Ballpoint pens are boring.

There. I said it.

One of the reasons why I love fountain pens is because of the variety that surrounds them. You have pens made of gold, of rubber, of wood, of steel, of silver, of plastics of various kinds, you have steel nibs and gold nibs of all kinds of writing styles and characteristics. You have all kinds of inks and filling-mechanisms and sizes and styles. Somewhere out there, is the fountain pen for you.

And perhaps you’re already out there looking for that fountain pen just for you. And perhaps you’ve been looking on websites or forums or online photo-galleries to find the best pen for you. And perhaps you’ve become interested in nibs. But not just any nib. A flexible nib. And maybe you just want to know a bit more about this curiosity of writing before deciding whether or not it’s really for you. That’s what this posting is here to do.

What is a Flexible Nib?

A flexible nib is…a…flexible…nib.

Okay that’s the short story.

The long story is that a flexible nib is a nib that bends, spreads and flexes according to the amount of pressure that the user applies to the pen. The more pressure, the more flex. Less pressure, less flex. Press down and the tines of the nib spread apart. Ease your force and the tines spring back together. Easy. That is a flex nib in a nutshell.

Why do we Want Flex Nibs?

Flex nibs are desirable for a number of reasons, although granted, they’re not for everyone. Flex-nibs are prized by people who like line-variation in their writing, by people who practice calligraphy (particularly styles like Roundhand) or people who just want a bit of fun in their writing. Flex-nibs are also handy for illustrators and artists who require line-variation in their art, such as comic-book writers and cartoonists.

I want a flex nib but…I can’t find any!

Unfortunately for the population at large, fountain pens with flexible nibs are, on a whole, no longer manufactured. In fact, they haven’t been manufactured in mainstream fountain pens for a while now. If you’re after a fountain pen with a flexible nib, for the best results, you’re almost certainly going to have to hunt for vintage pens, preferrably before ca. 1930 (or at least before the 1950s). Fountain pens with flexible nibs were particularly popular in the years between 1880 to about 1930, but their manufacture and use died away gradually since then until now they’re hardly manufactured at all. Many fountain pens made during the first two decades of the 20th century are famous for their flexible nibs and many pen companies were famous for making pens with flexible nibs. Companies such as Swan, Conway-Stewart, Wahl-Eversharp, Waterman and Conklin.

Where did Flex Nibs Come From?

Flex nibs or flex pens have a long history and they started with the quills of the Middle Ages.  Quills, which were the long, flight-feathers of birds (usually geese), were prepared for writing by being de-barbed (having their frilly bits cut off), being heated and dried, and then by being cut into pen-points.

Repeated dipping in ink meant that over time, the pen-points would become soft and flexible. Writers who enjoyed this quality let their quills stay nice and soft and flexy until such time that the quill-points got so soft that they’d just break (at which point, the broken point was cut off and a new quill was cut out of the remaining feather-shaft).

When steel dip-pens started replacing quills en-masse in the 1830s, writers were so used to flexible quills that factories often manufactured steel pens with flexible points so that writers would have something more familiar between their fingers.

In the early 1900s when fountain pens began to replace dip-pens, pen-manufacturers kept flexible gold fountain pen nibs as a writing holdover from the dip-pen era.

In the 1930s and 40s, as the fountain pen became more and more popular, flexible nibs were found to be unsuitable for the office environment, where pressing a pen-nib through paper and carbon-paper meant that stronger, stiffer nibs were required. After that time, flex nibs started being manufactured less and less, and finally died out after ballpoint pens started rising to prominence in the 1960s. Today, flex nibs…true flex nibs…are rare in the modern fountain pen market. Most people who want flex generally buy antique pens, or else buy cheap, steel dip-pens (which generally have flexible properties on a much lower price-level than antique fountain pens which can cost hundreds of dollars).

Using a Flex Nib

Flex nibs are not for everyone. Because they haven’t, for the most part, been manufactured for the past several decades, public knowledge of flex nibs is low. By that I mean, the average person on the street is unlikely to have ever seen one or used one. So, is a flex nib for you? It might be, it might not be.

Using a flex nib requires a light touch. Yes, all fountain pens require a light touch, but this is especially true with flex nibs (and the more flexible the nib, the lighter the touch). Someone transitioning from a ballpoint pen to a fountain pen should get used to using a regular, stiff-nibbed fountain pen first before unleashing themselves on a flex-nibbed pen and all the uncertainties that can come with it.

It’s important to know the limitations of a flex-nib. No two flex nibs are exactly the same and there are varying levels of flex. They range from superflex (also called ‘Wet Noodles’), to full-flex and semi-flex. Superflex nibs which will bend at the lightest of touches are especially common with older pens from the turn of the last century. The majority of pens are full-flex or semi-flex. If you want to experiment with flex-nib pens and aren’t sure whether or not you can handle trying to write with a pen that’s going to jump and down like a pogo-stick, you might want to start with a more forgiving semi-flex pen. These pens will only flex a small amount, compared with say, a 1900 Waterman which would have nib-tines that literally flex like wet noodles.

If you want to experiment with flexible nibs but don’t want to fork out $200+ for an antique Parker that you might only ever use once, when you figure out that flex really isn’t for you…then what do you do?

A lot of people ask this question. “How can I fiddle with flex on a fluff?”

The answer is easy. Go to your local arts and crafts shop or arts-supply shop or fancy paperie or your local pen-shop, and purchase some steel dip-pens and a pen-holder. Even modern dip-pens (but especially older ones) can be significantly flexible. Once you’ve got the hang of preparing the pen, then you can learn to write with it and see if writing with a flex-nib is for you. Think of the dip-pens as the cheap, training-wheels, free-sample alternative to blowing big bucks on antique flex-nib fountain pen. A small stash of flexible steel nibs and a pen-holder might cost $20 (okay, a bit more if you need to buy the ink as well), and it’s a small price to pay for trying out something totally new. Plus, if you break the pen-nib, you won’t cry.

Most importantly when learning how to use flex-nibs is to know how much pressure to place on the pen when writing. A really flexible nib will require almost no pressure at all to write a line a quarter-inch wide. Semi-flex nibs might require a somewhat heavier hand to produce a similar result. Not knowing the limits and capabilities of the flexible qualities of flexible nibs can lead to the nibs being broken or sprung (where the nibs have been pressed down so hard that the tines don’t spring back together when you ease off the pressure). Sprung nibs can be repaired and hammered flat again, but it’s a fiddly, messy process that’s best avoided to begin with.

What are Flex Nibs Made Of?

The vast majority of flex-nibs (for fountain pens, at least) are made of gold. The soft properties of gold make it ideal for nibs of different levels of flex. Dip-pen nibs which contain flexible properties, on the other hand, are generally made of steel. Steel can be a little harder to work when making and using a flex-nib, but it’s cheaper and easier to mass produce for throwaway dip-pens.

There’s watch-fairs, gun-shows, knife-shows, antiques markets and even book-fairs. And yes. There’s even pen-shows. And that’s what this article is about.

To the avid pen-collector, visiting a pen-show is like leaving a five-year-old kid inside Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. He won’t care that he’s lost and high and freaking out…he’s bloody loving it, and he won’t want to leave when you come along trying to drag him away, kicking, screaming and giving you a Joe Pesci Special that’d make your ears drop off and your hair turn greener than your neighbour’s lawn. Yes. Pen shows are THAT cool.

There are many benefits to buying your pens from a pen-show instead of eBay or another online seller or from a pen-shop. You can take your time, you can chat and converse, you can examine the goods like a Russian mobster checking out African conflict diamonds and you can haggle, barter and bargain until you’re blue in the face, with the guy behind the table, who will just sit there and say “No”. You can test pens in person and see how they write, regardless of if you do, or do not eventually buy them. You can see an array of pens and writing instruments and equipment that you will never see anywhere else, all in one place and in the flesh. And you can buy amazing pens that you’ve always wanted for your collection, right there, right now, on the table. You can just keep going and going until you’ve had enough. Then you take a break and go some more.

Your First Pen Show

You’ve heard about these things called pen shows. You’re a new collector and you’ve seen other people’s collections online and they’re making you greener with envy than Eggs A’la Seuss. You want those pens. YOU WANT THEM. NOW. You want that deep red, 1920s Duofold, or the sleek, 1942 Skyline. The tasteful 1930s Sheaffer Balance or that 1910s Waterman 52. You’ve only ever seen photos of a solid gold 1905 Conklin Crescent-Filler, or that latest Montblanc Meisterstuck with the diamond star on the end. You. Want. It. NAO!!

But hold on. You need to know how to approach things. That’s what this article is for.

Finding Out about Pen Shows

So, you want to collect fountain pens. Or maybe you already are collecting fountain pens. And you want to know how to collect more. So you hear about these things called ‘pen shows’ where collectors, restorers and retailers sell, trade and chat about pens. Mad and insane as it is, you discover that this is true. But how do you find out where these mystical gatherings take place?

Your best bet is to visit the Fountain Pen Network, the internet’s biggest forum for fountain pen collectors, users, traders, repairers and sellers. Here, you can find out about all the major pen-shows that happen around the world. Most of them take place in the United States; New York, Los Angeles and Washington. But there’s also the London Writing Equipment Show and the Melbourne Pen Show in Australia. Due to the large number of shows, they often jostle for space on the calender and it’s important to check the dates for upcoming shows carefully. Some shows only go for one day each year. Some go for two or three. You need to figure out which shows you can visit and how you’re going to get there and how to transport any potential purchases back home safely. If you discover that there’s a pen show in the city where you live, you’re in luck! Most people travel hundreds of miles to visit these things.

Kitting Up for a Pen Show

You should always bring along the following essentials to any pen show:

– A bottle of ink.
– A notepad.
– Tissue-paper.
– A powerful magnifying glass or loupe.
– Pens of your own.
– Wallet with plenty of cash (not all places have EFTPOS).
– A poweful flashlight.
– A good set of nerves!

