Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 307

 From one modern red fountain pen to another! This is Lawrence's lovely acquisition...

Lawrence writes: "This is my Parker Red Sonnet (....almost typed in "Red Sonja..." LOL). I can't say this pen is "feminine" like, for example, my Waterman Elegance, because most of my pens are basically neutral. It's like with birds. I used to have ten budgies and I know that some of them are "male" and some are "female"...but visually it's hard to tell so I do treat them as neutral cute creatures and that's that. So same thing with most of my pens. Anyway, here are some pictures of the pen:

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

I got the F point nib and here is the nib:

The thing that was a bit annoying in the end for me was the converter. It's not a twist converter, but a sliding one. Supposedly this is to help fill the pen with one hand, but the mechanism is not smooth and it gets jammed often...so in the end what seems like a good idea became something of an annoyance.

This converter also has a ball-bearing inside that "shakes" the ink up a bit while you use it, supposedly to help the flow (well it didn't...LOL..more on that later).

I got this pen as an "update" of my beloved vintage Parker, and I wanted this Sonnet to act as a "proxy" for my vintage pen (I know it sounds crazy...but sort of like an "ambassador" for my vintage Parkers LOL).

The pen is beautiful to look at, the gold / black / red is a great combo.

(According to this page, the date code on the cap band --the single vertical line,  followed by the letter "I" seen above-- represents the first quarter of the year 1994)

It has a made in France / Parker name on the cap.

I know this is not really a "big deal" as Waterman (a French company) has acquired Parker, or is it the other way around ? (Ed. note: Both companies are owned by Newell Brands). Anyway, this takes me back to my elementary years, when my vintage Parkers were still actively being used. Most of the Parker pens everyone had were made in the USA, but I had this classmate who had a French Parker. She called it "My French Parker" in capital letters LOL. Anyway, it struck me as quite unusual and, as a kid, I wanted my own "French Parker"...and now I do....in red no doubt.

Now we get to the writing part. I have owned pens with diva vibes (eg. my POY 2008) but most of these diva pens don't behave that way when writing; they are mostly very well-behaved and totally proletariat. But this Parker looks diva-ish and plays the part; it does not like any ink I put in it except Parker black. It skips like crazy until it got to the Parker black, then it worked fine, wrote smoothly, and is happy. Which is totally fine because I had this OCD thing with black/red combos -- black pen / red ink--and so this Red Sonnet will naturally "need" to have black ink anyway. So it worked out in a way."

Our thanks to Lawrence for his photos & review of this classic modern fountain pen--a perennial favourite-- as well as his ongoing contributions to our pen club's virtual "show & tell :)