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The Parker 75 Pen

August 28, 2012

jimpageadmin Fountain Pens, Strange and Pointless , , , , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

In 1964, to celebrate their 75th anniversary, the Parker Pen Company introduced the Parker 75. Mine belonged to my dad and is, I believe, from 1967. At the time, they sold for $25 which in today’s money would be about $200, I guess. On eBay, the sterling-silver ones, like mine, go for anywhere from $100 to $250, depending on what it’s made of, nib size and collectable status.

Mine is the sterling-silver model with the grid pattern, which looks very elegant and slim compared to many of today’s black and bulky fountain pens. I had my dad’s fine nib replaced with a Parker France broad nib, which is more like what we’d call a medium-thickness nib today.

Some of these pens were made in gold and other finishes, and some were made from 1715-era silver coins from a sunken Spanish ship found off the Florida Keys in the late 1960s.

When my brother (thanks, Jeffrey!) gave me this pen a couple of years ago, I had it checked out and the interior-grip cap mechanism replaced by our friends at Fahrney’s, which is a wonderful Washington, DC pen store. Their store is across from the National Press building on F Street, NW, and their repair facility is in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Good folks. Send for their catalog!

These 75s take both the old-fashioned fill-from-a-bottle ink holders and modern-day ink cartridge refills. Tomorrow, I start a new print production assignment at one of my favorite places, so I’ll celebrate by using this pen, filled with the Parker emerald-green ink, which they call Quink for some reason.

Fountain Pens And A Bit Of Doggerel . . .

August 28, 2012

jimpageadmin Fountain Pens, Strange and Pointless , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I like to use the old-fashioned fountain pens. Always have. Here’s the nib of one of my favorites; a Parker Duofold Centennial:

In my mechanical drafting, cartographic and drawing days, I had to use either a ruling pen (the less said about those abominations the better) or the old Koh-i-Noor Rapidographs with India ink. Those were a nightmare if you allowed the India ink to dry and had to clean the pen. And you would and did! In high school, a girl I wanted to date turned me down because my fingernails always looked dirty; I told her it was the darned India ink that kept my fingertips ink stained and was the very Devil to clean. So it goes . . .

A normal fountain pen with normal ink is a lot easier to manage, though I’ve still had a couple of accidents when I’d forget to cap the pen before sticking it back into my pocket. Then you walk around the office with a big blob of ink on your shirt. Luckily, dry cleaners are used to removing those stains!

Now, there was a stretch beginning in the late 1970s where I was filling out FedEx counterfoil labels all the time, and, for that purpose, a fountain pen isn’t the right tool. Reluctantly, I switched to a MontBlanc rollerball pen, but once FedEx labels could be generated online and printed on a laser printer, I went back to fountain pens.

What attracts me to fountain pens are the feel of the pen on paper, the infinite variety of inks available for them and the lovely designs available. The history of the things is overwhelming and it’s fun to look into that.

My collection isn’t extensive; I have a couple of each by the major manufacturers. I prefer a wider nib or pen-point than most folks do and that’s easily achieved with fountain pens.

Here’s the doggerel I promised. It’s from a pen-nib manufacturer in Scotland or England many years ago and at one time, signs with this verse were evidently all over the place in the UK:

Here’s what a box of those nibs looked like.

I still have a few boxes of that type of nib from my high school and college days. The ones I have are made by Speedball or Hunt, but they look just like the ones in that sign.