Richard’s Pen Collection : Vintage American Fountain Pens

Writing instruments on this page are part of my personal collection and are not for sale. Click the magnifying-glass symbol () next to any pen to view a zoomed image for more detail.

What pens am I carrying today?

This is a J. G. Rider “Perfection” Fountain Pen Nº 5, made sometime around 1910. It’s an eyedropper filler, but there’s no joint between the section and the barrel, where you’d take the pen apart to fill it. On the underside of the feed there is a sturdy notch just at the point where the nib and feed enter the body (U.S. Patent Nº 739,720). The clip fits into the notch on the feed, and with it you can pull the feed out to fill the pen. The opening has a nice square corner at the bottom edge, and the feed is shaped to key into this notch in perfect alignment, right where they should be. Now that… is cool. It’s a pretty average-sized pen, at is 5¹⁹/₃₂" long capped and 7" capped, it’s a little heftier than the average pen of its day.

Here’s a smaller “Perfection” Pen, a Nº 2. It works just the same way, and I really don’t need to have two Riders, but the MHR and the elegant slender shape just sort of said, “Buy this pen. You want it, you know you do.” I did, so I did. It wasn’t in the superb condition the seller said it was, but that sort of thing is just a challenge for me. This baby is 5¹³/₁₆" long capped and 6¹/₂" capped, not that much different from its big brother above, and its nib is a firmish stub. The clip is one I made; the missing original was one of the “not all that good” condition issues.

In 1906, William A. Welty patented a filling system using a cam and locking ring (U.S. Patent Nº 834,542). Known as the Wawco, this design formed the basis of the Welty Fountain Pen. (The design attracted Conklin’s attention despite its not being a literal crescent filler, but a suit brought by Conklin was decided in Welty’s favor.) Welty set up his company in his home town, Waterloo, Iowa. In 1915, upon its founder’s departure, the firm changed its name to Evans Dollar Pen Company (in recognition of principal investor Patrick H. Evans). I have a Welty pen; the later Evans is markedly inferior in terms of workmanship. At 5¹³/₃₂" capped and 6¹¹/₁₆" posted, this pen is a nice size. The Nº 4 WARRANTED nib is a decent stub.

Frank Spors, of Le Sueur Center, Minnesota, was disabled and could not work in most of the jobs available in the 1920s. To earn his living, he imported inexpensive (cheap!) merchandise of all types from eastern Asia. Spors pens are typical of the lower end of the third tier; they were Japanese made, and they were truly cheap, with thin celluloid and wooden inner caps. (In 1926, he was jobbing them for 67¢ each, to retail for $1.25.) The best thing about them is the reliable glass nib, which is well made and, if not chipped, very smooth, and wet. Spors sold both lever fillers and crescent fillers, but it’s the crescents that turn up most frequently today. I’m not sure whether that's because they were more popular or because they were so bad that people just shoved them in to the backs of drawers and forgot they were there. This Spors pen, probably made in the later 1920s or early 1930s, is 5¹/₁₆" capped and 6⁵/₃₂" posted.

The Wahl Company began producing pens in 1921. Their first-line pens were of very high quality and often bore innovative features. The Wahl Gold Seal pen shown here, in Lapis celluloid, has a roller clip and features Wahl’s Personal-Point screw-interchangeable nib unit. The well-designed Personal-Point anticipated Esterbrook’s Renew-Point by six years, and it continued in production into the mid-1930s on pens such as the Equi-Poised and Doric.

My Lapis pen, probably made in 1929, is 4²³/₃₂" capped and 6¹/₈" posted, and its smooth fine Personal-Point Signature nib is semiflexible.

As might be expected, not all of Wahl’s pens of that period were Gold Seal pens. A lesser pen, interesting because of its “Tulip” clip, is this Coral specimen, 4³/₈" capped and 5³/₄" posted. This is a very small pen, and its nib is quite firm.

