A wooden Waterman for President Taft

Waterman willingly accepted special orders, and a few examples are shown in the company's catalogs. Some of the most intriguing designs, however, are those described in the trade press, including the one shown here.

The pictures come from The American Stationer of August 28, 1909. The article explains:

The L. E. Waterman Company have recently had occasion to manufacture a notably historical pen. They were presented by John B. Hardy, Industrial Expert of New York, with a small block of wood saved from the last of thirteen trees planted by Alexander Hamilton on his estate in New York City. It will be remembered that each tree represented one of the original thirteen States.

From the block the Waterman Company manufactured a beautifully turned wood pen lined with rubber. The cap and barrel were very handsomely mounted with gold, the pattern of which was designed by Carolyn Mihr Hardy, and engraved as follows: On the three gold bands on the barrel -- "Protection - Progress - Patriotism," and on the two name plates on each side of the cap: "Presented to the Hon. Wm. H. Taft" and, on the reverse side: "Made from the last of thirteen trees planted by Alexander Hamilton on his estate."

The box in which the pen was presented, and which is above illustrated, was also made from the remaining portion of the block of the Hamilton tree. The exterior of the box was in the rough finish of the wood, very handsomely finished on the inside and finely lined with velvet and satin, the hinges and catch being made from gold.

The pen was presented to President Taft by Congressmen Pujo, Estopinal and Broussard of Louisiana and Frank Clark of Florida, all ardent Southern Protectionists and admirers of Mr. Taft.

Where is this pen now? 

Waterman's year of innovation: 1908

Of all the Waterman catalogs from the company's Golden Age, the 1908 catalog is a standout. Richly produced and printed, it listed some of the most interesting, beautiful, and desirable pens ever made. Stationery trade journals fill out the picture, highlighting how many of Waterman's most notable innovations date to this time.

At the beginning of 1908, for example, Waterman introduced its "Baby" (not to be confused with the so-called "Doll" pen, aka "World's Smallest") and the "Check Book" pen. The illustrations above appeared on the front page of the January 11 issue of The American Stationer. On June 27, the same periodical's front page announced Waterman's introduction of a full-length slender model, called a "Secretary Pen", but now more commonly known to collectors by its model number, 12 1/2.

Just a month later, it was Waterman's first retracting-nib safety pen being introduced, initially offered in just three sizes (12VS, 14VS, 15VS, each in just one standard length) with the option of gold filled barrel bands and the choice of smooth or chased black hard rubber, or "Cardinal" red hard rubber.

And at the beginning of October, to bring our short survey full circle, the front-page news was Waterman's lavish new 1908 catalog, produced at a claimed cost of $25,000. Followup stories about the catalog and its impending distribution appeared on October 10 and October 17. It is unusual that we can now date the 1908 catalog so precisely -- and this isn't purely of academic interest. For example, there was recently a discussion about the marking of Waterman silver "Filigree" pattern pens, in particular when the "4" in the hundreds place began to be imprinted on the barrel end. I will probably end up summarizing the conclusions in a future post here, but a key bit of evidence is that the 1908 catalog is the first occasion on which it is explicitly stated that the full model code will be stamped on the butt end of each pen. For various reasons, this wouldn't square so well with the evidence of surviving pens if the catalog had been released at the beginning of 1908; it is entirely consistent, however, with an autumn publication date.

PS Perhaps not in the same category, yet significant nonetheless: Waterman's Canadian factory started producing pens towards the end of that very busy year, 1908.

In praise of mint pens (and of keeping them that way)

I recently had the good fortune to acquire a pristine Wahl-Eversharp ringtop set, mint and stickered, boxed with instructions. The pen is shown in the picture above. Now there are those who seem to think that leaving a pen unused is somehow sinful. Yet when one gets back to pens of the 1920s and early '30s, truly mint examples are extremely scarce, and far rarer than examples that have been used, however gently.

The greatest value of pristine pens, though, is not monetary -- in fact, compared to most other areas of collecting, the premium for perfection in pens is small -- so much as informational. Years ago, it was a pristine Wahl "Deco Band" that tipped me off to the reason why Wahl caps tended to discolor in dark bands. You can read my 2002 writeup here, the upshot being that Wahl didn't use a normal hard rubber inner cap, but instead lined the top of the inside of the cap with a soft white rubber disk, and put another soft rubber washer on the outward-facing mouth of the inner cap, where the section presses when the cap is in place. Staining and hardening over time makes these construction features, which are not mentioned in Wahl company literature, invisible. They are clearly visible on pristine pens, however -- this newly acquired ringtop included.