Attending the Show

When you reach the venue of the show, remain calm and collected. Head in. Greet any people you know and then wander around. Don’t buy anything…just wander. Take in the show and see where things are, who sells what and how things work. Not every person at a pen show is there to sell stuff. Some people show up merely to display their collections and answer questions. Looking at these collections can give you ideas about what you might want to add to your own growing stash of stuff. Ask questions and learn more and make friends and share knowledge. This is what you’re here for. If you wanted to buy a pen, you should’ve gone to the nearest pen-shop.

Once you’ve acclimatised to the environment and done the obligatory meet-and-greet and seen where things are, you can now take your time and start hunting for the pens you want. Shopping at a pen-show has many advantages over shopping online or at a pen shop. At a show, you can usually touch and handle the stuff you want to buy. You can get expert information and advice (as opposed to the clueless marketing-spiel you get hocked at you from every shop-counter in the universe) and you can test the product before you potentially buy it.

Buying a pen at a pen show is no different from buying a pen anywhere else. With loupe or magnifying-glass in hand, examine the pen minutely. Go over every single square milimeter and check for any and all imperfections and flaws. Decide how perfect a pen you want, ask how much the pen’s being sold for and then ask yourself if you think it’s worth that much and perhaps give a counter-offer. Remember to be civil, polite and friendly. Collectors are mutually trusting of other collectors…don’t do anything to sabotage that trust or you may not be welcome at the same seller’s table next year. Be sure to handle all pens with care, respect and delicacy. Some items for sale can be upwards of one hundred years old or more and they demand a light touch on the part of you, the potential purchaser. Always ask what is for sale, whether you can handle something and whether you can perform a dip-test to see how the pen writes. Not all people are there to sell things and not all people who sell things appreciate everyone fiddling with their merchandise.

Other things to Look out For

Pens are not the only things sold at pen shows. Keep an eye out for stuff like ink, blotting-paper, display-cases, books, diaries, pen-pouches, inkstands, dip-pens, nibs, inkwells, desk-blotters and rocker-blotters. Some shows may even branch out into other areas, selling vintage and antique wristwatches and pocketwatches, pieces of antique ivory and even some knives such as straight-razors, pocketknives and paperknives. It pays to keep your eyes open and wandering, to take in everything that a particular show has to offer.

Tableholding at a Show

If you’re a part of a local pen-collector’s club or a local pen-shop, you may get the chance (either someone offered it to you, or you asked for it specially) to become a tableholder at a pen-show. Remember to show up early, set up your displays and post clear signs about what is and what is not for sale. People will wander all over the place and peek at, and touch things that they want to see. Don’t wander too far from your table at any one time and if you must, then get a trusted party (fellow club-member, for example) to keep an eye on things while you toddle off to induge your pen fantasies. Above all – You should strive to know everything…and I mean everything…about the products on your table, whether they’re for sale or not. Nothing is more boring than asking questions of someone who looks like he should know the answers…and getting nothing in reply. You never know. It might spark a conversation that might lead onto you getting that one pen you’ve always wanted…

Whatever the case, enjoy visiting your next pen show, be it your first, second, third or 72nd! Just remember to have fun.

Admittedly, the range of fountain pens we have around today is pretty small. They’re all roughly the same size, they all hold roughly the same amount of ink and they all have the same selection of nibs.

Back when fountain pens were new, things were a lot different.

Fountain pens were once luxury items. To own one was a big status-symbol. Most people at the turn of the last century were still using steel-nibbed dip-pens to do the majority of their writing. Schools in many countries continued using dip-pens well into the 1940s. Fountain pens were expensive things to own and the people who were lucky enough to afford one of these newfangled ‘reservoir pens’ usually only owned one pen, which they used endlessly until it broke, before they purchased another.

As fountain pens became more common and gradually, cheaper, towards the early 1900s when mass production increased output and design-improvements made fountain pens more desirable, more people started wanting them. And they wanted different styles and types of pens as well. As the fountain pen became more and more essential to everyday life, people saw the necessity for keeping one near them at all times.

This was tricky when you consider that most fountain pens made between the 1880s-1910s…didn’t come with pocket-clips, the kind that all pens have today. Such fancy and mindblowing additions to the pen as a pocket-clip wouldn’t show up until the First World War. That’s where the ringtop fountain pen comes in.

Ringtop vest-pocket pens

Without the presence of pocket-clips, it was necessary to find other ways to keep pens from running away from their owners. One of the main methods of keeping a tab on your pen was to have a ring attached to the top of the cap (something that became possible when threaded, screw-on caps were invented, that held onto the body of the pen much more securely than comparable slip-on caps of the period).

There’s a big misconception that ringtop pens are all women’s pens. THIS IS NOT TRUE.

Ringtop fountain pens were common for only a very short period of time, from the 1900s up until the end of the 1920s and they were marketed (and manufactured) for both men and women. It’s easy to tell the difference between men’s and women’s pens purely from their lengths. Women’s pens were longer (four inches or more); they were worn with a chain or a ribbon around the neck, like a necklace. Men’s ringtop pens are significantly smaller, generally being no longer than about three and a half inches.

Why?

If the history of consumer-goods has taught us anything, it’s that women’s products are almost always smaller than men’s. Women’s watches are smaller. Women’s pens are smaller. Rings and chains for women’s jewellery are usually much thinner than men’s jewellery. So why are men’s pens in the case of ringtops, smaller than women’s?

Ringtop pens for men were designed as ‘vest-pocket’ pens. They usually had the code-letter ‘V’ or ‘VP’ (for Vest/Vest-Pocket) heat-stamped or engraved into them. Pens like this were deliberately kept smaller than women’s pens because they were designed to be clipped to a man’s double albert watch-chain and worn in one of the two watch-pockets of his waistcoat (or ‘vest’). On a watch-chain along with a pocket-watch, the setup would look like this:

My vest-pocket fountain pen and pocketwatch. Pen: 1925 Wahl Art Deco vest-pocket fountain pen. Watch: 1950s Ball railroad chronometer

In the days when men still wore waistcoats (a stylistic choice I still carry on) and pocketwatches were still popular (another stylistic choice I keep alive), vest-pocket pens were a popular writing-instrument. Compact, convenient and nigh impossible to lose; even if the pen did fall out of your pocket, the chain clipped to the ring on the cap would prevent it from getting lost.

The End of Ringtop Pens

Ringtop pens for men died out by the 1930s. Pocketwatches were still being made, waistcoats were still popular and people were still combining the two, but the truth was that demand for this pen, which had become little more of a novelty by this time, was dropping fast. The arrival in the mid-1910s of pens with permanent pocket-clips meant that keeping a pen securely about your person with a ringtop cap and chain was no longer necessary. By the mid-1930s, production of both men’s and women’s ringtop pens had come to an end.

Today, ringtop pens are no-longer made as there’s no market for them. They do still exist, as curious reminders of a bygone age, if as nothing else, though. You can still buy them at pen-shows, vintage pen shops and online from pen-dealers and repairers, but unless you’re intending to wear it on a ribbon or necklace around your throat or on the end of a watch-chain, they’ll probably have to make up part of your desktop pen inventory due to the risk of them falling out of your pocket (unless you store them in a pen-pouch when you’re carrying them around).

From the 1890s until the 1950s, the Waterman Pen Company was famous for manufacturing awesome fountain pens. Their vintage pens are among the most famous and collectable in the world. I’ve always wanted one, especially one of their lovely Red Ripple hard rubber (also called ‘Woodgrain”) pens…but that was not to be.

Until recently.

No I didn’t get a woodgrain pen…but I did get something just as interesting:

This is a Waterman #12 ‘Secretary’ pen from 1904. Like all pens from the era, it’s made from hard rubber, and like almost all pens from the era, it’s an eyedropper. I like eyedroppers. Messy as they are to use, they are, nonetheless, idiotproof. Unscrew the pen-barrel, squirt in the ink, screw the barrel shut…and write! What could be more idiotproof than that?

Apparently people were stupider back then because the original box, which comes with the original instructions, have written on those instructions rather detailed steps about how to use an eyedropper pen. Although it’s probably not surprising that instructions were made that detailed – fountain pens were like iPads in 1904 and were only just becoming a commercial viablity.

I bought this pen for a variety of reasons, at the 2010 Melbourne Pen Show. The first reason is I didn’t own a vintage Waterman at the time and especially not one as cool as this. Second…I’ve never owned a pen this old that came with its original packaging and instructions! Third, it has a really sweet superflexible nib (also called a ‘wet noodle’) which oozes characteristics that most pens today would strip their gold to have.

Reading the advertising material on the box is a wonderful step into history, seeing just how Waterman marketed its products. The underside of the box is entirely devoted to warning the customer about fake Waterman fountain pens, instructing them to “make sure when buying a Waterman’s Ideal Fountain Pen, to see that our trademarks are stamped on every gold nib and on every holder”. I think it’s also very telling of how revolutionary the idea of a portable reservoir pen was at the turn of the century, when you read the instruction (that has shown up on every single pre-1910 pen-box that I’ve ever seen), that says (all in big, bold, underlined capitals):

“DO NOT REMOVE GOLD NIB FROM THE HOLDER”

When Waterman was advertising to a public which had only ever grown up using steel dip-pens with easily-broken, rusty nibs which had to be removed and replaced every few months, this instruction was very important, and again shows just how new the novelty of the fountain pen was. The pen itself is rather simple. Black, chased hard rubber with two gold bands around it. The nib is a New York Waterman’s #2 nib in 14kt gold, which is about as flexible as you could get. The pen fills easily (if messily) and writes smoothly. I love it!

Eyedropper pens such as this lasted until about 1915, when more practical self-fillers, such as Conklin’s crescent, Sheaffer’s lever and Parker’s button-filler began to replace them and become more popular with writers. But that doesn’t make those pens any better writers, just better fillers, and fountain pens of this vintage are as much fun to use as those made decades later.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone invented a device or a storage-facility that could hold all your documents and word-processing hardware and software and lock it up safely, out of reach of fiddly hands and out of sight of prying eyes? A storage facility that was portable and light and handy and which you could take with you anywhere that you wished, and which you could, in a pinch, open and access all those documents that you so desperately needed?

“Yeah we have that. They’re called laptops”, someone might say.

But what about the days before the laptop? What if you were travelling from London to New York or New York to Los Angeles or Melbourne to Hong Kong a hundred years ago and you had a whole heap of documents to bring with you that you couldn’t just stuff into a briefcase. What then?

