Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 228

Today we're featuring a couple of items that Stuart picked up in downtown Vancouver recently. The first is a metal-bodied, cartridge-filling fountain pen sold by the Japanese store Daiso (on Granville Street) which he acquired for the princely sum of $2.25:

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

Stuart: "The Daiso pen has a very stiff nib, and the ink flow isn’t great, although that could be my particular pen. It’s an ideal no-worry pen as it’s so cheap!"

Stuart's other new acquisition is an interesting piece of ephemera relating to a handwriting method developed by a Canadian educator in Victoria and used by millions of Canadian schoolchildren from 1921 until the mid-1990s:

From the Creston Museum website (link to article):
"For decades, the leading guide in teaching and learning penmanship was The MacLean Method of Printing and Writing. It was developed in 1921 by H.B. MacLean, a school principal, as a way of addressing teachers’ complaints that they couldn’t read the sloppy handwriting of their students. He devised a “scientific” way of teaching handwriting, starting with fundamentals like how to position the paper and how to sit in the chair, and going all the way up to precise formation of every letter in the cursive alphabet. Students could earn certificates documenting their success every step of the way – at the upper levels, they could even send samples of their penmanship to MacLean himself for grading!"

Here's one such MacLean Method certificate that Stuart found at a second-hand Vancouver bookstore:  

Stuart: "I’m just guessing about the MacLean certificate, but I think it was issued prior to the Second World War. But it could be from the early post-war era. As the student was working with pencil, they would have been in the early stages of learning the method, before graduating to using a dip-pen and an inkwell, which their teacher would have filled at their desk! That the certificate has survived in such good condition indicates it was something the student prized and kept carefully."

Some further reading ~ Article in the "British Columbia Historical News", the journal of the B.C. Historical Federation -"H.B. MacLean’s Method of Writing" (pgs 8-12 of PDF)

Stuart--many thanks for sharing these latest finds with us :)