Famous people's pens

[Morbus Curiositas]

I am a reading addict and a history lover...

 

Modern writers use Microsoft Word.... Bastards

 

I love French Classical literature...

 

Balzac, Flaubert, Zola Maupassant

Denis Diderot and Jean Jacques Rousseau (sorry no novelists)...

 

But they died before the first (mass produced) appeared....

 

Too Bad :-(

 

Does someone know if Jean Paul Sartre or Albert Camus used Fountain Pens....

 

Any other famour writers of literature (not the Danielle Steel kind of Rubbish!!)

 

I must get a Conway Stewart or an Onoto... Good old Winston, Politician, historian and writer used one...

 

I am interested too in famous people/politicians.... Famous not notorious... so Forget Stalin, Mao or Sadddam Hussein.... But more like Mandela, Woodrow Wilson, Ghandi or the Dutch royals used etc etc

[Ursus]

 

I am interested too in famous people/politicians.... Famous not notorious... so Forget Stalin, Mao or Sadddam Hussein....

Well, some people are difficult to forget... but I sure will try!

[pdc13]

Mary Pickford in 1943:

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Mary_Pickford_signing_the_entrance_to_the_Mary_Pickford_War_Funds_bungalow.jpg

 

I write on doors in the same way.

 

 

Here's a video of D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin signing the contract to form United Artists:

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=Emz_Qk10GEE

 

...using a dip pen.

[Cepasaccus]

Albert Michelson, Nobel Prize in Physics

 

http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/07/070924.michelson.shtml

 

On the third photo it looks like a big Duofold to me, but not a red one.

 

Cepasaccus

[Kuscer]

I personally love Conway Stewart, especially the Gatsby limited edition

[sffstorm]

Gaiman (my all-time favorite writer, and the person whose autograph I would have tattooed on me if I could get it) has quite a collection. He apparently uses a different color ink every day, to see how much he's writing.

 

He wrote Anansi Boys with a vintage Waterman Ideal.

 

Possibly apocryphal, but I've heard from some sources that he carefully selects a brand-new pen for each new novel, and writes only with that until it's finished. He then doesn't use that pen for anything else. From what I've read on his blog, though, this seems unlikely.

 

In addition to the Lamy and the TWSBIs mentioned earlier, I have also seen him use a Pilot Custom 823. In this video you can see it close at 0:31 and refilling at 0:51. Pretty sure he was using the same when I went to have my copy signed in NYC.

 

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[KAC]

Henry Kissinger: Lamy 2000, because the pen did not leak in airplanes.

[KAC]

Nicholas Elliot, famous MI-6 spy and Kim Philby's foil, wrote with a MB (source: Ben Macintyre's recent history, "A Spy Among Friends"). He rolled the pen between his fingers or on a hard surface as a distraction and to cover his own nervousness during the confrontation with Philby in Beirut.

[Bigeddie]

 

In addition to the Lamy and the TWSBIs mentioned earlier, I have also seen him use a Pilot Custom 823. In this video you can see it close at 0:31 and refilling at 0:51. Pretty sure he was using the same when I went to have my copy signed in NYC.

 

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And what looks like a pre 2010 bottle of Montblanc Bordeaux, maybe Sepia.

[gwyneddd]

Nicholas Elliot, famous MI-6 spy and Kim Philby's foil, wrote with a MB (source: Ben Macintyre's recent history, "A Spy Among Friends"). He rolled the pen between his fingers or on a hard surface as a distraction and to cover his own nervousness during the confrontation with Philby in Beirut.

 

Have you read "A Spy Among Friends" which is the story of unmasking Philby as a double agent? It's fantastic--and if you like John LeCarre, it gives a lot of insight into his best books (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for one.)

[Helen350]

Colin Powell uses a custom made fountain pen commissioned for him by Bill Cosby from Bradford Torelli. The pen is made completely of solid titanium. Colin Powell is a lefty. www.Torellipens.com

Edited October 21, 2014 by Helen350

[Buckandball1842]

I went to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa the other week and saw this cool piece of history. It's the Parker Challenger used by General Charles Foulkes, commander of the 1st Canadian Corps, who accepted the surrender of General Johannes Blaskowitz, commander of German forces in the Netherlands, at Wageningen on 5 May 1945.

[fullfederhalter]

 

Walt Disney is often seen in pictures with Sheaffer pens. I don't know if this is because they supplied the pens or if he actually enjoyed using them.

 

P.S. If someone has the 'Walt Disney' Sheaffer balance pen kicking around they don't want....

Supposedly, after Walt passed away the contents of his desk were inventoried and a black Sheaffer Balance and an Eversharp Skyline were found (I have reproductions of both pens). While visiting the Walt Disney Museum in San Francisco last summer, they had this Skyline on display.

[Man O War]

I think maybe Lyndon B. Johnson was the last US President to sign a bill with a fountain pen. He used Parker 45s and Esterbrook Safari's.

 

I do know that George W. Bush also used a Cross Townsend rollerball as his official bill signing pen. They were navy blue with gold plated trim. Barack Obama's Townsends are black with chrome plated trim.

In Robert Caro's four volumes "The Years of Lyndon Johnson," he mentions Lady Bird refilling his pen each night while he was in the House, then the Senate. Given LBJ's personality, I suspect she did it when he was President too. Care doesn't say what type of pen though. As an aside, Caro is writing the fifth and final volume. LBJ was an interesting character, though largely a jack a**.

[______Zaphod_Beeblebrox]

I know that the President of the Universe uses an Onoto Aviator Fountain pen.

[______Zaphod_Beeblebrox]

My Montblanc Jules Verne Trio Set was originaly owned by Stefan Wallrafan of "Collecting Stars" fame.

[limt]

I believe Walesa used a simple ballpoint (multicolor one), but sometime ago he was seen with Omas pen

Edited June 25, 2015 by limt

[Flippy]

Somewhere on line, alas I don't remember exactly where, I saw a Sheaffer fountain pen stamped with the name "Richard Castle". So do fictional famous authors count?

Oooh...Castle. I can't imagine a fictional author would catch crime with a Sheaffer. Also, many of the characters in the episodes were using Parker Jotters (SS)

[masterguns]

This sits in the Stalin Museum in Gori, Georgia.

 

[fromthecrowd]

Leo Tolstoy had fountain pens in his possession. His friend and neighbor Chertkov gave Tolstoy a Swan pen, which he brought to Russia from Britain. As far as I remember this happened as early as in the 1880s. There appears to be no evidence of Tolstoy writing any literary text with fountain pens. But he certainly used them for correspondence. Actually there exists a letter to Chertkov, in which Tolstoy mentions how well the fountain pen writes. Later Tolstoy asked Chertkov to send him replacement golden nibs for fountain pens. Most frequently mentioned is the instance of Tolstoy using a fountain pen for signing his will. The procedure which occurred in 1910 was well described by Chertkov's secretary. For certain reasons the act of signing was held secretly in the forest. Tolstoy arrived on horseback and had with him a fountain pen 'clipped to his blouse'.