Enter the Georgian answer to a “Generation @” question. How to store your files and folders when you’re on the move: The Writing Box.

What is a Writing Box?

Also called a writing case, dispatch case, dispatch box, writing chest or lap-desk, a writing box was mankind’s answer to the laptop computer in the days before…well…laptops! These boxes or cases were designed to be desks or offices…packed into a box. They ranged from the plainest of plain-Jane boxes, to the most elaborate, fanciful, foppish boxes that you could imagine, inlaid with pretty woods, ivory, pearls and other wonderful materials that did absolutely nothing to the practicality of the box and only increased its weight. But, whether a banged-up ‘entry’ model or a super-deluxe model, writing boxes were designed to hold everything a 19th century professional gentleman needed for correspondence and business and were stocked with everything that one could expect to find in an office, study, den or standard bureau desk of the era.

Such boxes typically came equipped with locks, keys, a writing-surface, inkwells, lightwells, pen-trays, pidgeon-holes, storage-spaces for such essentials as paper, seals, sealing-wax, nibs, postage-stamps, envelopes, pencils, money and enough little hidden compartments to spirit away the Crown Jewels right under the nose of the queen. They really were offices in a box. They were the iPads of their day, transforming a huge, bulky thing like this…

…into a compact little thing like this, small enough to put in your steamer-trunk:

Isn’t that just lovely!?

The History of Writing Boxes

In a day before passwords, ID numbers, retina-scanners and fingerprint-readers, professional men were always on the lookout for a way to safeguard all their precious documents such as private letters, deeds, wills and testaments and other important pieces of paper…like birthday cards from mummy.

To hide these things from prying eyes (especially those birthday cards!), men would store these papers in boxes when they weren’t at their desks, and lock them to keep them secure. The first writing-boxes like these were descendant from “bible-boxes” and came into being in the 1600s. Bible-boxes were used to…as the name suggests…store bibles in, during an era when bibles were expensive, handwritten documents worth their weight in gold and liable to be stolen.

Eventually, in the second half of the 17th century, such ‘bible-boxes’ were repurposed or the design was taken and improved, and the first incarnation of the writing-box appeared on the scene, as a rectangular box with a sloping lid. The box held papers and the sloping lid was the writing surface. They looked a bit like this:

This bible-box with a sloping lid for reading and writing dates from 1673

Such boxes provided a ‘desk on the move’ for such people as merchants, members of the clergy and professional men of the turn of the 18th century. But pretty soon you’ll see a big problem with these boxes.

They’re not squared off.

In the blocky world of the 1700s, where squarish chests and trunks and boxes were stacked onto the rooves of carriages and sent rattling and bumping halfway across Europe and America, a box with an irregular, sloping lid was difficult to pack and wasted space when it came time for people to pack up their new, 2hp fourwheeled carriage for the drive from London to Bath in 1725. A better and more practical design was needed.

As the 1700s progressed, some smart fellow realised that if he sliced a rectangle in half, diagonally, and moved the cutting-line so that it was slightly off, when this was applied to a box, when the lid was opened and laid down flat, a complete, compact writing-slope could be created for anyone who wanted to use it. When business was done, the slope was simply folded up into a neat little box. Such was the basic form of the writing box for the next two hundred years.

A writing box from 1790. Note the diagonal cut on the side of the box which would allow it to be opened up to present a sloped writing-surface for the user, and the spare drawer in the side of the box for storing writing-equipment

Once the form of the box was established and the basic design had been finalised, writing boxes became wildly popular. Maybe people in their wigs, tricorne hats and long coats lined up outside the local carpenter’s shop at 4:30 in the morning to get the new iBox 1.1 in 1730 or something.

Such was the popularity of the writing box that they started being used by and for everyone and everything. Their practicality and portability allowed them to be carried on journeys, on long sea-voyages, on military campaigns, scientific and geographic expeditions and even for a trip out of town to visit the Duke for the weekend shooting-party. It was during this time that writing boxes became fine pieces of craftsmanship, handmade by cabinetmakers, carpenters and skilled artisans. They ranged from sturdy, utilitarian pieces with brass-edgings to protect the wooden corners from damage…

…to exquisite, five-star models with inlaying on the outside of the case, brass handles, beautiful leather writing-slopes and lots of secret compartments:

As time progressed, writing boxes only became more and more popular and people from all walks of life, both men and women, carried them around for their own personal use. Unlike a desk which was a piece of furniture that anybody used, a writing box was considered a personal and private accessory, like a woman’s handbag or a man’s briefcase. Only your most personal and important documents or necessities were stored within its sides.

In trying to understand why writing boxes lasted so long, one has to understand the nature of correspondence, communication and just good-old-fashioned pen-pushing back in the “good old days”. Even in the third quarter of the 19th century, writing boxes remained essential pieces of travelling kit and they were essential when you consider what they were used for.

Why, for example, were writing-boxes carried everywhere? Surely it was easier to carry a pen?

Well…the first practical fountain pens didn’t finally show up until around 1895. Before then, a dip-pen and inkwell was the only way to go. Before you could get ink that was bottled in safe, screw-top, leakproof bottles, a travelling inkwell, which had a lid that locked securely and a rubber or leather seal to prevent leakage, was the only ink supply you were likely to get. And with the dip-pen shaft came the little box of nibs or ‘pens’ as they were called then, that went with it. This was a lot of things to carry around in your pocket when all you wanted to do was write “c u back @ home 2nite” on the back of your Victorian calling-card at King’s Cross Station in London.

Writing boxes therefore carried everything that you needed to do business. Mostly though, they were used for correspondence. Most likely, their contents included seals and sealing-wax, stamps, a couple of envelopes, notepaper, nibs or quills and a pen-shaft. All writing-boxes also had a dedicated slot or alcove where a sealed inkwell would sit. Such wells usually came with the box as a set.

Apart from the fact that writing on the move was rather tricky before the invention of the fountain pen, the fact of the matter was that a lot of Victorians and Georgians carried around a frightful amount of paper with them, especially when travelling. Before the age of the electric telegraph in the 1840s and 50s, sending a letter was easy. Receiving a reply could take months! To cope with likely memory-loss, most people wrote two letters! One for themselves and one to send to their friend or member of their family. That’s why all those old-fashioned desks have those pidgeon-holes. When it took three months to get a reply, you wanted to be damn sure you remembered what you mentioned in your letter in the first place! This accounts for why writing-boxes had so many cubbyholes and storage-spaces underneath the writing-slopes.

The Victorian Writing Box

Writing boxes in all honesty, probably didn’t die out until well into the 20th century and each era had its own special designs of writing-boxes. Elaborate Victorian boxes looked very different from their Stuart grandparents in the 1660s, since the Victorians were communicating faster with more people and had more papers and documents to store. Telegrams and letters meant that news moved faster and secrets had to be kept even safer. While secrecy was still important and it wasn’t uncommon for such boxes to have secret compartments, emphasis moved more to storage and organisation than anything else.

Here is a series of photos detailing what a writing box belonging to a businessman or other wealthy professional who did a good deal of travelling, would have looked like in the 1880s up to the turn of the 20th century:

Typical in design of most boxes from the middle-Georgian era up to the turn of the 20th century, this three-fold writing box is representative of the fine, top-quality boxes made during the the heyday of this unique piece of office-equipment. Swathed in black leather on the outside and navy blue leather inside, this box measures 10.5in. wide by 6.5in. high and 15in. long. It is fitted with brass hinges, propping hinges, locks and a folding handle on the lid.

Unlocking the box and raising the lid reveals the three smooth panels of ivory which collectively were called an “aide memoire” (Latin. Literally ‘Memory Aide’) which was basically a really fancy notebook for you to jot down any quick notes that you needed to remember, with a pencil. These pencil-marks could later be erased with the wipe of a damp cloth. The dark blue leather is also visible along with the pen-tray and the two boxes for “LIGHT” (matches) and “INK” (a travelling inkwell).

When opened, the underside of the lid reveals compartments for storing papers as well as sleeves for holding the writing box’s original desktop implements, made of elephant-tusk ivory:

This panel on the underside of the lid slides into a recess behind it so that the top of the box can close and lock smoothly down upon the part below it. The ivory utensils comprise of a letter-opener, a paper-folder, an old pencil (sadly, not made of ivory!) and an ivory-shafted parchment-scraping knife, used to remove dried ink from paper by scraping the edge of the knifeblade over the parchment to remove the stained paper-fibres. The black, leather sheath is marked with “JOSEPH RODGERS & SONS / CUTLERS TO HER MAJESTY”. The Joseph Rodgers company was a famous manufacturer of cutlery, ranging from first-class silverware to paperknives to fine gentlemen’s grooming equipment (err…straight razors!).

The paper or parchment-folder (the thin piece of ivory above the pencil) is an interesting implement used by only a few people today…mostly book-restorers and bookbinders…and which was used to help fold letters and handmade envelopes back in the 18th and 19th centuries. Modern envelopes are a relatively new invention and before their arrival, most letters were themselves folded into their own, handmade envelopes before the whole thing was sealed with wax, addressed and posted. A paper-folder such as that one was used to make sure that the lines and folds of the letter were clean and crisp and as tight as possible, so that it could be folded up to make its own envelope.

Removing the pen-tray from between the “LIGHT” and “INK” boxes reveals the secret compartment underneath (which these boxes were famous for having), which served as extra storage-space for writing necesities such as nibs, extra pen-shafts, sealing-wax and sealing-stamps. Postage-stamps might also be stored down there.

Modern matchsticks as we know them today, were invented in the 1820s and they were soon given their own little boxes in writing boxes, along with their partners, the travelling inkwell:

These matches are the original strike-anywhere ‘vesta’ matches. The inkwell has had a modern, plastic insert put inside it to replace the original liner (probably made of either glass or ceramic) which has been lost over the last hundred or so years. Matchboxes like the one pictured also came with a specially inbuilt striking-surface and match-holder to put the lit match in while lighting a cigarette or, as was probably more common, lighting a candle or a stick of sealing wax:

The match-holder is the small, round hole in the bottom right of the matchbox, below the striking-surface.

