Richard’s Pen Collection : Vintage American Fountain Pens

Writing instruments on this page are part of my personal collection and are not for sale.

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Wearever: Iconic Third-Tier Pens

David Kahn, a Jewish immigrant, did not set out to make the world’s best fountain pens. Instead, he decided to cater to the masses, and beginning in about 1918, David Kahn, Inc., did just that until the company was sold to Dixon in 1986. It sold third-tier pens branded Wearever, in a bewildering variety of styles over the years. For many years after World War II, Kahn was the world’s largest manufacturer of fountain pens. For most of its history, the Wearever brand meant steel nibs, but some customers expressed a desire for Wearevers with gold nibs, and Kahn provided them. At the top end of the line were the Pacemaker and the Zenith, both fitted with solid 14K nibs of decent, albeit not outstanding, quality.

The Pacemaker is a button filler. Mine is 5" capped and 6" posted, a good size for people who aren't convinced that “size does matter.” Except for its DK logo, the Pacemaker’s blind cap is identical to an ordinary tire valve cap, and during World War II Kahn made valve caps for U.S. military vehicles. This pen has a nice medium 14K nib, the biggest gold nib Kahn put in any of its pens, set on a clear plastic feed.

Next is my lever-filling Zenith. At 5" capped and 6" posted, it’s pretty much the same size as the Pacemaker, but its 14K nib is rather smaller. Made of injection-molded plastic, the wartime Zenith is relatively late as gold-nibbed Wearevers go. Its postwar version acquired a steel nib. I like my British Racing Green Zenith; the end jewels, in transparent red plastic, look like sports car taillights. I have the original $1.95 clip tag for this pen, but I took the tag off to shoot the pen’s portrait. Like the Pacemaker, this pen has a clear plastic feed. I also have a matching ballpoint.

Probably the earliest gold-nibbed Wearever was the Deluxe 100. This celluloid pen, another lever filler, shows real ingenuity in its patented nib design: the 14K nib itself is much smaller and hence less costly than even the Zenith’s, and it’s mounted in a steel frame that fits it into the pen as if it were a full-sized nib. The pen is a tad shorter than its siblings above, at 5" capped and 6" posted. This luminous green is one of my favorite pen colors — and the nib is pretty nice, too!

In the 1950s, Kahn was churning out pens by the millions. The best-known model of that era was the Pennant; the pen shown here isn’t a Pennant, but about the only apparent difference is in the breadth of the cap band. It’s 5" capped and 6" posted, and it is exactly like a pen that lived in the drawer of a desk in my parents’ house while I was growing up there. I never saw that earlier pen used, however; it just lived in the desk.

Diamond Medal, from your Sears Catalog

Along with other big-box retailers, Sears, Roebuck & Company commissioned pens to be made to its specs. Sears used house-brand names such as Webster, Tower, and — possibly the best known in the 1920s and ’30s — Diamond Medal. Among the makers who made Diamond Medal pens were Parker and the National Pen Products Company. This Diamond Medal Comrade may or may not have been made by either of these companies, but it’s a doggone nice pen in any case. At 5" capped and 5" posted, it’s fairly average in size for its time, but its looks are not at all common. The pointed barrel end is reminiscent of the tapered barrels of Houston and Snapfil pens, but the only relative I can find for the clip, which springs like a single hair from the top of the pen’s head before it sweeps down alongside the cap, is that used by J. G. Rider. Rider’s clip had a dual purpose: besides holding the pen in the pocket, it was a tool for removing the feed to fill the eyedropper-filling pen. Sears’ clip has no such dual purpose on a lever filler, so it’s just plain funky. But it really is oddly attractive and, in its own way, elegant. Looking at the initial engraved on the clip, I wonder who “M” was.

Waterman began its conversion from hard rubber to celluloid in 1929 with the introduction of the Patrician, an oversize pen of classic Art Deco design. But before the celluloid Patrician ruled the land, there was a brief period when Waterman’s upper crust wore hard rubber, at least in the Jet color. (Waterman was joined at the hip with a rubber company, remember, and it took a pretty good kick in the posterior to get the company to let go of last year’s bread and butter.) Well, as it happens, I like hard rubber, so I don’t have a problem with that. Black is distinguished. Black is substantial. Black is elegant. And this hunk of black is 5" capped and 6" posted. It’s definitely a handful. The nib is substantial, too, a real nail. But it’s a Waterman nib, and that means it’s a good one. Smo-o-o-o-oth!

Suck It Up!

At 5" capped and 6" posted, this Good Service pen from the National Pen Products Company seems pretty ordinary. But it’s a syringe filler, which is not ordinary, and the filler is a little more out of the ordinary because it fits under a blind cap that’s nominally too short. It does this by collapsing a little: the skinny part of the plunger shaft is spring loaded and slides within the fatter part. With two clear stripes running up the barrel to provide a view of the ink supply, the rest of the body is marbled green celluloid, and it’s a bit prettier than a similar pen with a completely transparent barrel. And it has a flexible stub — what more could I ask for?!