A Waterman prototype surprise

Many years ago I acquired a group of prototype Waterman Hundred Year pens, all of first year design but most in colors that never made it into production. Recently I finally got around to cleaning them up for proper photographic documentation, and inside the pen shown above there was an interesting surprise.

There was actually a bit of a clue beforehand -- "LEW" and "X" and "I" scratched into the bottom of the feed. Plus of course the pen's completely nonstandard color, an opaque metallic blue.

Nonetheless, there was no anticipating this. Incidentally, several of the pens in this prototype group came with #7 keyhole-vent nibs. As pre-production examples, they might well have been put together before nibs with the Hundred Year imprint had become available.

And here is a more complete view of the feed. At some point I'll have to look to see if a patent application was filed. 

While some of the pens in this group are pristine, such as the light green metallic example shown above, most had been carried and used, including the blue pen. It was undoubtedly a working prototype and not just a material trial.

Waterman desk set discovery

Inkwells are not a collecting focus for me, particularly those from the 20th century. When this one popped up on eBay, however, I made sure to put in a bid -- and to save photos from the listing, just in case. As things turned out it now resides at my shop. But why my interest in this one?

In large part because it retains its original label, identifying it as the product of the Jennings Brothers Manufacturing Company ("Artware of Distinction") of Bridgeport, Connecticut. 

In larger part, however, because of its clear affiliation with the desk base shown below -- a piece that I don't recall seeing in a catalog or ad, though they are not so rare that I haven't seen a few over the years.

It is widely known that fountain pen makers outsourced all sorts of components, with desk set bases being one of the most obvious examples. Yet we don't always know who actually made what, so this is a particularly fortuitous discovery. Note that the construction is of base metal with a thick gilt bronze surface layer -- well preserved in the inkwell, but with much peeling and losses on the desk base version. The base came with a matching rocker blotter and a set of corner squares to be attached to a desk pad. There surely were other accessories available, though it has been so long since I've seen other ensembles, I no longer recall what other pieces they comprised.

Jennings Brothers also produced a wide range of figurines, often found as bookends. It will be instructive to see how many also appear on catalogued Waterman bases without attribution.

Waterman pens with emblems

  

Back in the later 1990s I bought a collection of Waterman pens with emblems that had been assembled by Jim Krause, an eminent watch, clock, and pen dealer. Most have long since been sold and though I photographed all of them, most of the images were not kept in high resolution form. They are nonetheless a valuable visual record and I am sharing them here, along with some better photos of other Waterman emblems that have passed through my hands more recently.

 

 

 

 

 

Waterman 1919 catalog, p. 49.

1925 Waterman catalog: Reference Library: Waterman – Pen Collectors of America

Urushi rash and how to prevent it

Traditional Asian lacquer finishes have soared in popularity among pen enthusiasts in recent years, with a commensurate increase in the number of companies and artisans offering urushi work on their products. Unfortunately these products are not always allowed to cure fully before being sold -- a process that can take a year under proper conditions after the last coat is applied. This doesn't always affect the surface stability, but it can lead to unpleasant rashes. While a lucky few are immune, most people react to uncured urushi in much the same way that they do to poison ivy and poison oak.

I grew up in an area where poison oak was endemic; exposure was pretty much inevitable for anyone spending much time exploring the woods. I got more than my share of awful rashes as a boy, so when I ran across this video several years ago I resolved to share it as widely as I could.

Whether the exposure comes from insufficiently cured lacquer or from the great outdoors, the principles of managing urushiol exposure are the same. Putting on creams and taking antihistamines are of limited use unless you have completely scrubbed off that tenacious invisible film. And just to be clear, you most certainly should seek out professional medical advice in case of any serious allergic reaction. Prevention beats cure, but prevention is never going to be 100%.

Happy 120th anniversary to the inner cap!

The humble but indispensable inner cap was patented 120 years ago today. One of August Eberstein's  greatest contributions to fountain pen design, US patent 764227.

Gooptu's pens: two that got away

 

The following was written back in 2005 as a short piece for the now long-defunct magazine Stylus. From what I recall it didn't end up getting published, and I never got around to sharing it properly afterwards.