Another famous feature of all writing boxes was that the leather writing-slopes had leaves which could be lifted up to reveal extra storage for paper underneath. And this one is no exception:

Another common feature on boxes such as this was the catch on the bottom leaf of the writing-slope, to prevent the leaf from falling open when the box was folded up and locked:

This particular box was manufactured by the Toulmin & Gale Company of London and dates to about 1885-1890 and it’s part of my personal collection of writing instruments and paraphernalia. It was also the inspiration for this article.

Writing Boxes Today

Once an essential piece of luggage for anyone travelling further than six feet from a desk or a public inkwell, writing boxes eventually died out as practical pieces of office-equipment and convenient desks-in-a-box during the 20th century. The invention of the fountain pen and the growing popularity of the mechanical typewriter meant that it was easier to write and correspond on the move without carrying around what would soon become a historical curiosity. As reservoir fountain pens became cheaper and more widely available, boxes such as the one above were soon forgotten. Their very historical significance was forgotten the moment the latest Parker or Sheaffer or Waterman hit the shelves of stationers’ shops all over the world and many were shoved away into attics, basements or just plain thrown out. For that reason, they can be treasured and valuable antiques today, worth anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. Many writing-boxes were simply trashed, smashed and thrashed, their locks broken, leaves ripped out, inkwells smashed or lost and their secret compartments destroyed. Some were repurposed as sewing-boxes, piggybanks, nick-nack nooks and other, more practical things.

Many of the surviving examples from the Georgian or Victorian era, such as the ones featured in this article, are more often than not, locked away in museums behind glass cases where people can see them and appreciate them from a distance. Boxes of a quality such as the one in my collection are quite rare and are usually museum-pieces. Boxes which are as in good a condition as mine and which as complete as mine are rarer still – many of them have all their utensils broken, broken up or just plain lost over the fifty or more years since these boxes were ever used as desks on the move.

If you own a writing box such as one that might be featured in this article, be it one that you bought at an antiques shop or which you inherited from family…Look after it. They are rare and beautiful pieces of writing history which should be treasured for centuries to come.

Haven’t done one of these in a while. A post about that most boring and yawn-inducing of subjects, a topic bound to alleviate even the most hardcore of insomniacs from their troubles…the fountain pen.

Many people see fountain pens in movies, in magazines, at other peoples’ houses, or somewhere out in public, in the hand of a fellow writing something down in a cafe, or at the office. Sooner or later, a few of these people will start thinking that they’d like a fountain pen of their own. Only…they don’t really know where to find one…

So, if you want a fountain pen, either as a special gift or as an everyday writing instrument, where and how do you go about looking for one? And, having found their secret lair, how do you infiltrate it and decide which pens are the best for you?

Fountain pens, by their very nature, are highly personal posessions. A Bic Cristal is no-more personal than a plastic coffee-cup and retains as much sentiment as a tissue-paper retains water. Fountain pens, on the other hand, can literally last for decades…and will certainly be around for a lot longer than any time that you’d be on this earth for.

With that in mind, selecting and buying a fountain pen is a bit like buying a car. It’s a slow, careful and involved process, a lesson in patience, attention to detail and product-knowledge.

What to Know

Before buying a fountain pen, you need to know a few things about yourself, first. Chief among these are:

– How will you use this pen? Is it an everyday writing-instrument? Is it a ceremonial thing, to be brought out at weddings to sign registries, cheques and wills?

– Have you used a fountain pen before? Yes? Then you might know a bit more about what will suit you. No? Then move on to…

– What’s your writing like? Big? Small? Cursive? Curly? Print? The size and style of your handwriting will determine what type of fountain pen is best for you. Unlike ballpoint pens, no two fountain pens are exactly alike, and picking one that fits your handwriting comfortably is an odessy like trying to find the Holy Grail.

– What is your budget? If you’re already used to fountain pens, you might like to spend a bit more to get a really nice one. But if you’re starting out, a cheaper fountain pen that you won’t cry over if you lose it, might be a better option. There seems to be a huge misconception these days that fountain pens are hideously expensive, starting at a million bucks and skyrocketing up from there. This is absolutely NOT true. Fountain pens can be found at any price, it’s just a matter of what you’re willing to pay and the quality you’re expecting.

Picking Your Pen

Having decided that you would seriously like to buy a fountain pen, the next hurdle is to decide on WHAT pen to buy. There are thousands of fountain pens out there which could start at $10, or could start at $10,000. What brand or pen-maker do you want to focus on? What is important to you? Weight? Style? Comfort? Ease-of-Use?

Things that will help you decide what pen is best for you, include…

– Style. Do you want an older pen? A newer one? Something a bit retro and 30s Art Deco, or something that just rolled off the production-line? Something that’s made of metal and all futuristic? Or something that looks like what your grandfather used, for that vintage touch?

– Weight. Fountain pens are made out of LOTS of materials. Steel, silver, gold, celluloid, plastic, casein, ebonite, wood…need I name more? The type of material used to make the body of the pen will affect its weight, and therefore, comfort. If you’re wanting to own a pen which you’ll use for regular writing, you might want to pick one that’s lighter. Instead of wood or metal, pick one made of rubber or plastic.

– Overall Size. Fountain pens can be as thin as a drinking-straw, and as thick as a salami. The overall girth and length of the instrument is important. If you’ve got bigger hands, a larger, chunkier pen like a Montblanc 149 might fit more comfortably. If your hands are smaller, a slimmer number such as a Waterman Phileas might be more comfortable.

Brand Focus

Having decided on the general size and style that you want to go for, picking a good brand now becomes important. There are literally dozens of fountain pen manufacturers out there making pens of all styles and price-ranges. Some of the more well-known pen-makers include Parker, Sheaffer, Waterman, Visconti, Montblanc, Lamy, Rotring, Conklin and OMAS. You should take your time to sift through all the available options. Some pen-manufacturers only make really expensive pens, but others make pens of all price-ranges. If money is no object, look at everything you can find. If money is an object, limit your field to pen-manufacturers that produce pens at a variety of price-ranges.

Keep in mind that fountain pens have been around for over a hundred years. There are lots of defunct pen-manufacturers with perfectly functional vintage and antique pens still floating around the market. Some of these older pen-makers include such notables as Wahl-Eversharp, Mabie-Todd, Onoto and Morrison. And there are also hundreds of discontinued pen-models made by hundreds of well-established companies that are still available for purchase. How about a Parker Duofold from the 1920s? A 1950s Parker ’51’? A Sheaffer Balance from the 1930s? A Waterman Ideal from the 1910s? If you want a more vintage pen, keep an eye out for stuff like that.

Where to Buy?

You’ve figured out the brand, size, style, nib-type and the hundred and one other little tiddly things that you should know about fountain pens before buying one, and now you want to know…where the hell do I find one of these things?

First up, a stationery shop or a news-agent is not your best bet as a hunting-ground. Like it or hate it, fountain pens have drifted into the sort of “Novelty” area of desk accessories in the last thirty or forty years, and most news-agencies and stationery-shops are unlikely to stock fountain pens. If they do, they won’t be the really nice ones that you want, they’ll be the cheap, disposable kind. This might still be useful to you, however, if you’re thinking of getting a simple fountain pen just to give a trial-run before looking into pens more seriously.

The most obvious place to go to is a pen-shop or a large-sized stationery or office-supplies store. Places like Staples or OfficeWorks or any of those big, aircraft-hangar-sized stationery & office-supply shops may have a pretty decent selection of mid-priced and cheap fountain pens from a variety of manufacturers. It’s in places like this that you’re also likely to find the cheaper pen-models made by established manufacturers like Parker, Sheaffer and Waterman.

Pen shops are the top place to go. A good pen shop should be brightly lit with nice, easily-visible display-cases with the pen-brands clearly signposted all over the place. Head in and start browsing. Pen shops are also handy places to buy notebooks, diaries, ink and some general stationery-products such as sealing-wax, calligraphy-sets, envelopes and address-books.

Feel free to speak to the staff at the pen-shop. Any good pen-seller worth his salt, will be knowledgeable about the various brands and models of pens that he sells and will be able to help you make an informed choice on what you want.

Like I said before, buying a fountain pen is much like buying a car; you don’t just go out and buy it sight unseen and hand untouched. A good pen-shop should allow you to pick out a selection of fountain pens and perform what is known as a ‘dip-test’. A dip-test means that the clerk or shopkeeper will give you a notepad and a bottle of ink for you to dip and write with the fountain pens that you’re interested in. This is important as it allows you to see exactly how the pen performs. In some shops, there are even specific ‘sample’ pens placed aside, deliberately for this purpose.

If, for any reason, the shopkeeper or clerk won’t allow you to try a ‘dip-test’…move on to something else. Don’t waste your time arguing, just remember that the guy behind the counter just talked himself out of a potential sale. You wouldn’t buy a car without driving it first, and neither should you buy a fountain pen without first seeing how it writes.

Online Buying

Pen-shops are non-existent! They’re staffed by idiots! The prices send you to the hospital suffering from heart-failure! The local office-supply shop is staffed by clueless teenagers who wouldn’t know the up-side of a pen if you stabbed them in the eye with it! Damn it!…Now what?

Ironically, there are dozens of places online where you can buy fountain pens! The most obvious places to start are on pen-company websites, but there are also the smaller, independent pen-maker websites that you can visit. Some people (called pen-turners) manufacture their own, custom-made pens using a variety of materials and sell them online. If you’re looking for something unique, try there.

I mentioned vintage pens earlier. These pens can be up to a hundred years old. How is it that they still work today? This is made possible by the dedication and skill of the dozen or so expert pen-repairers in the world. Fountain pen repair and restoration is a niche market, but there is a solid community of these folks who accept, repair and re-sell fountain pens. Some of these repairers sell fountain pens via their websites, whether they be vintage models or brand-new pens. Buying from people like this will ensure that you’re dealing with professionals who know their product and that what you’re buying will actually work when you fill it with ink.

Lastly but not least…the electronic flea-market. eBay.