Another ephemeral feature that we know about only from examples such as this is the in-filling of imprints. In most cases, imprints were not originally colored in, but there are a few exceptions. One little-known exception is the gold coloring sometimes applied to the nib grade stamps on Wahl-Eversharp feeds. This gold coloring is beautifully preserved on our recent acquisition, but one can see that it would be washed away rather quickly once the pen was put to use.

The discoveries don't end there. Another recent acquisition is shown below: a coral semi-streamlined X-Seal pen, also mint and stickered. This is a rare model, and a puzzling one. The pen itself does not appear in any known catalog or advertisement, and though it shares features with other standard production models, its profile is different from any of them.

The X-Seal has been the subject of much speculation, as it appears not just on these pens, but also on regular production pens, albeit rarely. Its use follows no discernible pattern, so any scraps of information about how it was used are invaluable.

Unfortunately, the sticker on this pen is half gone. Nonetheless, it gives us some idea of the pen's original price point, and at least part of its model number. Considering how rare these pens are in any condition, to find one with sticker largely intact is no small thing.

Korean fakes: eBay seller on the move again

Our Korean criminal now is using a different user ID, sunpawel. At the moment he has only one item listed: a supposedly first-year Parker 51 set in the box. I will not go into all the details of why this is a fake, but I can assure you that this is an assemblage of newly-made parts and original (but not first-year) parts, deliberately put together to deceive.

Interestingly, his completed listings don't include any obvious frauds (the Duofold Senior is a possible exception), and indeed under this user name he has only two feedbacks as a seller, both very recent. This user account was registered December 8, 2010, and it seems that our forger used it primarily to buy (he has 170 feedbacks as a buyer, and the purchases that can be seen, are all, tellingly, of discolored or cracked Parker parts pens).

ADDENDUM: Hey, what a surprise: sunpawel was an active bidder on rttrfb/yeujeff/jeffriad's auctions! At least he left good feedback -- for himself. So not only a counterfeiter, but a bid manipulator as well. Too bad eBay makes it virtually impossible to report shill bidding, even when it is this flagrant.

UPDATE: That "first-year" set closed at $1025.01 on October 6. Had this set been genuine, this would still have been a very high price, well above what the best-established and most reputable dealers would charge at full retail. Unfortunately, the "winning" bidder (markjia) appears to be a real collector and not one of the Korean faker's shill bidding accounts.

Korean fakes: new eBay ID

Korean vintage Parker forger jeffriad/yeujeff now has a new eBay user ID: rttrfb-- buyers beware!
As yet, he does not appear to have any active listings (and all those that appear under completed listings are from July and earlier), but the fact that he has changed his user name suggests that he is planning to start up his counterfeiting business once again.

Previous posts about his fakes can be found here and here. You can see his eBay user ID history here. Quite a few name changes, and no wonder: rttrfb since September 12; yeujeff from June 9; jeffriad from June 28, 2011; koyo6te from March 27, 2011; yeu2002 from November 25, 2009; sasu159 from June 21, 2009; hasu4321 from October 16, 2008; and hasuk4321 from February 13, 2008.

UPDATE: Still no action under the rttrfb ID -- but a fake first-year Parker 51 set has just been listed under the eBay ID sunpawel -- yet another alias for the same crook (more here).

Seal-top English Waterman

Pen books give ample coverage to Waterman's American production, but European-made pens and pencils have not been so thoroughly or systematically illustrated and discussed (a notable exception being the Waterman Safety book by Dansi, Jacopini, and Verduci). This 9K gold English-market Waterman is an example of the sort of pen that leaves many collectors puzzled. Is that seal stone in the cap top original, or is it a jeweler's customization?

Waterman pens with seal-stone tops seem to have been most popular in Britain and France, though they are not at all common. In the USA they were special order items, with one shown in Waterman's 1908 catalog. Nearly all of these, however, were slip-cap eyedropper-filling pens (examples here, here, and here); lever-fillers with seal tops are far scarcer.

Quink Concentrate

At just two inches (5 cm) high, this is one of Parker's smallest Quink ink bottles. The instructions on the side of the box state:

Pour the contents of the phial into a 4-OZ. bottle and fill with CLEAN COLD WATER.
In doing this BE SURE TO RINSE out the phial several times to make certain that ALL the content is used.

