Waterman Santa Claus Association pen

Sometimes pens tell a story. This mottled hard rubber Waterman #4 straight-cap bears a distinctive imprint: "SANTA CLAUS ASSOCIATION/COMPLIMENTS OF/L. E. WATERMAN COMPANY". The pen lacks the usual Waterman barrel imprints, further indicating that it was a factory special.

From the American Stationer:

"The Santa Claus Association of New York, having received permission from the Postmaster General to obtain from post offices letters addressed to Santa Claus, was organized [in 1914] to distribute such letters as were found to be from worthy children, to people who care to accept one or more of them for the purpose of seeing that the youthful writers were substantially remembered at the Christmas season.
The Santa Claus Association and the members of Waterman's Ideal Ten-Year Club desired to perpetuate the work of the association and at the same time to recognize the many courtesies that Messrs. Muschenheim Brothers, proprietors of the Hotel Astor of New York, extended, because of their liberality in the donating of rooms and light for the handling of the enormous Christmas mail that the association had to investigate and distribute.
As a result, a life size bust of Santa Claus was made out of 5,000 of the Santa Claus letters and mounted upon marble. The bust is probably one of the most unique works of art ever executed in this country. It was made entirely by hand by the famous Belgian sculptor, Kratina, who has worked day and night since Christmas to finish it in time for the presentation, which was made on Thursday, March 18, to Mr. Muschenheim, by F. D. Waterman, president of Waterman's Ideal Ten-Year Club, and John D. Gluck, founder and secretary of the Santa Claus Association. Moving pictures of the occasion were made for the interest of the public generally."

So Frank D. Waterman took an active role in promoting and assisting the association's work -- including, it would appear, donating specially-marked pens for their use.

UPDATE: There is an exhibition now open in Brooklyn devoted to the forgotten history of the Santa Claus Association. Read more about it here (the exhibition runs until February 10, 2013).

Thanksgiving 2011

We had a fine family Thanksgiving this year, and hope that all of our pen friends who celebrate the holiday did so as well!
We will be catching up on orders and correspondence today; if you are awaiting an order acknowledgment or a response to an inquiry, all should be back to normal by the end of the day.

Washington DC pen show

We are back from Washington (Tysons Corner, to be precise) and will be working away to catch up over the next several days. Buying was good, as was overall turnout.

This is one of the few American metropolitan shows that has managed to find the sweet spot as far as location: for many big cities, holding the show right in the middle of town both drives up costs and makes access difficult for those driving in (and especially for exhibitors), yet putting the show too far from the center makes it less accessible for local urbanites and drastically reduces the appeal for those wanting to partake of the city's amenities, whether for dining or for tourism or shopping. All this is less critical in less densely built-up areas, but for venues such as Boston, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, location is going to be key.

Memorial Day weekend

We've been working nonstop since before the Chicago show a couple of weeks back, so are particularly looking forward to this long holiday weekend and an opportunity to recharge.

Best wishes to all our pen friends -- we'll be back in the shop on Tuesday!

Back from Chicago

We bought quite a bit at the Chicago Pen Show this year, most notably dip pens and 19th-century pencils. It will be a while before it is all listed, but we should have a few goodies posted within the next few days.

Chicago Pen Show time!

We've closed up the shop for a few days to attend the Chicago Pen Show. We won't be exhibiting, but if you'll be around, do say hello.
We'll also be doing a bit of double duty, visiting the pipemakers' show the same weekend to show off our newly-made American Art Plastics ebonite and celluloid products.
Monday will be back to business as usual -- haven't decided yet what our next featured update theme will be. . . .

Phone troubles

We've been having sporadic problems with our phone service for some time. The good news is that we found the problem. The bad news is that it may be several days until we have a permanent fix.

Until then, all incoming calls are going straight to voicemail -- so don't be afraid to leave a message and let us call you back (though email is still a faster and more reliable way of reaching us).

Communications outage

Apologies to all who have been trying to reach us by phone over the past week or so. We've been preoccupied with packing up and relocating our workshop, and didn't realize until Friday afternoon that our phone wasn't working. All incoming calls were being sent automatically to voice mail, and to a particular mailbox that we don't normally use. Fixing the problem wasn't especially difficult, but it may take a couple of days to catch up on all the missed calls.

Summer hours

We are back from the Washington, DC pen show, but things will remain slow for the remainder of August, between family time and moving our workshop.

Attendance at the pen show was good, yet it seems that most shows -- this one included -- are becoming more and more dominated by consumers, rather than collectors. This goes beyond the divisions between new-pen and old-pen people, for while few who come to pen shows to buy new pens are collectors, a substantial numbers of those buying old pens aren't really collectors, either.

The need for collectors to carve out a space for themselves is becoming increasingly apparent, at shows and online as well. This has been highlighted in the discussions recently prompted by the temporary shutdown of the Lion & Pen site -- one of the few collector-dominated pen forums -- and the launch of David Isaacson's new Fountain Pen Board -- clearly aimed at collectors over users.

Pen forums update

Fountain Pen Network is back, malware-free. Apparently took a while to clean up, and longer to get Google to de-blacklist them. Word is that Lion & Pen will be back before too long, as well. Perhaps it could be arranged that the regular maintenance payments for hosting and the like be automatically withdrawn from a special Paypal account, to which donations could be made by readers and forum participants.