Buying fountain pens on eBay is an experience, to say the least. While you can find some amazing things there, keep in mind a few tricks and traps which can snare you and leave you crying in the corner. First, buy from sellers with a good reputation. Some pen-repairers have eBay accounts where they sell their restored vintage fountain pens. If you want peace of mind, deal with these folks. Some people are pen-collectors who want to sell some of their collection because it’s getting too big. As with any collecting niche, fellow collectors hate being ripped off, so you’re likely to get some very honest answers here to any questions you ask.

Then there are people who are clueless about what they’re selling. This can be a gold-mine, or it can be a minefield. Some sellers genuinely have absolutely no bloody idea what they’re selling…they just want to get rid of it! You can get some nice bargains here, but be sure to check the descriptions and photos for any signs of damage. Be mindful of…

– Cracks.
– Chips.
– Bent, cracked, or otherwise broken nibs.
– Bent filling-levers. This is a sign that someone tried to force the filling-mechanism on a lever-filler. This pen will need to be re-sacced before use.
– Missing parts.
– General quality and condition.
– Operational condition. Does the pen fill and write properly?

Some sellers *know* what they’re selling…and WILL try to rip you off. Best to stay away from folks like this, but if you really want what they’re selling, be mindful of various phrases that might jump out at you. In fact, any person on eBay may use these phrases, and it’s best to know what hidden meaning they contain…

“Fills with water”

That’s nice. But I need a pen, not a teapot. Does it fill with INK? And does it WRITE? Just because a pen fills with water and empties with water is no guarantee that it will work properly. Only ink and a writing-sample will tell you that.

“Rare!”

Seller: I’ve NEVER seen one of these before. Don’t let this fool you. Just because it’s advertised as ‘rare’ doesn’t mean it IS rare. If every pen in the world was ‘rare’, you’d never own one.

“Value $500/$1000/$25000. For you? $50”

The pen might be perfectly legitimate, but don’t be fooled. Unless it’s encrusted with diamonds and gold…no fountain pen is worth that kind of money. The ONLY time there might be exceptions to this rule are with limited edition or particularly old pens (when I mean old, I mean at least 90 years).

“12/14/18kt gold nib”.

Most honest pen-sellers or clueless sellers will mention this fact as a matter of common courtesy and habit. Nothing wrong with that. You want to know what you’re buying, and they’re telling you.

Where it becomes a problem is when an unscrupulous seller tells you that the nib is 14kt gold and demands a ‘Buy it Now’ price of $2,500. Gold is expensive, yes…but it’s not THAT expensive. Truth be told, the amount of gold in a nib is worth $15…MAX. Don’t be dragged in by this. They want you to think that this is REALLY SPECIAL…it isn’t. MILLIONS of fountain pens have 14kt gold nibs and it has absolutely NO affect on the value.

“Never used”

Perhaps not by you, the seller, but if it’s a second-hand pen, take for granted that it has been used and that it *may* need some professional attention.

“Genuine/Authentic”

Be careful of sellers who are trying to rip you off by selling FAKE fountain pens. Montblanc is HIGHLY prone to this. Keep a few things in mind…

– Montblanc nibs are 14 or 18kt gold. They do NOT say “IPG” (“Iridium Point, Germany”) on the nibs and they are NOT made of steel. The nibs are 14 or 18kt SOLID GOLD, not gold-plate-on-steel.

– The Montblanc Star should be PERFECTLY centered on the top of the cap. If it isn’t…fake.

– The pen (If fairly new) should have a serial-number electronically engraved onto the clip-band. If not…fake.

– The pretty swirling patterns found on Montblanc nibs is mechanically pressed, not engraved by hand. If the patterning is off-center or rough in appearance or in any way suspicious…fake.

– The word ‘PIX’ should be stamped on the UNDERSIDE of the pocket-clip. If you don’t see a photo proving this fact…advance cautiously. This could be an older pen without this authenticity safeguard on it, or it could be a fake.

– Montblanc pens may have ‘Germany’, ‘Made in Germany’, ‘W. Germany’ or ‘Made in W. Germany’ on them. Older pens up to the early 1990s will have the latter two markings, more modern pens will have the former two. ‘W. Germany’ is WEST GERMANY, where Montblanc was located, before the reunification of Germany after the collapse of the USSR. Some fraudsters will try and trick you and type in stuff like “Made in Gormany” on their boxes and hope you won’t notice (I have seen this, you’d be amazed how stupid people will think you are).

“Pen functions/writes well / Working Condition”

This will generally mean that once you’ve got the pen with you, it should work right away. If doubtful, ask the seller to post a writing-sample or ask him/her how well the pen fills and empties with ink.

Pen-Sellers Jargon

As fountain pens are rather something of a niche market, some online pen-sellers may use specific jargon (slang) that you may not be familiar with. Here’s a few of the more common terms.

“BCHR/BHR”. Black (Chased) Hard Rubber. A pen made of Hard Rubber (ebonite) which may or may not have ‘chasing’ on it. Chasing is heat-pressed patterning on the cap and barrel of the pen. Pens of this kind were manufactured from the very earliest days of fountain pens up to the mid 1920s. SOME modern pen-makers (such as Conklin and Bexley) still make pens this way.

Similarily, there is also “RCHR/RHR”, which is Red (Chased) Hard Rubber. Same concept, different colour.

Flex/Flexy/Flexible/Semi-flex/Wet Noodle. Some pen-sellers will use these terms to describe nibs. Flexible-nibbed pens were very popular from the 1880s to the 1930s. It means that the nib will flex (bend) according to the amount of pressure placed on the writing-point. This produces lines of varying thicknesses. Thin (light pressure) or broad (heavy pressure). If you do calligraphy, you might like a pen like this. Flex-nibbed pens are NOT for beginners as they can take a bit of getting used to.

NOS/NIB. New Old Stock and New In Box. This means pens which were once new, but which were never sold commercially and which should still have all their papers and boxes with them. If you’re after particularly nice pens, keep an eye out for those acronyms.

Wet/Dry. A seller’s description might say that a pen writes ‘wet’ or ‘dry’. This relates to amount of ink that the nib lays on the paper. A ‘wet’ pen lays down a liberal amount of ink that may take some time to dry. A ‘dry’ pen lays down ink sparingly, which will mean it dries quicker. If you’re a left-handed writer, a dry-writing pen might be best.

Sprung. A seller selling an imperfect pen might use this term to describe the nib or the clip. A nib or a clip that has been ‘sprung’ is one that has been bent out of its original position. This IS repairable, so don’t freak out!

Sac/Bladder. From about 1900 until the 1950s, the majority of fountain pens filled with rubber or plastic ink-sacs (also called bladders). Over time, these can wear out, ossify (harden up) or simply just lose their elasticity due to overuse. Sacs in this condition must be replaced, fortunately, it’s a relatively simple job that any pen-restorer will be able to do.

Buying Pens at Flea-Markets

No pen shops, prices too high, unhelpful staff, no places nearby to buy pens, can’t buy pens online because you promised your wife/husband/parents that you wouldn’t or you can’t because your cards are maxed out. What now?

If you have one nearby, visit a flea-market, also called a trash-and-treasure market, a bric-a-brac market or a car-boot sale. The folks at places like this often just have a whole heap of junk at home that they want to get rid of or have collections of things that they want to trim down. You can find some amazing bargains here, if you know where, when and how to look. Here are some guidelines about searching for pens at flea-markets.

Turn up EARLY

‘The Early Bird Gets the Worm’ might be a tired and worn-out saying, but in this case…important. Collectors of ANYTHING, from stamps to records to CDs to…fountain pens…swarm around flea-markets like bees around honey. If you expect to find anything of quality and value at the flea-market, you MUST arrive early. If the market opens at six o’clock in the morning and you stroll in casually at nine…go and have breakfast, because you’ve missed the boat. Hardcore treasure-hunters will arrive before the sun’s up to scour through everything like a Victorian mudlark on the River Thames at low tide. Arriving early at the market means that you get FIRST PICK of any and all pens that are to be found there that day.

Tool Up

Bring along a few tools to help make your pen-hunting easier. Essentials include cash in small denominations, a jeweller’s loupe or a magnifying-glass, a small notepad and a bottle of fountain pen ink. If you’re arriving early and it’s dark…bring a decent flashlight/torch along with you as well.

The Hunt is On…

It’s six in the morning, it’s cold enough to freeze the nads off a brass monkey, you’ve got a hundred bucks in $5 notes, a magnifying glass strong enough to read microfilm and a flashlight powerful enough to fry eggs on. What now?

Really…it’s up to luck. First thing’s first. Don’t expect to find anything. Let’s face it…chances are, you may go there every weekend for a month and find nothing, so never get too excited. Secondly, know where and how to look.

Don’t waste your time with stalls or tables at the market which have absolutely nothing to do with pens. Unless of course, you’re looking for a new copy of Dante’s “Inferno” as well as a nice pen. Move quickly from stall to stall and scan everything carefully. Keep an eye out for display-cases, big boxes of crap and tables covered with all kinds of nicknacks. Pens are TINY things and they can hide almost ANYWHERE.

Time must be taken to find them. Knowing the likely places to search is important. Due to their size, people selling pens are likely to put them in glass-lidded display-cases so that they’re easily visible, but they may be buried or obscured by those cheap Mickey Mouse wristwatches, that 1912 Waltham pocket-watch or the collection of raunchy, 1890s postcards. Once you’ve found those display-cases, boxes, stands or cabinets, take your time to examine them thoroughly. The pen of your dreams might be hiding underneath the stack of Playboy magazines next to the shoebox of junk thoughtfully laid on the seller’s table.

Having found a stall or table that sells pens, remain calm and self-controlled. A hint of excitement and the price is likely to shoot up, or it’ll never come down when you want to try and haggle. It’s always best to ask the seller if you can handle his offerings, as some people can be a mite nervous of shoppers snatching stuff and running off with it or breaking it. Once you have the pen in your hands, check for a few things…

– Brand. Is the pen-name one that you recognise? If you want a quality pen with a good reputation, pick one with a reputable brand such as Parker, Waterman, Sheaffer, Conway-Stewart, Morrison, Wahl, Wahl-Eversharp, Conklin, etc. These were the “First Tier” pens (pens of best quality). Below them were brands such as “Mentmore” which produced mid-ranged “second tier’ pens and then there are ‘third tier’ pens such as Platignum and Summit.

