I’m just going to ramble here so if you have something better to do just ignore this.

I often wonder what happened to all the old pens. I know that there are many around but it’s just a fraction of what once existed. The very oldest ones, from 1880 to 1915, were replaced by more convenient pens with a lever on the side. No doubt those who had a high quality eyedropper, the Parkers and Sheaffers, Swans and Conway Stewarts, carefully placed them in a drawer rather than just throwing them away. A proportion of those pens survived the intervening century and those are the ones that have come down to us today.

In those years when the fountain pen dominated permanent writing, pens may have been replaced when the latest shiny object came along, but in reality there were few improvements in fountain pens. Feeds improved a little, but they were already pretty good by 1920. During that period we can see that interesting phenomenon: the utterly worn out fountain pen. I had a Waterman that I wrote about some time ago which was so worn that the chased pattern had completely disappeared where the owner’s fingers gripped. The tipping material was on its last thousandth of an inch and it was completely flat-spotted into the writer’s angle of writing. Clearly, the owner had seen no advantage in changing this useful tool for a new one despite all the pretty celluloid and new, exciting shapes. That pen was an unusual survivor. There must have been many pens that were used to death and they would have been thrown away.

It’s true, of course, that the various innovations that came along – the Vax, the Touchdowns, the Leverlesses and so on didn’t write any better. They were all about how to get ink into the pen, an act that takes seconds while even a fill for a lever filler will last for days for most people. The importance of these innovations was overestimated as is shown by the survival of the lever filler right to the end of the mass production of fountain pens.

The huge abandonment of fountain pens was in the nineteen fifties when the ballpoint became king. It was so convenient that it replaced not only the fountain pen but also, to a great extent, the pencil, whether mechanical or wooden.

Fountain pens were set aside and many of the of lesser brands appear to have been just junked. There was quite a long period, perhaps up to the advent of eBay, were the value of fountain pens was not recognised and when houses were cleared they were thrown away.

There was – and is – the pernicious practice of pulling out nibs for their scrap value. Usually the rest of the pen is thrown away but there have been sellers in eBay who consistently offered pens for sale with no nibs. Hanging is too good for them.

The old pens that have escaped all that and have come down to us in repairable condition are precious objects even if they are only Platignums or Novas. I had a battered black New Bond Easiflow, Woolworths best, but made by Langs and a sound pen. Cleaned up and polished, with a new sac and a tuned nib it was an excellent writer and a pen that would give good service for another generation. There are not many other seventy-year-old objects that retain such value with so little effort.

I’m using my Pilot Capless or Vanishing Point once again.  I’ve had it for a couple of years and loved it when I first tried it.  Then I set it aside for quite a while so that I could try other pens.  Its time has come again!  The idea of a capless pen has been around for a long time.  Caps get lost or broken and it’s a nuisance pulling them off or unscrewing them every time you want to jot down a note.  A pen that you could operate with one hand was something to aim for.  Among others, the British company W.J. May & Co. Ltd. produced the Pento Capless in the 1920s.  It seems that they may have had some success in doing so but the development had been so expensive that the company failed.

Pilot succeeded where others had failed and have been producing their Vanishing Points for many years.  Considering how convenient the Capless is, it’s surprising how little it has disturbed the fountain pen market.  Though Capless pens sell well and are highly regarded, fountain pen buyers still go for pens with caps, whether push-on or screw-on to the same extent as they did before.

There may be a number of explanations for that.  The negative one is that the design of the Vanishing Point may not be to everyone’s taste.  Some have adversely commented on the placing of the clip, which they find uncomfortable.  Also because of the mechanism inside, it’s quite a thick pen.

On the more positive side, buyers continue to appreciate the benefits of the traditionally-shaped pen.  After all, the cap is where much of the decoration of a pen is located – the decorative clip, the cap rings and often nowadays, engraving on the cap ring.  Use of the clutch mechanism obviated the need for unscrewing the cap – just a quick pull and you were ready to write!

Another point is that the fountain pen doesn’t really need to be a convenient writing instrument.  For most people, there are other writing instruments for that.  Those rather odd people, like me, who insist on using a fountain pen, are prepared to put up with a little inconvenience in pursuit of their hobby.

