – 48
The Mark III had a longer blind cap and a much shorter clip screw. It was offered in the same colours as the Mark II. It has two bands and a ball-ended clip. Again, because they were produced for a short period there aren’t many of these pens around.
Mark IVMark IVMark IV
1948 – 52
The Mark IV is often referred to as the “Victory AF” as it shared the aluminium filler with the Duofold. The clip had been redesigned to be more tapered, quite like the clip on the Challenger. This is a very aesthetically pleasing design, to my mind the most attractive of the self-coloured Victories. They’re probably the most common of the pre-aerometric Victories.
Mark VMark V
1953 – 1965
The Mark V is the final version of the Victory. Like the rest of the Newhaven Parkers, it’s now an Aerometric filler, and it’s insufficiently distinguished from the smaller pens in the Duofold range to attract much attention from collectors. It has a single chevroned cap band and appears in black, green, blue and burgundy.
Without exception, these are high-quality pens. They make excellent user pens and they are an interesting byway in Parker production. At the moment, they tend to sell for rather less than their true value. Snap them up while you can!
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