Can't Find Any British Victorian Dip Pens

[TheFountainPenOfYouth]

Hi guys

 

I am trying to find a dip pen manufactured in England during the Victorian era and I am not having much success. The vast majority of dip pens I see come from the United States or do not have any identification.

 

Can anyone help?

[pen2paper]

Try S. or Sampson Mordan.

Other here have been more successful than myself finding them.

[TheFountainPenOfYouth]

Try S. or Sampson Mordan.

Other here have been more successful than myself finding them.

 

Thanks for the advice pen2paper. In particular I am looking for dip pens with ivory or mother of pearl, if you or anyone else has further info on that, please share!

[Inky.Fingers]

@aaandrew Perhap Snr. Andrew know a bit or two since the steel pen trade is not too far off.

[aderoy]

Take a peek at this website:

 

<http://www.vintagepens.com/>

 

David carries many dip pens and may have something that tickles your fancy?

[TheFountainPenOfYouth]

Take a peek at this website:

 

<http://www.vintagepens.com/>

 

David carries many dip pens and may have something that tickles your fancy?

 

All of them wildly out of my price range And I don't see any made in England except one.

Edited February 18, 2018 by TheFountainPenOfYouth

[AAAndrew]

I just found this topic, which is long dead. (not all incantations using my name work, it seems) But in case it needs revival, I'm curious what you were (are) trying to do? Do you want to write with a dip pen that would have been used in Victorian England? Are you looking for a specific maker of pens? Are you trying to figure out what a specific person in Victorian England would have written with?

 

I can help you figure out the answers to all of these questions. If you are still interested, let me know. Probably 80-90% of all steel dip pens made during Victorian times were made in England, Birmingham, to be exact. The Americans were dominant in the gold pen trade, and most gold pens used in England were American made.

 

What specific pen you would use could well depend on who you were, what class, and what profession. There were thousands of types of steel pens, and dozens of manufacturers of gold pens (though less variety in shapes than in steel pens).

 

Andrew

[Inky.Fingers]

Why were there thousands of steel pens vs a few dozens of gold pen manufacturers?

 

Were most gold pens made by jewelers or is it the properties of most gold pens are the same?

While steel pens with different design yield different properties?

 

Properties as in: flexibility (spread of the tines), softness (ease of flexing), or just bling, bling!

 

Thanks Andrew

[AAAndrew]

Gold pens were a luxury item with a much smaller audience. There were smaller jeweler-made brands, but toward the end of the century most were made in factories.

 

Steel pens were a commodity and so the competition was much stiffer among steel pens to differentiate themselves. Steel pens were also used much more widely for many more purposes. Gold pens were also somewhat fragile and easily bent. It didn't make sense to subject a gold pen to the rigors of a normal work day unless you were so wealthy that $20 was of no consequence. (a gross box of normal steel pens was around $1 or less) Steel pens were made to be disposable.

 

It would make no sense to give your clerks a gold pen with which to enter accounts into the ledger. You could buy many boxes of 144 steel pens for the price of one gold one. Instead, buy them a couple gross of Esterbrook #555 accountant or #322 Inflexible steel pens. Need to write a lot, better to go through boxes of inexpensive #314 Relief pens than risk your expensive gold pen.

 

 

I'm not a gold pen expert, but I it seems to me that I've seen no more than a dozen or so different shapes for gold pens. They did differ in size and somewhat in firmness, but compare that to 39 primary shapes (sometimes with many variations of a single shape) I've identified in my steel pen shape taxonomy, and the dozen different finishes, not to mention the thousands of brands and the combinations are nearly endless. Each combination does have it's own writing "experience" influenced by its shape, size, finish, quality of manufacturing and even tip.

 

Gold pens are tipped like fountain pen nibs and come in pointed (fine, medium, broad) as well as stub varieties. Steel pens are not tipped, but they come in Ball, Double Point, Folded, Music, Oblique Stub, Oblique Pointed, Oval, Pointed, Round, Ruling, Shading, Square, Stepped, Stub, Tipped, and Turned-up.

 

As for numbers made, steel pens swamp the number of gold pens made. (cheap and disposable) I don't have any kind of comprehensive numbers but can give you an idea.

 

In 1854 in Massachusetts, the two gold pen manufacturers in Boston made a total of 6,500 pens. The massive Dawson, Warren and Hyde gold pen factory in Haydenville, MA, that same year made 80,000 gold pens which were shipped all over the country. A huge amount. That same year, one small Vermont stationer alone claims to have sold 2000 gross steel pens (288,000 pens). Almost a decade before, in 1847, Birmingham, England manufacturers made 300,000,000 pens, and they were just getting started.

[Inky.Fingers]

That's astonishing Andrew. So that's why we have steel pens on the flea bay to boot.

 

So...When is your book getting published?

[P25B]

Thanks for the information Andrew. A really interesting read! I am just getting into the dip pen side of things and I think i have hit a milestone of some sort as I managed to break my first ever nib! It was a steel and its no big issue as I have a load more, but just made me appreciate why 300,000,000 will have been made. Its an easy(ish) thing to do.

 

The problem I am having is that, being a lefty and loving a flex nib, I quite often end up splattering ink by catching a tine on the light upstroke. Other than being careful, do you know if a flex nib would have been made for lefties, or would the lefties have been made to write incorrectly and so use the nibs made for the other hand, therefore no development of an old flex lefty nib...?