When all that’s said and done, I love my Capless!  It has the finest point of any pen that I use which means there’s a lot of writing between changing cartridges.  The position of the clip ensures that I am holding the pen the right way.  The clip fits neatly between my thumb and forefinger.  I like a fat pen but most of them are also quite long.  I feel that the length of the Capless is just right for me.  My one is burgundy with silver-coloured trim and I like its style.  I believe that if the obnoxious ballpoint had not come along, this would have been the future of the pen.

A final reason for my love of the Capless:  my husband, who is on haemodialysis, writes a blog during his haemo sessions.  His left hand is immobilised by the needles and lines that connect him to the haemo machine so he’s effectively one-handed.  No other pen is as convenient as the Capless in that situation.

This pencil commemorates the Empress of Britain and may well have been made to cash in on its launch in 1930. The ship was built in John Brown’s Shipyard on Clydeside and was made for the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company. At the time it was the largest, fastest and most luxurious ship carrying passengers between Britain and Canada.

The representation of the ship in the pencil is not notable for its accuracy. It’s pretty good all the same on its tiny scale. One of the buildings shown is probably the Canadian Parliament Building. I don’t know what the other one is. The pencil itself is in remarkably good condition. It contains lead and is in full working order.

I’m not sure why the ship is called the SS Empress of Britain on the pencil. So far as I can tell the ship was actually the RMS Empress of Britain. I don’t suppose it matters much except to those who have a particular interest in these things. The way that the clip is attached to the cap reminds me of the construction of some of Conway Stewart’s pens and pencils, but I remind myself that resemblance is not always a good guide to the manufacturer.

Sadly, the Empress of Britain came to a bad end. She was used as a troopship during World War II and was torpedoed off the West Coast of Ireland in 1940. Luckily there was no great loss of life. In fact it was believed at the time that everyone was saved. Apparently, the ship was carrying gold bullion – I don’t know why.

In the 1980s someone planned to carry out a salvage expedition, doubtless in the hope of finding the gold. However, the Department of Transport informed them that the gold had been removed, probably while the ship was being evacuated. Some years later, divers explored the wreck and found that the ship had almost entirely burned-out, leaving only a shell upside down on the seabed. The only part that had survived was the bullion room, probably because it had been reinforced for security. When the divers entered it they found no gold but there was a skeleton, probably one of the men who had been salvaging the gold.

This pencil was never intended to be a reminder of that sad story but that’s what it inevitably is.

A Fractured Rhyme*:

I’ve spent some time on this here rhyme
About these pens, so very fine;
They’re on my site
For your delight,
Please make them yours, no longer mine.

Don’t be pensive; they’re not expensive!

*This is one of the worst poems I’ve ever produced, and I am very proud of it!

 

What do you think this is?  Clue: It’s not about pens though it came to me in a batch of pens.  The lucky winner will get a Pilot Parallel Calligraphy Pen.

 

 

***Edited to add*** We have a winner!  This is a universal watch winder, circa 1840.  I have enjoyed all of your guesses!

I wrote about the rather rare The Jock Pen back on 26th June. I said I would add pictures when I had them and here they are. Not unlike a Blackbird of the same period but that’s a beautifully sculpted section!

 

I used my cheap Chinese piston filler for a month. Considering how much I write, that was a good test and it passed with flying colours. Chinese pens have come of age – or at least some of them have.

It was time for a change and I cast around for something totally different and found it in the form of this Platignum Varsity. It came in a batch of pens I bought some time ago and being virtually unsaleable it had been lying around my workshop ever since. All I had to do to it was flush the old ink out of it and fill it with new.

The Varsity is a range of pens rather than an individual model. I’ve had one or two of them before and I think this is a later one. There’s a hint of the Parker 61 in the barrel end jewel, steel cap and general shape. The clip with a central cut-out is vaguely Sheafferish. It’s a squeeze-filler called a Pressmatic. So far as I can see, it still has its original sac, so it must be something similar to Parker’s Pli-Glass. The nib is steel and two-tone, part being gold-plated. It has a good lump of tipping material. It’s marked “M” for medium but is actually closer to a fine which suits me well. I do feel a little deprived in one way; the piston filler held a bucketful of ink whereas this fairly short approximately No 16 sac needs frequent filling. Otherwise this is a great pen. I do love it when the cheap and disregarded pens work well.

