Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 521

Happy August! As promised in our July meeting report (link), here's Christopher's write up about the lovely vintage OMAS he brought to that meeting (thank you, Christopher!)...

(Photo & text below courtesy of Christopher ~ please click on image to enlarge)

"Over the years I have heard tell that Omas pens are the ‘Bee’s Knees’ in fine writing instruments. Sadly, it was a line of pens that didn’t come into my sights until quite recently. And I think what interested me the most was a write up I read that said that it was questionable as to which came first in a faceted pen design -- the Doric or the Omas ‘Extra’ line of pens. Strictly by dates of production, I would have to say that it was the latter. Then again, the design was so much of the times, which was Art Deco, it was no wonder both lines of pens shared a similar look! Still, my interest has always been in the vintage -with few exceptions- and if there was to be an Omas pen in my collection, I wanted it to have some age to it. Well, as luck would have it, a superb Omas ‘Gentlemen’ came my way and definitely ticked off all the Omas boxes which include a smooth-as-glass Omas Lucens 18K Gold nib. 

I am not going to get into the history here, because there is enough of it with this line of pens to fill a book. Saying that, this pen was hand produced in the early 1960s, more as a tribute to one of the company’s first major sellers. But unlike the Omas pens that followed the Gentlemen, it was the last Omas pen to be fabricated out of celluloid. The newer Omas pens were made from vegetal resin, which does not --from what I understand-- have the stability. It wasn’t until the 1990s that this was changed to the more modern special resin, that does have the strength of finish to endure. Also, and just for the record, the Omas Company, just to make things a wee bit confusing, produced a 2cm smaller version, but instead of calling it the ‘Gentlemen’ branded it the Omas ‘Gentleman’, marketing it at a lower price. The Omas Gentlemen is a piston filler, and a fine working one at that, with a blued transparent ink view window. Regardless of just how things came down, I personally am quite enamoured with this fountain pen and subsequently, it will find a place in my vintage pen collection."