On the subject of Indian pens, here’s a list of those I found. There may be others.

Airmail/Wality, Guider*, Deccan, Kim & Co, Ratnamson, Ranga*, Varuna, Camlin*, Serwex*, Fellowship*, FPR*, Gem & Co.*, Asa Pens (Gama)*, Oliver*, Abhay Pens, Camay, Lazor*, Hamraj* and Gala.

Edited to add Fosfor Handcrafted Pens

Not all are available online but those that I have marked with an asterisk are at time of writing. I didn’t search terribly hard so it may be that some of the others are available too.

I would be interested to hear of your experience with Indian pens, good or bad.

 

My first experience of Airmail/Wality was many years ago when I bought one of the huge Wality eyedroppers. I wasn’t impressed. It had a tendency to blob and the nib/feed assembly didn’t deliver ink very well. Being one of those who never learn by their mistakes, I ordered a different Wality, a small piston filler with a decorative cap. It worked perfectly. I have it still and I often use it.

A couple of weeks ago I thought I’d have a poke around the site and see what they have on offer these days. I was quite taken with this 75P and ordered it. It was $16 – whatever that is in British money – and it came quite quickly. As you will see, I think it’s excellent value for the very little money one has to outlay.

It came in a padded bag with some bubblewrap around it – not the best packing I’ve seen but considering it got here undamaged it was okay. The pen itself is attractive and well-made. The chrome plated clip will grasp a pocket well and the cap, which appears to be anodised aluminium, has the word “Airmail” in what I take to be a bright red paint which matches the rich Post Office red of the barrel and section. The clutch cap snaps in place securely. The nib, as with many Indian nibs I have seen, has very shallowly stamped lettering and decoration. It tells me it’s an Airmail Special Tipped. The pen is a cartridge/converter filler and it is supplied with the converter in place. A slight complaint – the nib/feed unit was somehow blocked when it arrived. It wasn’t evident what was causing the problem; I simply pulled the nib and feed out, give them a brisk wash and replaced them and that seems to have been enough to solve the problem. It writes well now and the nib behaves rather better than its appearance would suggest. It’s a nice European-size fine.

This is quite a small pen at 12.5 cm so it’s not for those among us who require a baton to write with. I should say it’s perfectly adequate for most people. It’s about the size of a Swan SM 100/60. I can’t understand how they can keep the cost so low. After all, this isn’t an absolutely basic pen: there are two different metals in the cap, topped by a nice red finial, and there is a chrome plated band on the barrel. All of this has a cost over and above the most simple pen. It’s attractive and well-balanced and with such a nice tight-fitting cap it would make an excellent carry-around everyday user that would not affect the bank balance too adversely if it were to be damaged or lost.

I haven’t had all that many Indian pens so I can’t make a generalisation about them, but if this one is anything to go by they are well worth attention and investment.

I have spent the morning write-testing and adjusting pens, preparing them for sale, and it occurred to me that this is the most writing that I do with fountain pens. I have a scratchpad by my keyboard and I take notes with my trusty Pilot Custom Heritage 91, and that’s it! Greeting cards of one kind or another are rarely fountain pen friendly – the paper tends to bleed.

I used to address envelopes with fountain pens and rub candle wax over the writing to prevent smearing if it got wet but, really, that was too much of a performance and I regretfully returned to using a ballpoint for that purpose.

I don’t write letters any more. I used to have several penpals but with regret I had to end the correspondence as arthritis got worse. Official correspondence of one kind or another gets rattled out on the keyboard. I’m not a journalling type of person.

I suppose I wrote most in school and university. Hand-written essays were the norm then. I wrote quite a bit at work but since then it has gradually tailed away. It’s paradoxical that my day-to-day work is fountain pens and yet I write so little. I wish I had reason to write more because I enjoy my pens so much but the reason to do so just isn’t there.

I said in comments some days ago that I had never seen a lizardskin Unique. Peter Hinchcliffe kindly supplied me with an excellent image of one.

He also gave me a picture of several other beauties. How can these pens be so under-appreciated?

I’ve discussed Uniques before, if you care to search. I have nothing to add, really, except that my earliest speculation as to their history is pretty wide of the mark!

It was commented to me recently that Parker pens after 1950 are mostly boring and reliable. I’m not at all sure that that is true: to my mind there are several Parkers made after 1950 that are outstanding pens and would have been so at any time. The Parker 75 Cisele which went into production in 1964 is a fine example.

Parker was among the first pen manufacturers to realise that, in face of the competition from the ballpoint pen, the way forward was to make the fountain pen an objet d’art. The 75 was designed by Don Doman who had been Parker’s Design Director from 1953 to ’57, when he set up his own design company but was retained as a design consultant by Parker until he retired in 1986. The pen was intended, as well as being a fine writing instrument, to show the arts of the jeweller and metalsmith.

The material for the first 75 was 92.5% sterling silver with gold-plated trim on the ends and the clip. The grid pattern is interrupted only at the bottom of the cap where a smooth band carries the words “Parker” and “sterling silver” together with (in this case) “made in USA”. The ends of cap and barrel are gold-plated with a ring pattern. The earliest versions of the 75 are known as “flat tops” to contrast with the later ones which had a dished top, said to be to allow for corporate logos. All have a slender and elegant version of the Parker arrow.