Platignum’s poor reputation is generally deserved but there are exceptions. During the 60s and 70s (near as I can tell) they made quite unassuming pens that you might never notice but which bore gold nibs and were good writers without the usual Platignum leaking problems. They were sac fillers too. Briefly, Platignum was licensed to make a clone of Waterman’s X-pen and that’s a much underrated pen too.

Historically, as Mentmore’s largest sub-brand, Platignum was established to provide inexpensive pens for those who couldn’t afford the gold-nib pens offered by the more famous brands. The story is told that originally the intention was to name the brand “Platinum” but whichever government agency controlled these things, said that the pens could not be assigned the name of an element, hence the inclusion of what was intended to be a silent “G”. Everybody says it with the “G” now. Evidently the Japanese authorities saw nothing wrong in branding pens with the name of an element.

Many of Platignum’s cheap 1920s and 30s pens have not survived at all and some turn up in a condition beyond economic repair. When you get a good one, particularly those in mottled hard rubber, they are attractive pens and were obviously very good value for money when new. The weak point is the steel nib these pens were issued with. They were subject to corrosion and even those that survived the rather harsh inks of the day wore out quite quickly as they had no tipping material, just a folded tip. They quite often turn up with replacement Osmiroid 35 nibs, a good combination.

Post-war, Platignum produced a variety of pens in various qualities. The very cheap cartridge-fill school pens were very bad, notoriously leaky and a danger to clothes and schoolbags. However, like Osmiroid and Burnham, they produced rather better pens that accepted a range of screw-in calligraphic nibs. These nibs are still available in eBay and though they have a different thread from Osmiroid and Esterbrook they still offer a viable alternative for the calligrapher.

I’m not really suggesting that Platignum is due a reassessment or should become the latest collector’s choice (though their attractive 30s and 40s pen and pencil sets in pretty boxes are collected) but with careful selection one can find good daily users among their output.

Like the other low-cost pens, they form a larger part of pen history than we realise, because though a great many were sold they were not highly valued and most were discarded, unlike the Conway Stewarts, Swans and Onotos.

If you go to my search box, up there on the right hand side, and enter ‘Rosemary’ or ‘National Security’ as a search term, you’ll find some exceptionally beautiful pens, jade and lapis lazuli among them.  Those pens pose some interesting questions.

In a sense we know quite a lot about them.  They were manufactured on behalf of British Carbon Papers by Henry Stark, Son, and Hamilton and possibly Conway Stewart.  We know that ‘Rosemary, that’s for remembrance’ which appears on the pens and the boxes is a Shakespearean quote from Ophelia’s speech in Hamlet.  ‘National Security’ appears to be self-explanatory.  And yet knowing, those things, there seems to be a deeper mystery.  No one seems to know very much about British Carbon Papers, which must have been a company of significant size in the 1920s and 1930s, by time it could have these high quality pens made.  It would be wonderful to know who in the company was tasked with the creation of these pens.

It would also be enlightening to know who decided on the names of the pens and what the thinking was behind them.  After all, ‘Rosemary, that’s for remembrance’ and ‘National Security’ are quite unusual names for pens.  It is said, with what authority I know not, that Rosemary is in remembrance of the fallen in World War I.  I certainly wouldn’t dispute that.  It seems highly likely.  Why did the person responsible hold remembrance in such importance that he/she named a range of pens after it?  Were family members of the directorship of British Carbon Papers casualties of World War I?

And then ‘National Security’.  Isn’t that a rather odd thing to call a pen?  Wracking such brains as I have, I can’t think of another British pen that’s called after a concept, especially a concept that has nothing to do with writing.  Again, no one could sensibly suggest that national security isn’t important and, in a sense, it does tie up with the theme of remembrance in that the war was an extension of national security.  Those thousands of soldiers gave their lives to keep Britain secure.