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The two pens shown above were acquired together some years ago.  One is a U.S.-made Waterman 55 from the 1920s; the other is an Indian-made eyedropper-filler with a transparent barrel, probably from the 1940s.  The latter is identified on its clip as a Gooptu’s “Perfection”, and it would appear that the Waterman belonged to its maker – for its barrel bears the personalization “RAI. SAHEB. F. N. GOOPTU/1925” [Fanindra Nath Gooptu, the company founder].

A small story, to be sure, but one that leads to another.  For while an online search for “Gooptu” and “pen” yields nothing about the penmaker [NOTE: this was back in 2005], it leads to an anecdote about Gandhi and another Gooptu pen, as recounted in 1948 by writer, teacher, and politician P. G. Mavalankar (d. 2002):

“It was May 1944. Bapu [Gandhi] was at Juhu.  I went to him with my father. After the talks (between him and my father) were over, I placed in Bapu's hands my autograph- book for his autograph. He took the book with the five- rupee note, and asked for a fountain pen, which was then offered to him by my father. But he returned it, stating that it was of foreign make. He even rejected my pen, which was known as 'Gooptu's Perfection' and was made at Calcutta, under the impression that it was of foreign make. He signed his autograph with a pen lying near him. While signing his autograph, he gave us, in a romantic manner, the history of his own pen. He said: "Once I had been to Banaras.  Mahadev was with me.  I lost my pen there.  Mahadev was naturally upset. So our host, the late Shivaprasad Gupta, presented a pen to me.  He gave one to Mahadev also.  I am still using that pen.  It is entirely Indian-made – manufactured in Banaras – and it works well." After saying this, he said with a smile: "I was told the story (of the manufacture of the pen) by Shivaprasad.  I do not know anything about it. But what he stated must have been true."

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Several years later I ended up selling both of the two pens to an Indian collector, with whom I have unfortunately lost touch. Now, of course, there is much information to be found online about Indian pens and their makers, with Gooptu the subject of a biographical entry in Wikipedia and his pens eagerly sought after though very difficult to find. 

Dating those reverse-threaded Conklin crescent-filler sections

As if I weren't busy enough already, I've been serving for some time now as Librarian for the Pen Collectors of America (a venerable nonprofit collector-run organization, well worth supporting -- please consider joining, or rejoining if you've let your membership lapse). If you've not checked out the online Reference Library lately, you are in for a surprise: over the last few years fresh material has been added at a steadily accelerating pace, with no slowing in sight.

A recent addition is the Conklin service manual whose cover is shown above. While preparing the listing I noticed something remarkable: on pages 3 and 8 Conklin's notorious left-handed section-barrel joint is illustrated and described as a newly introduced feature. 

These left-handed four-start threaded sections have long been known to pen collectors, but I've never seen anyone propose a date or proffer any company literature in which they are described. Finding these mentions in a datable Conklin document is therefore a bit of a discovery. "Datable" rather than "dated", however, as the manual has to be dated indirectly. We can start by noting that the San Francisco address shown on the cover was in use no earlier than the very end of 1920, while the listing of the Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston branch offices has to predate September 1922, when London and Barcelona were added. On top of this, we have in the Reference Library a mailing that went out from Conklin to dealers under a cover letter dated January 20, 1921. The mailing was to promote Conklin's service kits, and the flyer included reproductions of two pages from the kit's manual, which correspond exactly with our manual. While it is possible that the manual was published in more than one version, in all likelihood we are looking at just one edition, printed at the very beginning of 1921. This would put the introduction of the reverse-threaded sections towards the end of 1920. How long they remained in production is another matter. To my knowledge they never appeared on any Conklin lever-fillers, nor do they show up on the Endura-era crescent-fillers with flat cap tops. I would guess that this "improvement" was quickly dropped after Conklin was flooded with dealer complaints about broken barrels.

A repair manual for early mechanical pencils

 Information on the repair of antique pencils is much more difficult to find than for fountain pens. The skill set required is different, and notably eclectic.

So it is with considerable gratitude that I am conveying the offer of a specialized repair manual by its author, Winfried Neu. He has asked that any interested collectors contact him directly for the pdf files at no charge, at novusneu (at) web.de.  Please put "Repair telescopic pencils" as the subject to keep your emails from being treated as spam. 

