Barrel Nibs (More Steel Pen Stuff)

[AAAndrew]

Most people are familiar with traditional fountain pen nibs, which were basically derived from the standard slip nib, what most people know as the standard dip pen.

 

 

 

Slip nibs were developed around the 1820's-30's. Probably the first type were actually cut pieces of quill that would slip into a holder. Joseph Bramah was not the first, but he was the most widely known inventor to come up with both a hand press to cut multiple points from a single quills, and a holder to hold them. (I have a reference to a New Yorker, Mr Stansbury, who came up with a way to cut quills into individual "pens" that were held in a holder five years before Bramah files his patent).

 

Here are some of Bramah's "Portable Pens" and a holder also invented by Bramah.

 

 

 

The early gold pens were slip nibs, but were often mounted in a gilt brass sleeve which mounted on a stick made of wood or fancier materials like ivory or mother of pearl.

 

This is a gold dip pen in my collection made by Piquette who made gold pens in Detroit from about 1845 to 1860. It's actually a normal slip pen but it came already "slipped into" a gilt brass sleeve. Alas, the wooden holder is missing.

 

 

 

And here is another gold pen from my collection made by Dawson, Warren & Hyde from the 1850's. This one still has it's original wooden holder. The end of the holder has a brass tip over which the sleeve would fit. The gold nib can be removed if needed, but was most likely just kept in the sleeve for protection.

 

 

 

 

The earliest steel pens for which we have descriptions, were not these slip pens. They were instead what was then, and are still known, as barrel pens. The actual "nib" part are only part of the pen. Most of it is made up of a long barrel extending from the bottom of the nib. This barrel would slip over the end of a holder, usually made of wood. Some of the early pens were made as one piece, and were not meant to be taken apart, but most were made so you could replace the nib should it wear out or get damaged. At this stage, the wooden holder was much less valuable than the steel nib.

 

One of the earliest steel pen makers was a man named Samuel Harrison. He was a maker of split rings (think those key rings made of a single ribbon of steel wrapped into a circle overlapping itself) in Birmingham, England. He also made pens for his friend, the famous chemist Joseph Priestly. These early metal pens were made by bending a sheet of thin steel into a tube, and then cutting away the metal to form a nib. Harrison used the seam where the two ends came together as the slit in the pen.

 

Another early maker, Daniel Fellow, a blacksmith from Sedgley, began making pens in the 1780's. His technique was similar, but he created the split with chisels.

 

 

 

 

Notice the ad says that the pen is "properly mounted." This means that the pens came pre-mounted on a holder. These were still luxury items, so I'm sure the holders were very nicely made, but were still a small portion of the total cost of the pen.

 

These barrel pens were also made in the US in early days. The first professional steel pen maker in the US was Peregrine Williamson, starting in about 1806 in Baltimore. His pens were very popular at the time, and attracted the attention of President Thomas Jefferson, who became a customer.

 

His pens were also barrel pens. He sold them loose, with a holder, or "properly" mounted. He sold some of the loose nibs to Thomas Jefferson for use in his "polygraph" and also some mounted in a fancy pen/pencil combo complete with perpetual calendar at one end.

 

Here's the only image we have of his pens. It's from a newspaper ad in 1809.

 

 

 

The barrel pen continued to be made into the 20th-century, almost exclusively by the British manufacturers. They were not very common, or widely made, but they can still be found now and again. Here is a box, complete with the small holder that came with it, of William Mitchell "N" pens from the early 20th-century. This gives you a good idea of how the barrel pens of the very early days looked. It's amazing that this form, which must have been more expensive to make than most other styles, persisted to relatively late in the history of steel dip pens.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, thought some of you might enjoy learning a bit about the earliest form of steel dip nibs and seeing some interesting pictures. This will eventually be added to my web site on the history of the steel pen.

Edited August 2, 2018 by AAAndrew

[europen]

I find your post, pictures and text, utterly fascinating. If nothing else, one can see that pen design has remained basically the same; it is manufacturing techniques that have (obviously) become more sophisticated.

 

Users of such pens in those early eras must have felt special indeed, as pen users should today, to have access to such innovations that accompany unique designs.

[Honeybadgers]

Cool info. I really need to start collecting a few older dip nibs. I love my zebra G's but I want to get back into sketching, and good god do I REALLY want a gold dip nib.

[AAAndrew]

Cool info. I really need to start collecting a few older dip nibs. I love my zebra G's but I want to get back into sketching, and good god do I REALLY want a gold dip nib.

 

Vintage nibs are terrible, awful things that no one should even have in their houses. That's why I offer a vintage nib disposal service. Just pack up any old nibs you have and send them to me in a well-sealed box. I will dispose of them properly.

 

First I label and count them and then store in special boxes.

 

 

 

Then I store dispose of them in drawers like this one. I'm currently up to 15 drawers.

 

 

 

So, if you need to dispose of any vintage steel pens (I'll even take gold, silver, brass, German Silver, or even gutta percha, if asked nicely), just PM me and I'll make sure they're disposed of properly.