We’ll never know with certainty but there seems to be a story there.  Someone in British Carbon Papers was still grieving a family loss when they sent out the order for the company’s pens, and they also wanted to emphasise the need for military readiness.  Of course, we know now how right they were, and that another conflict of immense proportions was only a few years away.

Years ago, I used to make a regular round of the local junk shops, charity shops and car boot sales, picking up quite a few pens as I went. Over time it became less and less rewarding. Perhaps most of the pens were going to eBay or maybe there weren’t many pens left around here. I gave it up in the end. It was no longer a productive way to use my time. If I happened to be passing a junk shop I’d stroll in and look around but without much hope. The pickings were very slim.

There was a car boot sale/street fair kind of thing near here last week and I broke the habit of years by going to it. These things depress me. There is the detritus of people’s lives all around, orphaned ornaments and rejected table lamps. There were some fountain pens, to my surprise, but most were not good ones and they were all incredibly overpriced. Perhaps the best thing there was a Parker Slimfold for which the seller wanted a mere £80. The rest were the dregs of pendom, Platignums, Queensways, the later and less useful Osmiroids. Nothing under £50!

I assume that these sellers have taken a cursory glance at retail sites and Buy-It-Now listings on eBay and decided that the top prices they found there applied to their junk. They are probably unaware that a large proportion of the overpriced rubbish on those sites doesn’t sell either.

I may be wrong – and I hope I am – but it’s my belief that the good stuff, the Onotos, Swans and Conway Stewarts are gone from here now. Whatever quality pens remain are in the hands of people who have become more savvy in the ways of today’s world and, quite correctly, choose not to consign good pens to car boot sales, but sell them in a more profitable way.

I’m not looking to rip people off or make sumgai bargains. I’m just looking for a good, interesting stock. I have my sources and I keep going but it’s not as easy as it once was to turn up the rare and quirky pens that I can write about.

For many years – ten, at least – I have been contributing to pen discussion boards.  Often, the subject required a photo of the pen under discussion and I hotlinked the picture from my Photobucket account.  It was a matter of pride to me that while some other people’s photos might disappear and leave a blank space, mine were still there years later.  I have a paid account and I was confident that it would remain secure for years to come.

Without any warning (though Photobucket say they emailed members) all the photos belonging to those who have free accounts were deleted and replaced by an image indicating that the photos would be restored if a premium account was taken out.  The premium account costs $400.00  a year.  Oh, excuse me.  $399.99.

I would imagine that a very high proportion of those who had free accounts will not be able or willing to pay such a huge sum.  That means, of course, that those links will remain broken.  The precious archives of all the fountain pen discussion boards will be so damaged as to be useless.  Of course all the other hobby groups and blogs like LiveJournal and Dreamwidth will be affected, too.

Even those of us who have paid Photobucket accounts will eventually lose all our links, too, unless we pay the blackmail.  I, for one, couldn’t justify paying more than £300.00 per annum.  We have about 18 months grace, after which all the links will go.  I won’t use my account anymore.  There’s no point in making photo links which will die in December next year.

Of course there are many other photo embedding services.  I have signed up with Fotki.com who seem to be one of the best.  I could download all my photos from Photobucket but that’s not the point.  I archive all my pictures anyway.  It’s not those photos that are important, it’s the links.  There’s no way to re-establish them.

We know that nothing lasts forever.  One day even massive companies like Google and Amazon will have had their day.  If you don’t believe that, think back to how dominant Yahoo once was, and that recently it was sold off like a second-hand car.  But Photobucket’s change of terms of service was done with no warning and no explanation.  It wasn’t necessary and it was immensely destructive.  Instead of ending up with, perhaps, thousands of customers paying $400.00 they could have had millions paying a more sensible fee.  The CEO of Photobucket has made himself the Gengis Khan of the web.

Now that this has happened, who else can we trust?  Might not other photo hosting companies and cloud storage providers decide that blackmail is a good business model?  The only way to avoid that is if Photobucket crashes and burns.  I certainly hope they do.

Thankfully, the photos in this blog are safe.  WordPress provides its own photo hosting so I didn’t use Photobucket here.  Unless, of course, WordPress have a sudden bright idea…