Removing the slip-on cap reveals the black plastic triangular grip – a Parker innovation subsequently much imitated. Next is a calibrated dial which allows the user to set the nib at their preferred angle. The wraparound gold nib is engraved with the word “Parker” alone. 30 different nib grades were provided for the 75.

This is a glorious pen which would have been the pride of any company at any date. It remained in production for thirty years and was one of Parker’s most profitable products. It was later produced in many different patterns and when part of the production was moved to France, yet more outstanding patterns were issued in both metal and lacquer.

Being available in so many patterns, the 75 is a collector’s dream. It is certainly reliable, most examples writing as well today as when they were made, but I hardly think anyone could describe it as “boring”!  They continue to fetch high prices, both as collectors’ items and as prestigious writers.

I am in the fortunate position of handling a great many pens – hundreds every year in fact. I take pleasure in most of them with the result that I have no real favourites. Swans, Parker, Onotos, Watermans, Mentmores – the list is endless and they are all a pleasure to work with.

Given unlimited choice, which pen would you particularly like to own?

During the nineteen thirties Waterman produced some of their finest pens, excellent writers made from beautiful celluloid. This one is in the pattern “Moss Agate”. A 32, this is a more slender pen than the 52 and 92 that were available at the same time and in the same patterns. The box lever has been redesigned and protrudes less from the barrel than its predecessor. The pens Waterman made at this time are very sturdy; this one has been around for about 85 years and is still looking very good.

With a pen like this in your hand, you might wonder what the subsequent “development” was all about. Is any later pen better than this? Does it look any better and does it do the job any better?

On another topic entirely,  the PCI authority will no longer allow the SSL and TLS 1.0 protocols starting in June. Some of the PCI scanning companies are requiring the change to be made now. This creates a problem since some web shops can’t function if they are not PCI compliant but removing the protocols can cause problems.  That doesn’t affect this blog site but it will affect my sales site. The main difference that this will make is that some older browsers will no longer be able to connect to the site. If you still have Vista, which uses Microsoft Internet Explorer v10 or lower you won’t be able to see these upgraded sites.

When the Parker 17 first appeared in 1962 it had an exposed nib. Shortly thereafter it was redesigned to have a hooded nib in the style of the Parker 51. There were various levels of trim from the standard up to this deluxe.  It is evident that they sold very well as there are many around but, strangely enough, they don’t seem to sell very well nowadays. I see them go through eBay and though they sell they often don’t make much money. That’s a mystery to me as they are attractive pens and all those I have handled were great writers.

This particular example is a bit of an oddity. It has three names engraved around the cap: Allan, Jeff and Jack. There is also the engraved date 3.12.65. The pen has clearly not been used much as the factory chalk marks are still on the barrel. How do we explain this? Did Allan, Jeff and Jack present this pen to someone? Or did someone present this pen to Allan, Jack and Jeff? Did Allan use it on Monday and Tuesday while Jack had it Wednesday and Thursday and Jeff wrote with it Friday and Saturday and no one had it on Sunday? Are you convinced? No. Nor am I.

The lady I bought the pen from said that she had been told it was a demonstrator pen. Clearly, it isn’t in the normal sense, but perhaps it was intended to show the quality of engraving that could be produced.

One thing that puzzles me is the date. The Parker 17 Deluxe is said to be a late introduction in the production run. 1963 seems to me rather early. It may be, of course, that it is simply an example date and not the date the engraving was done.

In the nineteen twenties and thirties Waterman was a market leader with their wonderful ripple hard rubber pens and beautifully patterned celluloid pens. By the forties the company’s tide had begun to ebb and their pens were less attractive with unexciting design and poor gold plating. Their top of the range pens were still good, though. First was the Hundred Year Pen, followed by the Emblem.

This is a pen of an entirely different order from the 512s and the 513s of the same period. Most obviously, the gold plating is much thicker and despite this pen bearing the marks of having been much used there is no brassing. It’s heavier, too, probably partly from the greater amount of gold but also because the Lucite barrel is thick. At 13.7 cm, with a considerable girth, it’s a large pen for the time. When the clutch cap is removed the large Emblem nib is exposed. Though I believe some Emblem nibs are firm, this one is decidedly flexible. It’s a great pen by any standards.

The Emblem is not a common pen in the UK though I believe it sold better in the USA. Its successor, the Medalist, didn’t seem to catch on here at all. The result is that this is almost a forgotten pen here. They don’t run to the prices that they do in the USA, which gives the British collector the chance to obtain a very prestigious pen at a comparatively low cost.

There is an interesting debate going on in Fountain Pen Geeks about the comparative value of written and videoed reviews. Speaking for myself, I avoid videoed reviews because I tend to lose the will to live about halfway through. The very worst ones, I believe, are those where a big ego has a part to play (no names, no pack drill). These usually run to quarter of an hour or more. That’s madness – if you can’t describe a pen and its pros and cons in under five minutes there’s something sadly wrong! Others, perhaps, aren’t quite so bad but they often tend to ramble. It’s as if the discipline that one would apply to a written review disappears when the camera is switched on.

There are exceptions, of course.  SBRE Brown, for instance, has a pattern to his videoed reviews and appears to marshal his thoughts well in advance. So it can be done – though it rarely is. That’s not to say that all written reviews are good. Some of them are rambling nonsense as well but the ratio of signal-to-noise is rather better.

What do you think?