– Quality. Check for damage. Loose cap-rings, bent or loose clips, missing clips, cracks, dings, bite-marks, chips, abrasions, fading, banana-ing (where the pen is bent like a banana), oliving (on BCHR pens where the sun has leeched the black from the pen, leaving it olive green) and any other imperfections.

– Nib. Check the nib for cracks. Make sure the tines of the nib are aligned and that the tipping is whole and intact. A bent nib IS REPAIRABLE, so don’t throw it out if it is. An untipped nib can be re-tipped. A pen with a tine missing *may* be salvagable if the right nib can be found for it (but here, you’re really skating on thin ice). Cheaper pens will have simple, steel nibs. Steer clear of these. There’s a reason nibs were made of gold…they don’t rust. Nibs made of stainless steel, however, are safe to buy.

– Check the filling-system. Chances are, pens that you find at flea-markets are the ones that have been in grandpa’s desk for fifty years. And grandpa died fifty years ago, so nobody’s touched them since then. In most cases, the filling-system will need to be serviced. If the rest of the pen is in good condition, buy it and then send it to a pen-restorer to fix the filler-system.

You’ve found a nice pen. It’s what you want, it’s in good condition (or it may need a bit of fixing) and you want to buy it. You attract the stallholder’s attention and indicate the pen.

Two things can happen here.

One: The price is reasonable, you knock it down a bit, or you pay the full amount, and walk off with the pen. Everybody wins.

Two: The price is massive, by this I mean $150 for a non-functioning 1920s Waterman. There are two main reasons for this high price. AGE and…GOLD.

People frequently believe that because something is really old, it’s automatically incredibly valuable. It isn’t. If it was literally a one-of-a-kind and a hundred years old…then yes. But if it’s one in a million and it’s a hundred years old…no. Rarity makes value, not age.

Similiarly, if the pen-nib is gold, this may prompt the seller to jack up the price. Again, this is unjustified, as I explained earlier, the gold counts for a miniscule amount of the pen’s already rather diminutive value. IF the pen was WORKING and in MINT condition (or at least very good condition), then a high price might be understandable, but if not, then as a rule, don’t bother paying more than $50 for any pen you find at a flea-market. It’s not worth it, otherwise.

Well, that just about wraps it up. Hopefully this guide will help you in finding and selecting your very first fountain pen.

The Subject of Operation

There are all kinds of companies which used to make all kinds of interesting things, but which have since been lost to history. Like Burma-Shave, Rexall, Carter’s (That’s CARTER’S, not Cartier’s!) and Waltham. Add to this list one of the most famous pen-manufacturers in the world: Mabie Todd & Co.

Mabie Todd & Company was founded in New York City in 1860 as a manufactuary of writing supplies, gradually moving into the writing instruments market by making dip pens and pencils. In the 1880s and 90s, with the start of the fountain pen industry, led by giants such as Waterman and Parker, Mabie Todd & Co started making these newfangled ‘fountain pens’ as well, something that continued for several years right into the 1940s and 50s.

This last week, I was very fortunate to purchase an early Mabie Todd & Co fountain pen, a first generation “Swan” model. The Swan pen was made starting in the 1890s and it represented the best quality pens that the company made. Below “Swan” were the “Blackbird” and “Swallow” model pens.

My pen is an early 1900s Mabie Todd & Co “Swan”, made ca. 1908. It’s made of BCHR and it’s an ED pen with a threaded section and barrel and a slip-on cap and you’re going waaaait a minute what the hell are all these acronyms for?

“BCHR” stands for “Black Chased Hard Rubber”, hard rubber being the stuff that all early fountain pens were made of, black being the colour, and chasing being the heat-imprinted patterns that were rolled onto the pen-barrels when they were made. “ED” stands for “eyedropper”. These early fountain pens, such as the one which is the subject of this article, did not come with their own, inbuilt filling-systems like later pens. To fill them up, you had to unscrew them, fill up an eyedropper with ink, and then drip the ink into the pen-barrel before screwing the section and nib-assembly back onto the pen to write with it.

The pen was in surprisingly good condition for something that was over one hundred years old. BCHR is very prone to “oliving” (turning brown and green) if it’s left out in the sunlight. The sunlight leeches the black out of the rubber which was introduced into it when the rubber was being vulcanised for penmaking. This pen had very little noticable oliving, mostly around the cap, but thankfully, that was all.

Structurally, the pen was perfect. No cracks, chips, dings, scratches, gouges…even the smooth panel on the barrel reserved for engraving was perfect, unblemished and smooth. The cap, of the slip-on variety (pens this old did not have screw-on caps) was of smooth black hard rubber with a gold cap-jewel, a gold cap-band and a very large gold pocket-clip. The cap-band has the letters “A.E.E.” engraved handsomely on it. Here is the cap:

The nib of this pen featured a very unique “over-under” or “double” feed. The O/U feed was a common design-feature on very early fountain pens; feeds were not yet advanced enough to deliver enough ink to the nib, so early fountain pens had double feeds to compensate for a lack of inkflow. If ink refused to go along one feed, then it would flow along the other feed, instead.

This is the pen with the cap off and posted on the back of the barrel, which is specially shaped to take the cap:

You might be able to just see the over-under feed on the nib, on the left side of the photograph.

Restoring the Pen

Enough about the aesthetics and the mechanics. What about the restoration!?

Okay maybe “restoration” isn’t the right word. Think of it more as “repair”. I didn’t really restore anything: The cap is still olived and the nib is still a bit grimy…but I did manage to return this beauty to its original working condition. Huzzah!!

Unfortunately, doing this was far from easy. Whoever last owned this pen filled it up with blue ink, put it away in a drawer and then promptly died, or forgot about the pen entirely. The result was that the ink dried inside the pen. Now you hear a lot of people say: “If you don’t use the ink in your pens for a long time, empty the pen and wash it”.

Why?

This is exactly why. When the ink dries…it turns to CEMENT. This pen was jammed shut so tightly, you couldn’t break into it with C4 explosives! The ink had gotten into all the seams and threads inside the pen-barrel and it had dried and glued the whole thing shut. You could look like a pro wrestler and you still wouldn’t have been able to get that pen open to refill it, without cracking it in half like a pretzel first. Regrettably, hard rubber can be very brittle. Hours of twisting and wiggling on my part yielded nothing in terms of the pen opening up. It soon became painfully clear that the way to get into this pen was not through muscles and force, but with patience.

Old eyedropper pens work in the following manner: You unscrew the section and nib-assembly from the barrel. You fill the barrel with ink using an eyedropper (hence the name), then, you screw the section and nib-assembly back onto the pen and write. In this instance, the section, thanks to the blue glue cement inside, was completely unmovable. No amount of squeezing and twisting would get it to budge. To remedy this, I filled a shot-glass with water and a bit of soap and dunked the pen into it, from the nib right up to the top of the section. I removed it every hour or so, to tap it and shake it to get some of the ink out…and boy was there ever a lot of it! Bright royal blue ink! And it kept coming and coming and coming for the next twelve hours! Whoever used this pen before me really loved him some blue ink!

Finally fed up, I changed the water, added some fresh liquid detergent, dunked in the pen and left it overnight. This was necessary, partially because my wrists and arms were so tired from trying to shake and twist open the pen, and partially because the soap and water needs time to seep into the pen and loosen up any leftover ink.

The next morning…today, rather…I removed the pen from the water and wiped it down. Very carefully, I unscrewed the section. Gently, at first. Then, I felt it move. I had to be very very careful opening this pen: there is a very thin line with hard rubber, between sufficient force and accidently crushing the pen, shattering it, snapping it in half and having a pile of antique crap in your hands. I kept unscrewing and unscrewing. I had to turn several times to get the section off the barrel, because by design, eyedropper pens have very long threads (they have to, to prevent leaking). With the pen disassembled, I filled it up with water to flush it out one last time, and then filled it with ink, using an eyedropper that I bought specially for this historic occasion.

The disassembled Swan eyedropper fountain pen. The slip-on cap is on the left, the barrel is on the right. In the middle is the successfully-removed section & nib-assembly. That really long thin black thing you see sticking out the back of the nib is the feed

The pen worked absolutely flawlessly. No dripping, no skipping, no scratchiness, no fading or anything. Perfect inkflow. Not bad for a 102 year old fountain pen, eh? It now has pride of place in my collection.

Special Note:

Pen repairers, collectors and users are divided over the method of soaking a BHR pen in water. Some feel that this is dangerous and that it could damage the colour of the pen, while others actively encourage the use of water to clear out a pen. I’ve used the water-soaking method before without any ill effects and I’m of the opinion that this method is safe to use with antique hard rubber fountain pens, provided that the water isn’t too hot.

You found one in a drawer, your crazy Uncle Max gave you one as a birthday present, granny gave you one for being a good little boy, you found one on the bus, or maybe, juuust maybe, you actually went out and bought…your very first fountain pen! Yeah? Aren’t you lucky? Ain’t you a happy little camper, huh?

But having found, been presented or bought your first fountain pen, you’re probably wondering…what is it? How does it work? What care does it need and how do I look after it? All those annoying little things that those pesky information-booklets with the pretty pictures don’t seem to cover! If you’ve just bought your first fountain pen, or if you’re asking these questions, this article is for you. Keep reading.

What is a ‘Fountain Pen’?

In the strictest definition of the term, a fountain pen is a writing-instrument which contains its own ink-suppy and delivery-system, which applies the ink to the page via a metal pen-point.

Using this definition, almost any pen in the world could be a fountain pen, yes, including that 20c Bic Cristal on your desk.

But the term ‘fountain pen’ as most people would recognise it, refers to a writing-instrument which uses water-based ink to put marks on paper, via a symmetrical, curved and tapering metal pen-point, made of either gold or steel. If this is what you have in front of you, or within your immediate neighbourhood, read on.

Parts of a Fountain Pen

“…the frilly bit underneath the gold pointy-bit next to the round metal doohickey…”

Bleh! Just as it’s important to know various key components of your car or your computer, it’s important to know the various components of your fountain pen, so that you don’t sound like a doofus when speaking to people on pen forums, pen shops or, if you ever go to one, a pen show. What are the various components of a fountain pen?

