Collectors Sign Up for Fountain Pens by Linda Rosenkrantz on Creators.com

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Collectors Sign Up for Fountain Pens

It's not always necessity that's the mother — or father — of invention. It can be any of a number of other factors, and in the case of the modern fountain pen, it seems to have been a unique combination of frustration and embarrassment.

The story goes that one day in 1883, an insurance salesman named Louis Edson Waterman lost a client because his pen flooded ink all over the contract, and by the time a new policy had been drawn up, the customer had moved on to a rival company. Waterman was determined to find a way for this not happen again — to invent a pen with a reliable, efficient ink flow.

For at least 50 years before this, other attempts had been made to produce such a pen, with a variety of devices from hoses to eyedropper, but none had proved commercially viable. Another problem was finding a suitable material for the nib: The solution was 14-karat gold tipped with osmiridium or iridium — a smooth, hard metal that allowed the pen to write without scratching. The first successful commercial producers were Waterman in 1884 and Parker with the Lucky Curve in 1888, and soon there was fierce competition between those two firms, Shaeffer and Wahl-Eversharp.

In all the fountain pen systems, the barrel holds a supply of ink. In some, it was contained in a rubber sac that was compressed by a plunger and released to draw ink up into the container; in others, the piston-like plunger has to be pushed up and down to fill it. The Shaeffer Pen Company introduced the first lever-filling action in 1913. Another big breakthrough came in 1932 when Parker introduced the Vacumatic, a sackless pen with an internal pump.

Before the ballpoint era — introduced in 1945 — a fountain pen was a very personal possession. There were some made exclusively for men or for women, some for specific purposes and professions. Today's collectors are attracted by the strong, simple shapes and diversity of colors and patterns in period pens.

Until the early 1920s, hard rubber pens were most common, available in a very limited range of colors. Then, in 1924, Shaeffer introduced pens made of Du Pont's Pyralin (cellulose nitrate or celluloid) in marbleized jade green. This ignited an explosion of pens in such exotic hues as Kashmir Green and Morocco (Wahl-Eversharp), Mandarin Yellow and Lapis Blue (Parker). And although celluloid was essentially celluloid, each of the major firms had its own trade name for it: At Parker it was Permanite, Shaeffer called theirs Radite.

Some of the pens were somewhat deco in design, others modern and still others had elaborate precious metal filigree elaborations. Pearlized and marble examples were especially popular then, as they are with collectors now. Waterman's Nacre, for example, had the luminous look of mother-of-pearl.

One of the most sought after of the early pens is the Waterman No. 20, made in 1910; among the best-known Parkers are their pens with a sinuous snake-form silver overlay, made from 1905 to 1918 (one sold in 1992 for $36,000), and Duofold Big Reds of 1925, as well as the Parker T-1, a pen made of titanium in 1970 to commemorate the moon landing.

Here are some recent market values from the latest edition of "Schroeder's Antiques Price Guide":

1939 Montblanc No. 139, piston filler, gold-filled and silver trim $3,000

1910 Waterman No. 18S Safety eyedrop filler, black, rare $2,600

1929 Waterman Patrician lever filler, onyx (red cream), gold-filled trim $2,500

1928 Parker Duofold Sr. button filler, Mandarin yellow, gold-filled trim $1,750.

1928 Leboeuf No. 4, sleeve filler, green Pearltex, gold-filled trim $1,500

1930 Shaeffer Lifetime Balance, large, roseglow stripe, gold-filled trim $1,400

Linda Rosenkrantz has edited Auction magazine and authored 18 books, most recently "Beyond Ava & Aidan: The Enlightened Guide to Naming your Baby" (St. Martin's Press). Visit her baby names website at http://nameberry.com. She cannot answer letters personally. To find out more about Linda Rosenkrantz and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.