World War II sparked an incredible patriotic fervor in the people of the United States. Practically the entire nation went to war, if not on the battlefield then in the factory. Much of the period’s history that we have today is drawn from letters written to, and by, the fighting men of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. Pen companies switched production to war matériel, making a much-reduced number of pens (most of which went to the military). Morrison, in addition to its war work, designed and produced a pen and matching pencil named the Patriot. There were versions honoring the Army, Navy, Army Air Forces, and Marine Corps, each featuring the crest of its respective service. The set sold for $6.25; considering the pen’s 14K nib, this was a remarkably low price during wartime. The Patriot was a simple and reliable pen, with a syringe filler that was almost unbreakable. The most common Patriot was also rather unusual in appearance, with a sharply raked diagonal cut across the end of the cap, onto which was fixed the gold-plated cast metal service crest. (Before and after the War, Morrison used the name Cameo Top on pens with the angled cap crown.)

My Army Patriot is 5¹/₄" capped, 6⁹/₁₆" posted. My Navy pen is slightly shorter, at 5⁵/₃₂" capped and 6¹⁵/₃₂" posted, the Army Air Forces pen is 5¹/₄" capped and 6²¹/₃₂" posted, and the Marine Corps pen is 5¹/₄" capped and 6¹/₂" posted. These pens were sold in sets with pencils and a leather carrying case that attaches to the belt. The Army pencil (4¹¹/₁₆") here did not come with my pen; it’s probably earlier, as its Army crest is enameled and its clip has a different imprint. The Army Air Forces pencil is 4²⁵/₃₂" long, and it came with the pen in an original box and leather case.

Perhaps the crest on the cap was thought too flashy for some people; Morrison also made crestless Patriots, fitting them with a plain slightly rounded cap crown. My crestless Navy Patriot is 5¹/₄" capped and 6⁷/₁₆" posted. The 4²¹/₃₂" pencil shown here came in a carrying case with this pen.

Brothers in Arms

Even before the U.S. entered the War, Morrison had made pens in support of the Allies’ war effort, and the company continued to do so after Pearl Harbor. One of the wartime “Allied” pens was this one, with its hemispherical cap crown decked out with the red, white, and blue roundel of Britain’s Royal Air Force. This pen is not marked “The Patriot,” but it has the expected wartime syringe filler, and it is 5⁷/₃₂" capped and 6¹⁵/₃₂" posted. This example is fitted with an iridium-tipped steel nib that has lost all its gold plating; I have no way to know whether this nib is original to this pen.

Whence the Patriot…

The U.S.A. did not fight World War II alone, and Morrison appears to have taken notice of that fact. Not only did the torpedo-shaped Patriot exist before the War, but the company also made a Cameo Top lever filler honoring the Lend-Lease program under which America, still ostensibly neutral, declared itself the Arsenal of Democracy and shipped millions of tons of war matériel to the Allied belligerents (primarily Great Britain and, after the launching of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet Union). The Lend-Lease pen, orange in color and fitted with a Morrison HARD IRIDIUM PEN steel nib, bore on its cap crown a full-color decal transfer showing the crossed flags of the United States and the United Kingdom. My Lend-Lease pen has lost portions of its decal, but it is otherwise in great shape.

I really don’t know when this pen was made — based on its apperarance, I’m guessing that it’s a prewar model. It is marked “The Patriot,” so I‘m thinking of it as a “Protopatriot” rather than a pre-Patriot. It’s an odd duck: shaped like Sheaffer’s Balance (which was on its last legs as the U.S. entered the War), it’s Olive Drab, and then there’s that chasing! In terms of size, it’s 5³/₁₆" capped and 6³/₈" posted. Its original nib was an untipped steel Morrison’s Nº 7 whose plating was gone; I've replaced that nib with an iridium-tipped XF no-name nib just so that the color would be as it should. (But a little tweaking made this nib into a remarkably nice writer!)

…and Whither

After World War II, Morrison stopped making Patriots. But the sloped-crown cap design wasn’t dead. This pen, almost certainly pegged by its streamlined section as a postwar model, bears the Cameo Top name as part of its barrel imprint (as did some prewar pens). At 5²¹/₆₄" capped and 6¹⁷/₃₂" posted, it’s about the same size as most of the other pens shown here; the little bit of extra length can be attributed to its streamlined barrel. This pen has a typically nice 14K Morrison nib in fine. It appears to be a top-line model for Morrison, with a broadish band wrapped to the cap lip and a gold-plated metal piece inset for the Cameo Top.