Other Pens
What pens am I carrying today? Find out here.
Pens 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.
Not a Spacecraft, but Streamlined Anyway
Innumerable companies, worldwide, copied the Parker “51”. One of the less commonly seen “51” copies had its birth in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Soyuz (“Union”) factory in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) produced a series of models, most with plastic caps that the average comrade could afford; but one (this one) came with an elegant gold-plated cap and was probably made for Party officers and Politburo members. The band represents the stone wall of the Kremlin, with a very pretty spire (topped with the Red Star) over the arched entrance on the band’s back side. The star is inset with a small garnet, and there’s a larger garnet in lieu of Parker’s conical celluloid jewel on the cap crown. Both jewels are faceted. The pen came in a set with a matching pencil; they live in a nice red pasteboard box labeled Комплект „МОСКВА“ Авторучка с золотым пером — which means Complete set of “Moscow” fountain pen with gold nib. At 59/16" capped and 65/16" posted, the pen is almost exactly the same size as a “51”, and the pencil is 415/16" long. And surprise — they’re built like Russian tanks! The pen, by the way, is an accordion filler.
Filled in a Jiffy
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 a 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.
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