Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 44

Brand-new VPC member Kevin W. recently sent some photos of a couple of his new acquisitions. One of them is a familiar vintage fountain pen (one with a very long production run) and the other is a lesser-known brand that was supposedly among King George VI's favourites...

(photos courtesy of Kevin ~ please click on images to enlarge)

Kevin: "My very first fountain pen was a plastic bodied Parker 45. 11 year old me thought it was soooo fancy because it had a gold M nib and a shiny steel cap. To this day, it writes with a sublime smoothness, though it has suffered from the slight collapse in the barrel that stalks the Parker 45 due to the cap's clutch being a little too aggressive for the plastic barrel's softness. Unfortunately my handwriting could never do it justice, but I love that pen. My contemporaries at school often had the more modern (late 70's – all things are relative) Parker 25 with it's all metal flighter design. Over the years I've come to realise that there were in fact many variations on my basic black Parker 45, and amongst them was indeed an all-metal flighter. There's also a flighter with a black plastic end, but my preference had always been for "the full metal jacket".

"Today, The Pen Workshop near Aylesbury, UK delivered my dream pen. Paul Baker there kindly listened to my preferences and found the perfect match. He even located a pen with a barrel that shows minimal caving, and managed to find me one with an F nib. The cap has the all important "Made in England" and a lack of letter stamps puts it as likely pre-1980. I think I'll just gaze a bit longer before inking it up."

Kevin: "Pen number two started out as just an "oh, that looks nice" moment whilst perusing for the Parker. It has a gorgeous green marbling which I ultimately found irresistible. Never having heard of the Wyvern brand previously, I did a bit of research and discovered that my parents actually used these Wyvern Perfect Pen No 81's back at high school, and so with little more than that connection and a desire to own a small bit of British pen history, I added it to the shopping cart at www.penworkshop.co.uk."

"Wyvern is long gone now, closing its factory in 1955. Founded in Leicester, the Wyvern Pen Company was named after the mythical creature that appears in the coat-of-arms of the city. Production of pens began back in the 1890s and they made several models as well as manufactured nibs for other pen companies and promotional pens for a variety of campaigns."

"The barrel still has the faint imprint of "WYVERN Perfect Pen No 81" despite its ~70 year age. I hope I look this good when I'm that old!"

Welcome to our pen club, Kevin, and thank you for sharing your lovely British pen finds with us!

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