this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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Fountain Pens

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Recently I had some guests stay for a while, and while they were packing and cleaning this pen rolled out of a bedroom closet. I can't find any identifying marks on the pen itself anywhere, and in fact it looks quite a bit different inside than any pen I have seen before (not that I have tons of experience)--it's just a completely hollow tube made of very thin metal, with a friction-fit cap that holds a #773 R. Esterbrook & Co's Natural Slant, also friction fit and with no reservoir to speak of.

The only information I can find on the nib is that the nib is possibly from around 1938, or at least that that model was being manufactured at the time (The Esterbrook Project).

The house where this was found was constructed in ~1939, and I have no idea how long the pen was hiding in the closet since we've cleaned it out several times before and it wasn't even the first time this month that we had guests staying in that room. We're also far from the first owners, though I found a penny from the 1940s when we did a demolition project in the garage so there are some artifacts from the early days of its life still hiding around!

Any pointers would be appreciated! I'm not sure what to call the raised vine and flower motif on the outside to help narrow my searches to try to find similar pens by blind luck.

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[–] Treczoks 7 points 4 days ago

Looks like a dip pen like we used in school (art, calligraphy, not normal writing), with a more elaborate handle than we used, though.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

I tried a reverse image search and got a lot of similar looking smoking pipes and a few victorian pens and pencils, but nothing completely matching what you have here.

I wonder if it's worth having an antique dealer have a look at it, in case you have something special here.

Can you show a closer picture of the top of the nib?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Thanks for the replies everyone! It definitely looks like a dip pen from what I can see, I can't even see where a feed or reservoir might attach now that I'm looking. I'll try to post some better pictures of the actual nib and interior tomorrow, today escaped me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

I don’t see a feed for the nib. Do you think it’s missing? Could this be a kind of dip pen or something for calligraphy?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

The nib looks like the calligraphy nibs I’ve used in the past so if I had to say, it’s (like others have said) a dip pen. The friction-fit nib supports that, too, because you’d want to be able to change to different nib types for different fonts easily while still using the same nib holder, same as you do for calligraphy nib holders nowadays

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

@niucllos sorry, Lemmy was not showing the photo on mobile for some reason. I believe that’s a dip pen, not a fountain pen. The nib looks like a dip pen nib and the lack of reservoir seems to point to dip pen as well