Other 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?

Today’s French Waterman company, which grew out of JiF Waterman when Waterman closed its doors in the U.S.A., has not been slow to “keep up with the Joneses,” if the Joneses were the competition. From the C/F of the 1950s, the company developed a varied selection of pens that used the original C/F cartridge and later, with new models such as the Lady, C/F-compatible converters. The Lady converter also fit a close sibling of the pen shown here, but this pen is Waterman’s Jif Matic. Its cartridge well is filled with a sac and a sac protector. On the side of the sac protector, instead of a squeeze bar, is a flag-like “door” that you lift away from the sac protector. This action operates a pressure bar to squeeze the sac; it’s really an adaptation of William Welty’s vintage Servo filler. And it‘s a nice pen, too, with a delicious Nº 3 fine nib. The pen is 5¹/₄" capped and 5⁷/₈" posted, a nice size for people with average hands.

Sheaffer discontinued the very successful Connaisseur line in 1995, but the Connaisseur turned out to be the pen that wasn’t ready to die. It resurfaced three years later, rebadged with the Levenger marque. Unchanged mechanically even to the presence of Sheaffer’s famous White Dot, the pen became the Seas Collection, and Levenger offered it in six jewel-like colors that were named for various bodies of water around the globe:

• Red, for the Red Sea
• Yellow, for the Caribbean Sea
• Green, for the Aegean Sea
• Turquoise (aqua), for the Tasman Sea
• Blue, for the Mediterranean Sea
• Purple, for the Adriatic Sea

All are transparent except the yellow Caribbean, which is cloudy translucent. At 5¹⁹/₃₂" capped and 6¹/₂" posted, the Seas pens are typical of modern medium-sized pens, and they handle as well as their less colorful forebear. With Levenger-branded 14K nibs instead of the usual 18K Sheaffer nibs, they write quite nicely. My Seas have an assortment of nibs ranging from XF to stub. The Tasman Sea pen is quite rare, and I’m thrilled to have acquired this one to complete my set.

I like silver. At heart, I like it more than gold, although not so much for furniture on pens as for their bodies and caps. Throw in a bit of blue lacquer and a classy design, slap a famous Italian name on it, and call it a Montegrappa Z300 XMB (which latter three letters meant Silver Sapphire in the catalog when this pen was still in production). This pen was a gift from one of my closest pen friends, and I don’t care that it's not U.S.-made. It’s modern; but because it’s out of production, it’ll soon be vintage. Cool. At 5⁵/₈" capped and 6¹³/₃₂" posted, this is one nice pen. And its juicy smooth medium nib is a real pleasure.

Beginning after the end of World War II and continuing into the 1950s, many small family enterprises arose in Germany to make fountain pens, surviving until the ascendancy of the ballpoint drove most fountain pens off the market. One of these cottage-industry companies was Merlin. Although not made during the Golden Age, Merlins are a delightful “throwback” to the classic button fillers that Parker was making in the 1930s. They’re even made of real nitrate celluloid, with the same warm, almost “alive” feeling in the hand that no other resin material can give. With its unusual Lavender Shell color, the Golden Age-style celluloid on my Merlin 33 could almost have been wrapped around a Wahl-Eversharp Doric Airliner of 15-20 years earlier. The Merlin 33 is a little pen, 4²³/₃₂" capped and 5¹/₂" posted, and this one is fitted with a vintage WARRANTED stub nib.

The Merlin 33’s “little sister” was the Merlina. Made in a broad range of colors similar to that for the Merlin 33, the Merlina featured some colors that were exclusive to it, such as the color on this pen, which we’ve named Coconut Macaroon. This Merlina has a remarkable 14K full-flex Merlin nib and is 4³³/₆₄" capped, 5¹¹/₃₂" posted.