Starting from the outside and going in…

The CAP is the cylindrical lid that goes over the writing-point of your pen. Most caps will have at least one CAP BAND. These days, cap-bands are purely aesthetic, but 80-90 years ago, their purpose was to prevent the cap from cracking and splitting into pieces, if you accidently screwed the cap onto your pen too tight. Most fountain pen caps today still screw on, like modern bottle-lids. Such caps are called ‘threaded’ caps (the ‘threads’ are the little spiral grooves in the cap and on the pen).

Attached to the cap is the CLIP (also called a ‘pocket-clip’). The clip is there for you to clip your pen onto the cuff of your shirt-pocket. Be careful not to over-bend the clip, or you could damage it.

The main area of the pen (the rest of the outer cylinder) is called the BARREL. This is where you might find things like company logos, decorations, imprints and other such decorations.

Unscrew the cap of your fountain pen and put it aside.

Here I will pause for a moment to say that not all fountain pens have screw-on caps. Some pens have caps which click or ‘snap’ onto the pen. If you’re unsure if your pen unscrews or clicks the cap off, it’s best to twist first, and then pull, just in case. Twisting a click-on cap will not damage it, but pulling off a screw-on cap could cause significant damage. When handling fountain pens belonging to other people, most people will generally ask “Screw or pull?” (or words to that effect) to ascertain if the cap screws or pulls off of the pen-barrel.

With the cap removed, let’s have a closer look at your pen, starting from the tip, going down.

At the very tip of your pen is the TIPPING BALL. This little ball is made up of very hard metal, which is designed to let your pen write smoothly and to prevent friction-wear from damaging the nib. Traditionally, fountain pens were tipped with the metal known as ‘iridium’, but today, iridium (due to its rarity) is rarely used. Despite this, some nibs will still say “Iridium Point” purely for marketing fun.

Moving down from the tip is the nib itself, made up of two, symmetrical TINES. In the middle of the tines is the SLIT, which runs from the tipping-ball right down the nib to the BREATHER HOLE, which is a round hole in the middle of the nib.

Not all pens have breather holes, some do, some don’t. Not having a breather hole does not in any way indicate an inferior-quality pen. The point of the breather hole is to allow air and ink to move freely in and out of the pen. It’s also there to relieve pressure from writing and stopping the nib from developing cracks.

Directly underneath the nib is a black plastic thing, usually with all kinds of little frilly bits on it (if your pen is a modern one, that is, older pens may not have these). This is called the FEED. It is the feed’s job to deliver the ink from the ink-reservoir to the pen-point evenly and consistently. The frilly bits underneath the feed are the FINS. These are there to act as a barrier to catch any ink that might accidently flood out of the pen as a result of air-pressure changes (such as when you’re up in an airplane).

The whole nib assembly and the feed slot neatly into a grip called the SECTION. The nib and feed are generally held in the section purely by friction, without any glue or adhesives.

Assuming that your pen is a modern one, grasp the section now, and unscrew the barrel and remove it from the pen. Inside here, are more features.

Inside section, once the barrel is removed, you might see a little rod or tube, right in the middle of the section. This is called the NIPPLE (go ahead, laugh!). The nipple is there to hold the CONVERTER or an INK-CARTRIDGE in place. Most modern pens are converter or cartridge-fillers (usually abbreviated to ‘c/c fillers’).

Those are all the basic components of most modern fountain pens. Vintage fountain pens have more components such as BLIND CAPS (which are little caps at the end of the barrel which you unscrew), FILLING-LEVERS (which are found on the side of the barrel), PRESSURE-BARS and INK-SACS (Which are found inside the barrel, attached to the section-nipple). It’s not necessary to worry yourself about these bits and bobs of fountain pen anatomy, unless you’ve found yourself with an old-fashioned straight-sac filler fountain pen.

Care and Feeding of your Fountain Pen

Care and feeding of your fountain pen is like looking after a mechanical watch or an old-fashioned straight-razor. They need periodical care to function at their best. So, how do you look after a fountain pen?

Don’t Press!

If you’ve just bought a fountain pen and you’re used to using ballpoint pens all your life, the golden rule is NOT TO PRESS ON THE NIB. Fountain pen nibs can be fragile and may be easily damaged if not used the way they were intended. Fountain pens write purely by gravity and capillary action, whereas ballpoint pens write through friction. When writing with your fountain pen, you should apply as light a touch to the paper as you can. Pressing or digging into the page should not be necessary at all. If it is, your pen isn’t working.

Fountain pens should be fed a diet of proper fountain pen ink. Fountain pen ink is mostly water with various liquid colours added in. Do not feed your pen Iron Gall Ink, Chinese Ink, Indian Ink, Powdered Ink, Paint, Printer Ink, Artist’s Ink or any other kind of ink. This is not what they were designed to take. If you do, you could risk serious damage to your pen.

Fountain pen inks are widely available. Look for them in your stationery shops or office-supply shops. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a pen-shop somewhere in town. They’re bound to have a plentiful supply of fountain pen inks from a variety of brands in a multitude of glorious colours.

Occasionally wash your fountain pen to ensure that it functions properly. This generally involves filling and emptying your pen’s filling-system repeatedly with cold tap-water. Refrain from using hot water, as this could damage the pen. Lukewarm water is fine. For more intense cleaning, you may want to add a small amount of dishwashing soap or liquid ammonia to the water, but this is only for the really dirty pens which repeated water-rinsing has not been able to clean out.

Once the pen is washed, you can pretty much fill it up with ink and go right back to writing. Don’t forget that fountain pen inks are mostly water anyway, so a couple of drops of water extra won’t harm them. Some people panic about writing with wet pens, though. If you want your pen bone-dry before you fill it up, leave it nib-down in a drinking-glass overnight with tissue in the bottom of the glass, to leech out any leftover water.

Buying More Fountain Pens

Just like mechanical watches, fine wines, books and hardcore pornography, fountain pens have an inate ability to make you want to collect more of them. But where do you get them from!?

Fountain pens are available from a number of sources. The first stop is your local stationery shop. Just head in and ask for fountain pens. If not there, check your nearest arts & crafts shop. They might sell Parker or Sheaffer fountain pen calligraphy kits, which are good and cheap way to start with fountain pens.

Your best bet, of course, is your local pen shop. If you’re especially lucky, you’ll find a shop filled with friendly and knowledgable staff who could answer everything in this article, and even more! They’d be very happy to relieve you of your mone…I mean…assist you with selecting a fountain pen. Such shops generally also stock notebooks, blotting-paper, inks and other paraphernalia such as sealing-waxes and general desk-accessories.

If you can’t find a pen in a Bricks and Mortar location (generally abbreviated to “B&M”), then you can always search online. Believe it or not, there are still a number of people who use, service, sell, purchase and trade fountain pens all over the world. Some of these people sell fountain pens from their websites as a supplement to their income (read as: as a way to help them fund their next pen purchase!). Such people often have a wide range of pens for you to select from, at some very affordable prices. They will generally be very knowledgeable about their stock and will be happy to help.

Last but not least, there’s eBay. Care should be taken when buying pens on eBay, especially Montblanc pens, as these are frequently faked. One should do ample research of the pen that you desire to buy, before plunging into eBay to go hunting for it, armed with your virtual pith-helmet, shotgun and machete.

But I’ve left something out…yes, there’s even more places you can find pens! Try places such as flea-markets, antiques shops and garage-sales. Granted, most of the pens that you find in these places may not be in an immediately usable state, but with luck, a pen-repairman will happily relieve you of your newfound treasure, to return it in a few weeks’ time in working condition.

Types of Fountain Pens

There are, of couse, literally hundreds, dare I say it, thousands, of types of fountain pens out there. If you’re diving into the fountain pen pool for the first time, it’s best to know what you want, first. Online, the main fountain pen community can be found at www.fountainpennetwork.com, where you’ll find me as a member under ‘Shangas’. So, before you make like Betty Boop and dive into the inkwell, swing by the “FPN” with your questions and we’ll try to provide some answers.

If there was something about fountain pens that you wanted to know about but couldn’t find it here, maybe it’s in my fountain pens FAQ page.

For reasons that are unnecessary to elaborate on, I recently came into lawful posession of a Visconti ‘Ragtime’ limited edition fountain pen. It’s #1592 of a total of 1988 pieces (1988 being the year that Visconti was established).

When I decided I was going to get a Visconti, I never thought I’d seriously be getting a Limited Edition Ragtime, but I have to say that I wasn’t disappointed one bit, in the purchase that I finally made.

Presentation:

The pen comes in a handsome, rectangular, red leather box with its own bottle of Visconti-brand fountain pen ink. The box is neatly lined with soft cloth and there’s a small drawer underneath the pen-tray, where the information-booklet slips in neatly, discreetly and out of the way. The box-lid is spring-loaded and it all closes up with a very satisfying ‘snap!’. This is the kind of box that you could open up and put on your desk with the pen nestling snugly and securely inside it, between the sufficiently-padded jaws of the pen-rest.

Appearance:

The pen is very handsome and looks like a real modern classic. It sports fine, marbled-pattern plastic barrel and cap, with neat, gold bands around both; one band around the bottom of the barrel, two bands around the bottom of the cap. The cap has a pretty little gold ‘Jewel’ on the top, with ‘VISCONTI’ on it. The clip-band has the pen’s limited-edition number clearly marked on it, so that you know which pen in the lineup of 1988, you have in your hands.

The section is beautifully-polished gold, the nib is a firm, 14kt gold and writes a solid, fine line. All in all, the pen is a real piece of eyecandy, if it’s nothing else.

Filling-System:

The pen is a piston-filler, which is refreshingly different in this world of modern fountain pens which almost invariably take cartridges or screw or push-in converters. The piston-knob is accessible through the blind-cap at the end of the barrel. The knob is also gold, with little ‘V’s all around it. The pen fills smoothly and effortlessly and the blind-cap screws on with no troubles at all. The pen’s construction allows you to see the piston moving up and down inside the pen (if you hold it up to a strong-enough light-source), so that you can tell if the pen’s filling up or emptying out.

