(This page revised June 22, 2012)
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Early fountain pens were made of black hard rubber (BHR). Each manufacturer had its own ideas about design, and there were inevitable differences in appearance among the early pens — length, diameter, tapered ends, and so on — but there are relatively few ways to “jazz up” something in Basic Black, and after you’ve seen one slender cylinder of BHR, you’ve pretty well seen them all. Gold repoussé bands and gold or silver overlays were common beautification treatments:
Moore’s No. 2 “Tourist” Non-Leakable Safety Pen; Waterman‘s Ideal No. 452
Making Pens Attractive — Inexpensively
But these precious-metal adornments cost money, and the iceman or store clerk who needed a pen was rarely able to afford such nicety. How, then, to make a boring object more attractive? The answer was chasing. Chasing, the application of a surface pattern to an object such as a pen, is relatively inexpensive, and it adds no cost in materials. Here is a typical early 20th-century pen made of black chased hard rubber (BCHR), with no metal ornamentation:
Conklin’s Crescent-Filler No. 30
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, chasing was applied by rolling a heated die against the cylindrical surface of the pen or pen cap. The effect of this method is to create v-shaped grooves with slightly raised edges where the displaced material flowed outward. Some modern makers of BCHR pens use a laser to machine the grooves, and the result is square grooves with a rough-surfaced flat bottom, while others use a cutting tool that makes a V-shaped groove but does not raise material above the surface. Here are magnified cross-section illustrations of the three types of chasing:
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Rolling Die |
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Hard Rubber
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As chasing became the usual, almost the “expected,” surface treatment for pens, makers such as Morrison and Wahl applied it to metal overlays:
Gold-filled Morrison’s overlay
Chasing did not disappear when hard rubber was superseded by plastics in the 1920s. At least one maker, Morrison (which also made the overlay pen shown above), produced a black chased celluloid pen:
Black chased Morrison’s Tourist, 1930s
This pen looks so much like BCHR that it is sometimes mistaken for the older material. The easiest way to identify it is to observe that it has a gold-plated steel nib and a narrow cap band in the style of the 1930s. And, as implied by the reference to modern makers above, a few actual BCHR pens have been made recently:
Bexley Fifth Anniversary, limited edition made in 1998; chasing has square grooves
Getting Away from Basic Black
Although black was the color of most hard rubber pens, black can be boring. To add interest and thereby capture market share, some makers produced hard rubber pens in other colors. The most widely used color was red, and it appeared mixed with black in mottled, woodgrain, and rippled forms. It also appeared alone:
Sheaffer’s red chased hard rubber (RCHR) ring-top lady’s pen
Variations on a Theme
Chasing, being an artistic treatment, is subject to artistic decisions such as how much of the pen to cover and what pattern to use. The following images illustrate several vintage chasing patterns and identify companies that I know to have used them. This is not a comprehensive collection of patterns, and the companies listed are by no means the only ones to have used the patterns illustrated. If you can add to this list by lending me a pen or documenting other companies that used any of the patterns shown here, please send mail. I will update this page as I gather more information.
Many patterns that are made up of short grooves appear to conform almost to an “industry standard” for groove spacing and length. In the illustrations below, these patterns are indicated by an asterisk ( * ). But penmakers adapted the sizes of their designs to the sizes of their pens; thus, these computer-created patterns are suggestive, not exact representations. A given pattern may have more grooves for a larger pen or fewer for a smaller one, and the exact groove patterns in the illustrations may not match any specific real example. The patterns are illustrated as if they were applied to a pen viewed horizontally, like those above.
Bars
Conklin, Keene, Latremore, Parker, Sheaffer
Bars and Checkerboard* (also called Checker)
Conklin
Bars and Wings*
Conklin
Checkerboard*
Conklin, Moore
Greek Key*
Wahl
Lattice
Waterman
Rick-Rack*
Boston, Conklin, Moore, Morrison, Wahl, A. A. Waterman
Scallop 1*
Autofiller, Mabie Todd, Parker
Scallop 2*
Beaumel, Esterbrook, General, Moore, Phoenix, Waterman, Wirt
Scallop 3*
Gem, MacKinnon, Parker, Sheaffer, Waterman
Sidewise Scallop
Sheaffer
Sidewise Scallop, Interrupted
Sheaffer
Unique (later called Check)*
Wahl-Eversharp
Zigzag Bars
Sheaffer
The information in this article is as accurate as possible, but you should not take it as absolutely authoritative. If you have additions or corrections to this page, please consider sharing them with us to improve the accuracy of our information.