Identify Early Waterman FP?

[scribbler77]

My wife's granfather was a country doctor, active from the 1890s to the early 1930s. The Waterman fountain pen pictured below was found while cleaning out his former office. Miraculously, it was still in what was apparently its original box. The warning inside the box (both inside the cover and the bottom portion (shown) is apparently intended for persons accustomed to changing the steel nibs on dip pens. Therefore, it would seem that this is a very early fountain pen. But not the very earliest, since it has a (removable) clip.

 

 

The following photograph has been lightened to show the pattern on the pen. (It actually is a deep black.) The material seems to be hard rubber, and it also appears to be an eyedropper fill. (But I haven't tried to fill it!)

 

 

Can anyone identify the model and date it?

[scribbler77]

Checking the Waterman ads at the Italian site FrankB called attention to (http://www.fountainpen.it/File:Waterman-Ideal-1910-2.jpg), it would seem that the pen was produced sometime from ca. 1905 and 1918, since the address of Waterman's on Broadway in New York was different earlier and from 1919. It looks most like one of the pens in a 1910 ad from a store in Knoxville, Tennessee, but the clip is removable from the cap and not fixed on it. (My wife's grandfather lived all his life in Tennessee, and though he is more likely to have bought the pen in Nashville than in Knoxville, it is interesting to see that similar Waterman pens were advertised in Tennessee well before World War I.)

 

My guess is that the pen dates sometime between 1905 and 1910. Also, it seems to have been a "Waterman Ideal."

 

Any other guesses?

[Johnny Appleseed]

Well, I think the dating is correct for the box. It might also be the correct date for the pen.

 

However, that does not look like a Waterman pen. The profile of the section is completely wrong for Waterman pens from that period. The chasing is also different from any waterman pen I have seen before, and the rounded ends don't seem right either.

 

Is there an imprint on the pen? Are you sure it is hard rubber? It looks a little like the brass Eagle cartridge pens, which were black-painted brass, sometimes chased to look like hard rubber. It looks like there is black enamal chipping off the end, which makes me thing it may have been one of those.

 

John

[Beechwood]

http://www.vintagewatermanpens.co.uk/vintagewatermanpensusa.asp

 

 

One of the best sources for pictorial identification of early Waterman.

 

Large site, it is worth have a wander around

[Vintagepens]

The pen appears to be an Eagle, made of black lacquered metal. It is probably a glass cartridge filler.

[scribbler77]

Thanks. The clip does look like an Eagle. But it is not lacquered metal. The light portions in the lower photograph are not actually light; I lightened the photo considerably to show the pattern in the pen, which is solid black. I believe the material is hard rubber because there is no metal showing where there is wear and it is lighter than a metal pen would be.