Weight and Balance:

This pen is delightfully light and comfortable to use for long, long stretches of writing. Posting the cap doesn’t seem to alter the pen’s balance in your hand at all, unlike some other pens, where the caps seem to be heavier than the rest of the pen, just on their own!

Writing Comfort:

The pen’s light, plastic body and the slippery, smooth nib make this pen a joy to write with. I could easily power through several pages of script before tiring out. Those who use fountain pens purely for those ‘special occasions’ instead of using them for daily writing, have no idea what kind of joy they’re missing out on…especially with a pen as comfortable as this!

Conclusion:

Stylish, classic, easy-to-use, light, comfortable and well-presented, this pen scores a 10/10 from me. The Visconti Ragtime LE is, in my opinion, a fountain pen user’s dream. Several people whom I’ve spoken to, have said that Visconti produce the best nibs, and I have to say that, having now experienced one for myself, they were right on the money with that assertion. The nib is smoother than a lubricated ice-cube on a nonstick frying-pan. I could write forever with this pen. Well worth the money, I reckon. Those considering this pen will not be disappointed.

Oh, what a picturesque sight, eh? A man sitting at his desk, oil-lamp burning brightly, an inkstand open in front of him and a fine, gold dip-pen in his hand. Listen as he dips the nib of his pen into the inkwell, the soft ‘clink!’ as he taps the excess ink off the nib against the side of the well, and then the soft, scriffly scratching as the sharp, metal pen-point scrapes over the paper as he pens down the latest novel, scientific theory or groundbreaking essay on tropical medicine.

The Dip Pen has been part of human life for centuries, and its dominance only ended less than a hundred years ago. This article is devoted to that one, archaic writing instrument with which so many great documents and literary creations were penned down with, and to explore how they work, what came with them, and what they’re like to use. For the sake of convenience, this article will concentrate on the mass-produced steel pen-points which came into existence at the turn of the 19th century.

What is a dip-pen?

A rather obvious answer awaits this question. A dip-pen is a writing instrument (be it an actual steel pen, a quill, a brush or a reed) that is without its own, inbuilt, long-term ink-supply, and which must be dipped repeatedly (hence the name) into a source of ink, to allow it to write. Said source usually being a bottle of ink or ink contained in an inkwell. As I said above, this article will concentrate on the steel dip-pens which dominated much of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

How a dip pen works.

Dip-pens, like the fountain pens that succeeded them, worked by a combination of gravity and capillary action. Capillary action worked off the natural surface-tension of liquid while gravity directed the flow of ink. When a dip-pen is dipped into an inkwell, a small amount of ink clings to the underside of the specially-shaped nib. Surface tension keeps the ink on the underside of the nib, while capillary action and gravity draws the ink downwards towards the tip of the nib. Quite simple really. Unfortunately for mankind, this was as far as writing-technology got until the late 19th century when people began to understand the importance of air-pressure in making a good fountain pen.

Terminology.

A note of importance is the terminology. A dip pen is actually the steel pen-point…what most people today would call the nib. The shaft which the pen-point fitted into, was the pen-holder. If you went out to a stationer’s shop in the 1870s and asked for a ‘box of pens’, you’d recieve a small cardboard box filled with little steel pen-points. These days, however, the ‘pen’ is synonymous with ‘nib’, since the introduction of the fountain pen.

Preparing your nibs.

If you’ve just gone out to your local art-shop and bought some paper and a pen-holder or two and some nice dip-pen nibs and now you’re at home at your desk with your ink and your paper and your pens and you’re itching to start writing, there are a couple of things that you should do before starting your inky adventures. The first thing, rather obviously, is to select a dip-pen nib and slot it into your pen-holder. The second thing that you need to do is to prepare the nib for writing.

Now if you don’t understand this, I don’t blame you…but try this: If you get a fresh dip-pen nib and dip it into ink and then take it out of your inkwell or bottle, you’ll notice that the ink drips right off the nib, or otherwise, it forms nasty little ink-drops on the nib which crawl away from the slit and the pen-point like ants from a Huntsman spider. The reason for this is that the pen has a very thin film of oil on it, which was left there in the manufacturing of these nibs. You might get lucky and there won’t be any oil there at all, and you can write straight-off. However, in most cases, this won’t be the case. Now I’ve read several posts in forums about people who say: “I got my nibs, I got my pen-holder, but the ink refuses to stay on the nib. What do I do?”

Quite simple. Burn it. Or rather, temper it.

To do this, you need to strike a match, or light a candle, and pass the nib through the flame several times, making sure that all parts of the nib go through the flame at least once. What this does is remove the oil from the nib, and this allows the ink to cling to the nib as it should.

A word of warning. As these nibs are made of steel, they heat up VERY fast. Put the pen-nib into the pen-holder BEFORE running it through the flame, or else hold the pen-point with a pair of tweezers, first. Otherwise you’ll give your fingers a very nasty burn.

Having done that, your pen should hold ink perfectly fine.

The next thing to do is to smooth the nib. By this I mean, you need to smooth out the tip of your pen nib, with some very fine sandpaper, to give yourself a nice, smooth writing experience. This isn’t always necessary, but sometimes, pen-points (which are razor sharp) can tear and rip at the paper when you use them. Smoothing the nib and testing it occasionally, will give you a nice, comfortable writing experience.

Who uses dip pens?

“Hang on, hang on!” You’re saying, “Why the hell are you telling me this? Who the heck still uses dip pens these days!?”

You’d be surprised. A lot of people still do. Artists, calligraphers, illustrators, historical re-enactors and people who wish to explore the history of writing, or who wish to have a bit of fun when they write. I fall into this last category, myself. Also, fountain pen users sometimes find themselves drifting into using dip-pens for more interesting and creative writing-styles, which can’t be achieved with a fountain pen.

Dip Pens in School.

Even though dip-pen nibs were dying out by the first decades of the 20th century, they still persisted in schools for a surprisingly long time. Up to the 1950s or 1960s in some places. I’m sure many of you are wondering: “Why?”

Why would teachers and schools force kids to write with dip-pens when more effective, cleaner and more easily-used fountain pens were available?

There are several reasons for this, but it mostly boils down to convenience and cost.

In a school where you might have upwards of 1,000 boys, it was cheaper to supply them all with dip-pen nibs, which cost tuppence a box, rather than fountain pens, which were much more expensive. Ink for dip-pens is very easy to make and it was cheap. You could buy huge quantities of it (massive bottles of it, actually!) which would last for ages. Fountain pen ink had to be specially-made and formulated, and this was expensive.

But then you might ask: “Why didn’t students just buy their own fountain pens and fountain pen ink?”

Well…that was because they were students. You have to remember that in the 1920s, when practical fountain pens really started taking off, a decent fountain pen cost about $3.00-$5.00. While this doesn’t sound like much money today, in 1925, you could buy yourself lunch and a drink with twenty-five cents. Spending three whole dollars on a fountain pen was considered extravagant, expensive and far beyond the reach of most children’s pocket-money. And even if their parents bought them fountain pens to use, they would probably have warned their children not to take them to school, on account of how expensive they would’ve been.

It’s for these reasons that dip-pens lasted in schools for as long as they did.

Dip Pen Accessories.

Dip pens require various accessories to make them really work properly. These accessories are…

1. A leather writing-pad.

A leather writing-surface, either nailed into a desk or inlaid into a writing-box or writing-slope, was a necessary addition for dip pens. The cushioning of the leather allowed for the sharp, metal pen-point to travel smoothly over the page, without also scratching the wooden desktop underneath. It led to a more pleasurable writing experience.

2. A rocker-blotter or blotting-paper.

Dip-pens tend to write incredibly wet. By this, I mean they have a tendency to lay down a very generous amount of ink. Blotting-paper, either as a loose sheet, or cut into a strip and put into a rocker-blotter is essential. Failure to blot regularly can result in big, nasty, inky messes on your writing.

3. An inkwell or inkstand.

An inkwell was a necessary accessory to the dip-pen. Unable to carry their own ink-supplies, dip-pens need an inkwell near at hand when writing. Usually, it would be just the one inkwell, with a hinged lid. However on larger desks, you might have two inkwells, set in an ‘inkstand’, a special desk-accessory that held spaces for pens, inkwells, spare nibs and even, in some cases, space to store a rocker-blotter.

A typical inkstand, of silver and lead crystal (or glass). In this particular case, the stand would have been placed in the middle of a large, partner’s desk, for use by two men (note the opposing troughs, either side of the inkwells in the middle, for storing pens). The inkwells were filled with ink, usually two different colours (such as red and black), but in this case, probably both with black ink. The box between the two inkwells was for storing postage stamps.

Frequently Asked Questions.

Here are a few frequently asked questions about dip pens…

1. What kind of ink can I use?

Any ink, really. Traditionally, it was powdered ink or iron gall ink, and this is still the best ink to use, but regular fountain pen ink works just as well.

2. How long does a nib last?

You just got a new nib, it’s tempered, it’s smoothed, it’s ready to go…how long will it last before I have to change nibs?

That depends, really. It depends on the type of nib, it depends on how you use it and how frequently you use it. I’ve had dip-pen nibs that lasted a few weeks, I’ve dip-pen nibs that have lasted me the better part of a year.

3. Are dip-pen nibs really fragile?

You read this a lot in autobiographies of people who grew up in the early 20th century, of breaking dip-pen nibs at school. Or maybe your parents or grandparents used to tell you they broke dip-pen nibs when they were at school, and ink went everywhere and then the schoolmaster gave them a right, royal hiding with a bamboo cane for all the mess.

How fragile a dip-pen nib is, depends on the kind of nib it is. Most stiff, steel nibs are actually quite tough and VERY sharp. You could probably stab someone to death with one of them and then write a confession-note later with the same pen. It’s pretty hard to break them.

On the other hand, dip-pens which are flexible in nature, with softer, more malleable metals, might be more prone to breaking. I personally, have never broken a dip-pen nib. One the one occasion that I actually tried, it’s actually damn hard to do. That said, the nibs which students would have used in school were probably the cheaper steel nibs, which was all they could afford with their pocket-money, but that’s all I could say on the matter.