[AAAndrew]

There are smoother nibs and sharper nibs, but even the smoother ones can catch if you’re not using a light touch.

 

Like, REALLY light. Like, no pressure at all on he upstroke, just “touching” without pressure. It takes practice, but is quite possible. Kids used to do it, so you can too.

 

You could also try a dip stub, or a “round” or “oval” tip. These all are smoother to write with but the stub is a stub, and the others won’t give you the super fine hairlines. But that may be good to start with.

 

Here’s a little about the stub pens.

 

https://thesteelpen.com/2018/02/05/stub-pens/

[Inky.Fingers]

There is quite a many accomplished lefty calligrapher using straight holders as well as oblique holders. Just as Andrew had mentioned, a very light hand is all that is required to wield the mighty pen. As a righty, it took me almost three years to get used to using a semi-flex nib. The Esterbrook 357 is still a challenge for me. I splatter every now and then.

 

Then again I am not a calligrapher. It will take me four more years by my estimate.

 

Enjoy the process

Edited September 10, 2019 by _InkyFingers

[AAAndrew]

Pictures of what an oval tip looks like. This is an Esterbrook 902. You find the same tip on the extremely common Esterbrook 788.

 

 

 

 

A turned-up tip is an earlier version of this, and can also be smooth.

 

[seaclanky]

Hi Mint,

You don't say if you want to try the full Victorian writing experience or just want to own a nice period pen holder. If you want to see what marks you can make with a dip pen, my advice would be to just get some and try it. Be aware that many different styles of nib are still being made, so it's probably best to have an idea of what you want to do before laying out the cash. But a dip pen nib is not an expensive thing. The holders do not have to be expensive either. And try out your existing inks before investing in special "calligraphy" inks. I find that some inks work better than others with some nibs; also the paper you use will have an effect. You may be able to get away with a cheap inkjet paper with some FP's but - I find - dip pens will struggle to avoid feathering.

A word of caution. Don't fill your FP with ink from a bottle you've used for dip pens; the dip nibs can transfer paper dust back to the ink bottle. This won't trouble a dipper but could clog a FP. Or so I've heard.

The flexibility of FP nibs seems to be of great interest these days, with "Flexy" FP nibs available at a premium. If this is your bag, then you definitely need to try some pointed pen dip nibs. Probably on sale as "Copperplate" type.

If you have access to a lathe, the dip holders are the easiest things to make, the only metal required is the little ferrule that accepts the nib. You may find some nice ones on "Etsy" and the fancier ones (laminated with various acrylics including Mother-of-pearl-ish) hark back to the Victorian era. Or look as if they do anyway.

I love my FP's honestly I do; but dip pens are a right laugh and I urge you to have a go.

[AAAndrew]

... I love my FP's honestly I do; but dip pens are a right laugh and I urge you to have a go.

 

Preach it, brother, preach it!

 

Pretty much any steel pen you can find is based on a design, and well-neigh indistinguishable from anything made in Victorian times. British pens are extremely common on eBay. Gillott tends to be more expensive because of a few models of theirs which go for big bucks, so people assume all of them should. Look instead for William or John Mitchell, Brandauer, Perry, Geo W. Hughes, John Heath, M. Myers, D. Leonhardt or many others. And enjoy yourself.

 

 

[sidthecat]

Well, the dip pens I prefer don't come cheap, and I'm also a lefty, which has turned me into a rather peculiar overwriter. My style is a strange mash-up of Edward Johnston's casual style with the backward ascenders of Secretary Hand. It's nicer than it sounds, and, ironically, not especially flex-dependent.

[AAAndrew]

Well, the dip pens I prefer don't come cheap, and I'm also a lefty, which has turned me into a rather peculiar overwriter. My style is a strange mash-up of Edward Johnston's casual style with the backward ascenders of Secretary Hand. It's nicer than it sounds, and, ironically, not especially flex-dependent.

 

Sounds interesting. Backward writing seemed to be a "thing" fairly late. 1890's Esterbrook marketing materials still recommend their stubs for "backward writing"

[Dip n Scratch]

Another reason for the massive dominance of steel nibs is possibly ink-related.

If we are using anything with a good deal of iron-gall or that is not PH-neutral it will flash-corrode a plain steel nib.

 

I don't know what the inks were like that your average John (or Jane) Doe would have used at work. Were they sold in powder form and mixed as & when needed in a jar?

That thought occurred that it would be the most practical option for transport & storage. A tin of powder would occupy less space and be more durable to ship & store on-site than filled bottles & jars, whether they were of earthenware or glass.

[AAAndrew]

Just based on advertisements and catalogs, powdered ink was sold, but so were bottles of liquid “writing fluid” and other such fancy names. Commercially-made ink was available from fairly early in the 19th-century, first from England, e.g. Stephen’s, and by the 1825, in the US by Thaddeus Davids. Sold in small bottles for home, large ones to keep the school or office inkwells filled.

 

While iron gall ink is destructive to a Steel pen, it doesn’t quite “flash-corrode.” That’s why pen wipes were so popular. If you keep your pen clean, it will last for quite a while. Before steel pens were made in factories, people would take care of their pens and even repair” them with a hone or whet stone. THey could last months.

 

When they cost $1 a nib, they were repaired. Once they cost $0.75 for a gross of nibs, they became disposable.