Today's blog post is about a modern Parker find of Christopher's--two of them, in fact!
(photo courtesy of Christopher ~ please click on image to enlarge)
Christopher writes:
"I have professed, on many occasions, to be a serious collector of vintage pens over the newer ones. Still, there comes a time when that rule of thumb is gladly broken. Case in point - the Centennial Edition re-creation, in the UK, of the Parker Duofold during the late 1980s. As the story goes, when Parker’s writing instrument division changed hands and moved from the US to Newhaven, England, it seemed that everything fell into place to honour the original Parker 1920s Duofold line of pens with a Centennial edition line. Face it - who didn’t love writing with the Parker Duofold? But the British approach was to pull out all the stops to create a perfect tribute to one of George Parker’s best-selling pens - a line of pens that literally put the Parker company name on the map, and established it as one of the major leaders in producing fine and dependable writing instruments.
Now, fittingly, 1988 was the Parker Company’s centenary, so applying a centennial branding to this Parker Duofold tribute seemed rather fitting. But to what end could the UK Parker plant turn out a higher quality product in regards to this centennial Duofold tribute? Well, the production process started respectfully in 1987 and included a ten day computer manufacture process to get things just right. This was followed by the development of 130 different components at a level of quality control testing that just could not be beat. Strict attention was paid to the product’s make up, to include the finest and most durable materials. Along these lines, a extremely hard acrylic, Methyl Methacrylate was chosen for its overall strength and durability. The fittings had a sold brass base, which was, in turn, nickel plated to finally be further thickly plated with 23K Gold. The nibs were finely cut out of 18K Gold, but with the Parker arrow integrated in ruthenium, which also gave the nib the hard tipping required. These superb Parker nibs sat correctly and responsibly on a very well made feed that included the collector at the back end, which had made the Parker 51 just such a good option. Both nib and feed were subsequently inserted into a very well designed grip section, with further banding on the business end and the aft end. As for further design refinements, the first Centennial Parker Duofolds had a tapered, but shorter, arrow clip which sat with its tip well above the cap banding. As the line moved on, this clip was lengthened to have the tip sit directly above the cap banding. The filler was one that had served the British Parker works so well in the past and just came down to the dependable Parker aerometric, which also had proved itself to be reasonably leakproof. It should be noted, though, that the Centennial also could be acquired with a converter-type twist filler and Parker ink cartridges could also be used. To finish this Parker treasure, the cap top was crowned with a black acrylic cap screw which mirrored the original 1920s Duofold one. At the barrel end of the pen, was a long black fixed blind cap with a double ringed tassie. Could any pen lover ask for more?
Well, I would have to answer the above question with "Yes", because the Parker Centennial line also included a complimentary ballpoint, rollerball and or mechanical pencil. But my focus has to be on the Centennial ballpoint because that was the writing instrument that was included in the Centennial set that came my way. Over the years I have come across and injected a good number of Parker Duofold mechanical pencils into my vintage pen collection, but what I really admired about my particular Centennial set was that the ballpoint followed more or less exactly the design of the earlier Parker Duofold pencil. Of course, it matched the pen in finish as described above, but sported a beautiful gold crowning cap with could, in turn, be twisted to bring out the ballpoint writing tip. While the fountain was 6 ¾ inches posted, when capped at 5 ½ inches, the Centennial ballpoint came close to matching this length. To wrap things up in the Parker Centennial department, my set came in a very smart plush and smartly covered inside and out display box. And I was thrilled to find not only a spare ball point refill in the area underneath the pen's interior support card, but also a smartly finished lengthy instruction manual booklet, complete with the world wide Parker ‘Lifetime’ warranty. All mentioned, in turn, fitted perfectly into a matched grey outer Parker marked cardboard box. I have as yet to ink and write with the fountain pen, but did dip it to see how the nib performed on paper. On the other hand, I have used the ball point with great success. So, in both cases, I could not be more pleased, and this fine Parker set will definitely see some age to it residing in my pen collection."
Our thanks to Christopher for sharing this modern classic with us! As an aside, I posted a review of my own modern Parker 'Duofold' fountain pen here a few years ago, but my pen was the Dufold "International", the smaller relative of Christopher's Duofold "Centennial" model.
Have a great weekend,
~Maja
