Pens on this page are part of my personal collection and are not for sale. If there is a magnifying-glass symbol () next to a pen, click the magnifying glass to view a zoomed version for more detail.

What Good Is Ink Without a Pen to Put It In?

Founded in 1858 by John W. Carter, The Carter's Ink Company did very well with its ink products for decades, but in the 1920s it decided to venture into pen manufacture. Beginning in 1926, Carter produced fountain pens until about 1932, when the weight of the Depression brought home the business maxim “Don’t abandon your core competency” and the company abandoned pen production in favor of ink, which had built the company and was still Carter’s essential product. Carter’s pens, known commonly as INX pens and produced in several models at varying price points, were all of very high quality. Carter also developed an innovative lever filler, based on a concept by David J. LaFrance (U.S. Patent Nº 1,669,714), that included a secondary spring to assist in returning the lever to its closed position and keeping it there.

My later Carter’s, which I acquired first, is a streamlined Jade Green ringtop, not a large pen at 4²¹/32" capped and 5²¹/32" posted but quite nice in use with its firm fine nib. This pen also provided a great learning experience. When I purchased it, the trim band at the back end of the barrel was missing; and I had to figure out how to make and install a replacement.

My earlier Carter’s, acquired second, is a blue flat-top, Model 5223. It’s a full-size pen, 5³/32" capped and 6²³/32" posted. I became interested in Carter’s pens because of their unique lever design, and when I found out how well made they are, things just got better. The clip turns out also to be interesting; it's a reliable and elegantly fitted spring-loaded design.

Even the Slow Train Was Streamlined

Eversharp’s hot pen in the 1940s was the gloriously streamlined Skyline, but not every streamlined Eversharp was a Skyline. There were lesser models, pens with even less cachet than the Skylines without wrapover clips. One such “bottom feeder” was the Eversharp Streamliner. Featuring gold-plated furniture instead of the more costly gold-filled trim on the Skyline, the Streamliner nevertheless worked identically where it counts, under the skin. My Dubonnet Red Streamliner is 4²⁹/32" capped and 6¹/8" posted, and it has a very firm extra-fine nib of typical Eversharp quality. This is a top-line Streamliner, with a large nib, a cap band, and an ink-view section. Lesser Streamliners had smaller nibs and lacked the other luxuries that make this example a pretty nice pen.

King of the Rookery

Design Features

L. E. Waterman made a bundle selling helical-cam safety pens, but the design was the patented fruit of Francis C. Brown’s genius, and Brown was the first to put it on the market in his Caw’s “Safety” pen. Caw’s safeties began appearing in about 1895, and they were well made, sturdy pens. (Brown later licensed the technology to Waterman, so no theft of intellectual property was involved in the latter’s success.) Stubby and rather stout, Caw’s safeties look a little odd today; and the cap, with its nipple that posts into a recess in the retracting knob, doesn’t make things any more elegant in the modern person’s eye. But I like my Nº 327 a lot. Its nib lacked tipping when I acquired the pen, but that’s been remedied with a nice soft vintage-style stub. (The monumentally complicated feed works!) This little hunk of hard rubber is 4⁵/8" capped and 5²⁵/32" with the cap flipped around and posted.

Two for the Price of One!

Design Features

After Julius Schnell introduced his Penselpen combo in 1929, many other pen manufacturers jumped on his bandwagon with their own versions of the pen/pencil pairing. One of the prettiest, I think, was Conklin’s Ensemble. I have a nice ensemble of Ensembles, an early version (c. 1930) in Pearl and Black and a somewhat later one (c. 1933, I think) in Conklin’s lovely Leaf Green. Both of these pens have very good color — the Leaf Green is particularly lovely. They have typical Conklin “smiley face” nibs, and they both write quite nicely. The Pearl and Black Ensemble is 5⁷/8" capped and 5¹⁵/16" posted, and the green one is ¹/16" longer both ways.

© 2008 Richard F. Binder

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