Quink Concentrate was a WW2-era product, marketed in the UK. The ad below explains more, noting that "the bottle shortage is greater than ever". The need to economize on shipping was a major concern during wartime; another response to this need was "V-mail", in which letters were copied to microfilm and re-printed at the letter's destination. Unused WW2-era V-mail ink is still commonly found in the USA.

A very early Waterman lever-filler

This pen is one of the earliest Waterman lever-fillers I have yet seen. Early PSF-series lever-fillers have the narrow raised barrel threads, but much less common is the form of the lever, shown below, stamped of thinner metal than later examples, with a small end with a narrow margin around the globe logo imprint, and plated rather than gold filled.

The recess for the lever end is also distinctive, and also rather crude compared to later examples. It is flat-bottomed and appears to have been made by milling a simple oblong depression -- basically just two overlapping circular recesses.

Early Waterman lever-fillers with the raised threads normally also have a sprung two-piece pressure bar, as shown below. The J-shaped spring has a T-shaped end, which toggles into a slot in the rigid pressure bar. Unlike later pressure bars, this bar is not toggled to the end of the lever, and the matching lever lacks the necessary tabs or "ears" to engage a later pressure bar.

This pen, however, has an even more unusual pressure bar. It too is two-piece and sprung, but here the spring has a C-shaped base to hold it in the barrel, and its other end is permanently attached to the rigid pressure bar by a single rivet.

---

UPDATE:
Here is a better close-up of the lever box area, which also shows another very early feature: the bent-over tab that serves as a lever stop, rather than the solid crossbar that is seen on all later Waterman lever boxes. At the bottom is a comparison shot of another early PSF with raised threads and sprung two-piece pressure bar, but with the more familiar lever box construction and fingernail groove in the lever end recess.

John W. Greaton, gold nib maker and metallurgist

Several years ago, before the value of gold began to climb, I bought a hoard of gold dip pen nibs. They were clearly early, many bearing dates in the early 1850s, and were all marked "John W. Greaton". They appeared to be new old stock, though some had been "tested" with a file to see if they were indeed solid gold; most of them are shown in the photo above -- note that the ones in the photo are big nibs, what later makers might call #6 to #7-size.

At the time, there was no Google Books, and I did not have the time to dig out information about Greaton by traveling to multiple libraries and sifting through old city directories and microfilmed periodicals. Now, however, basic research of this sort is much easier, so I can share the following about Greaton and his nibmaking career.

As it turns out, Greaton left the gold nib business early, gaining fame in his subsequent career as a chemist and metallurgist. His obituary appeared in The American Stationer, vol. 1, April 1, 1897, pp. 528-29:

John W. Greaton, who was engaged at one time in the manufacture of gold pens at 23 Maiden lane, New York, died at his home, 326 Union street, Brooklyn, N. Y., on March 26, at the age of seventy-four years.

Mr. Greaton was born on January 1, 1823, on Pump street near Shinbone Alley, New York, which are now known as Pearl street and Chatham square. When he left the gold pen business he became a chemist and an assayer. He invented a solder on copper which would not eat through gold, for which he was offered $50,000. When the Government began the manufacture of five-cent nickel pieces Mr. Greaton instructed the men at the mint how to alloy the metal so that the coin would not break the die. He had a laboratory in the rear of his home, where he conducted his experiments, and where, during which, he lost the sight of one eye.

In 1854 he removed to Brooklyn, where he became estranged from his family. This so affected him that he retired from business altogether, and spent the greater part of his remaining life in his library with his books (of which he had a large number) as his companions, counsellors and sympathizers.

He is survived by a widow, one son and two daughters.

An obituary in the New York Herald of March 27, 1897, p. 12, col. 2, also noted that Greaton "took an interest in educational affairs, [and] was a member of the Society of Cincinnati." His bibliophily is also noted in The Library Journal and The Art Collector, but without specifics.

Snorkel springs are here at last!

Rusted Snorkel springs have long been the repairman's bane. Original replacements simply aren't available, and no matter how hard one works to remove the rust, rusted springs never seem to end up smooth enough to prevent the Snorkel mechanism from feeling as if it were full of sand. But now we have newly-made reproductions, which will get your Snorkel operating as smoothly and cleanly as new! They are already listed in our website catalog, and on eBay, three for $18 (and much less in quantity).

At the same time, we decided to make some PFM springs as well. Other reproduction PFM springs have been offered before, but at a retail price of $10. We have cut that price in half, with substantial further discounts for quantity purchases. See them in our catalog and on eBay.