The Parker Wood Pen

The Parker Wood Pen is one of the most enigmatic of limited editions. Solid documentation is hard to come by, and most of what is known to collectors is hearsay. This is not surprising for a design that was reportedly squelched by Parker's top management before it was fully produced or marketed, as noted on Tony Fischier's page -- one of the few online references to discuss the Wood Pen at all. 

I recently acquired a small group of boxed Wood Pens and in one box came the letter shown below. Although undated, it must date between 1980, when Willi Sieberger became president of Parker's writing instruments division in Janesville, and 1982, when he resigned from Parker "for personal reasons".

This letter raises questions. If the Wood Pen really was launched by Parker Germany without authorization from Parker USA, how is it that Sieberger would be putting his name on a promotional letter such as this? Could it have been that Sieberger thought that his appointment gave him authority to produce such a pen, only to find out otherwise? The letter certainly suggests that even if the Wood Pen idea came out of Germany, it also met with the approval of the head of the writing equipment division in Janesville -- a German, but in charge of operations worldwide. It would seem the story must have a few more twists than Parker Germany simply going off on their own only to be reined in by Parker USA. I have been in touch with Tony Fischier about this question, and from what he understands the directive to kill the Wood Pen came from the very top: the Parker family, who felt the Wood Pen did not comport with their idea of a Parker. How this would be connected to Sieberger's sudden departure shortly thereafter is for now only a matter of speculation.

Another puzzle posed by the letter is the list of seven woods. Fischier's site lists and illustrates eight, and I know of at least two German sample sets of eight pens, all in one box. Confusingly enough, each of these sets has paperwork that identifies the woods used -- different paperwork, but each lists only seven woods! The presence of one additional wood (which would seem to be angelin or partridgewood) isn't that hard to explain, especially if very rare: likely as not it is a material that was tried out and then dropped. The difficulty is in reconciling the other seven. Cocus is to be identified with Jamaican ebony, which is fairly straightforward. "Grendailla" (sic) is a little tougher, since grenadilla is another name for the African blackwood that comes first in the list, but it seems what was meant was granadillo, whose bold striping is consistent with the pen shown second from the bottom in Fischier's photo. Quajak and guajak both refer to lignum vitae. The "rosewood from Peru" is not a true rosewood and is probably what Fischier's site calls redwood. That leaves the tough question of reconciling the violet wood (or purpleheart) in the letter with the cocobolo in the sample sets' paperwork and in Fischier's list. As I have yet to see a Wood Pen in purpleheart, which is quite distinctive, it seems most likely that this wood was dropped and cocobolo substituted. 

A more straightforward insight from the letter regards the observed mismatching of the woods used for pens and boxes. Nearly all Wood Pen boxes are of the same material, no matter the wood used for the pens inside. The letter specifies that all boxes were to be made of Pau Rosa wood -- a reddish tropical hardwood that has usually been misidentified as redwood by pen collectors. It is certainly possible that early on the intention was to match woods, but the extreme rarity of boxes in other woods suggests that the idea was abandoned by the time production started.

The letter is silent on what happened to the pens remaining after the project was cancelled. There is some evidence in the packaging of the pens, however, which is notably inconsistent. Most have been found without boxes and some without numbers; the cardboard outer enclosures are seldom seen and yet still vary in how they are marked. While it is possible that unsold pens were recalled and destroyed, the evidence suggests that at least some ended up being disposed of otherwise, likely to Parker employees or their friends.

And though the sample size is too small to be definitive, the Wood Pen packaging that I have been able to examine also points to the pens being released in 1981 rather than 1980. A couple of examples would be pen #426 whose sale and guarantee certificate is dated October 20, 1981, and pen #368 which came with a generic Parker instruction sheet with a copyright date of January 1981. If any readers have other Wood Pens with documentation of date of sale, please let us know about them in the comments.

ADDENDUM: I have been informed of another example of the letter shown at top, accompanying a Wood Pen sold on eBay which came with warranty cards dated August 1981. There also seem to be multiple examples of boxes with the plaque engraved "A. B. Cremer" and "000". My guess is that this is a made-up name (the initials "ABC" are a clue) used for salesman's samples.