Help in identifying a vintage nib

[Vintage_BE]

Might anyone be able to identify the manufacturer and/or brand of this vintage nib? It is a “donor” nib that was fitted on one of my pens by Guillaume Chappuis of watchandwrite.com.  Guillaume believes it’s of Italian origin but does not know more.  It is one of my favourite writers, with quite a bit of flex and a medium fine tip that gives just the right amount of feedback.

Thank you.

[fabri00]

Never seen in Italy a nib with that logo.

[Paul-in-SF]

I did a bit of Googling, looking for "HKZ" related to fountain pens, and found this 6+ year old vague reference, but it does have a little more information:

 

"Unknown, probably Italian made pen. "HKZ" stamped on nib and cap, "Helios" imprint on barrel, nice piston filler"

 

Here is the link to the thread on Fountain Pen Board/FPNuts:   http://fountainpenboard.com/forum/index.php?/topic/6373-finally-new-pens/

 

The discussion of that pen continues, and there were a lot of pictures, but it appears that all the links to photos of this pen are dead. However, the poster there is named Christof Z, and if by chance it is our own poster Christof, maybe he can provide the photos here or provide more information. The photos that do appear (unfortunately about other pens) do seem to have his hallmark quality. Good luck. 

[sanpei]

Never seen on Italian pens too, more German than Italian to me, triangle reminds the MontB series III nibs, so not a MB ma inspired to.

[fabri00]

I also feel the design of the logo do not seems to be Italian.

Also hkz  do not sound like an Italian brand name.

The letter K is present but almost  not used in our alphabet and language.

And Sanpei  has really a great experience in Italian old brands, famous and minor one, therefore his opinion is quite reliable.

[Vintage_BE]

9 hours ago, Paul-in-SF said:

I did a bit of Googling, looking for "HKZ" related to fountain pens, and found this 6+ year old vague reference, but it does have a little more information:

 

"Unknown, probably Italian made pen. "HKZ" stamped on nib and cap, "Helios" imprint on barrel, nice piston filler"

 

Here is the link to the thread on Fountain Pen Board/FPNuts:   http://fountainpenboard.com/forum/index.php?/topic/6373-finally-new-pens/

 

The discussion of that pen continues, and there were a lot of pictures, but it appears that all the links to photos of this pen are dead. However, the poster there is named Christof Z, and if by chance it is our own poster Christof, maybe he can provide the photos here or provide more information. The photos that do appear (unfortunately about other pens) do seem to have his hallmark quality. Good luck. 

Thanks, much appreciated. I had tried many character combination in an attempt to decipher the logo ... and had not yet thought of "hkz". This may be an interesting lead

[Vintage_BE]

9 hours ago, Paul-in-SF said:

I did a bit of Googling, looking for "HKZ" related to fountain pens, and found this 6+ year old vague reference, but it does have a little more information:

 

"Unknown, probably Italian made pen. "HKZ" stamped on nib and cap, "Helios" imprint on barrel, nice piston filler"

... and, presto, I just found a (German language) eBay transaction for a fountain pen with this nib (I am not sure whether I am authorised to post links to eBay on FPN, but that pen was sold just two weeks ago, 19 January 2021 and the eBay reference number is 333852289714) . The pen in the eBay pictures with the hkz nib is branded as "Helios". There is an FPN forum topic (Under "Italy") on Helios fountain pens (see below), however the pens pictured in that topic do not appear to have a "hkz" branded nib.  So it's unclear whether "hkz" (or whatever characters are represented by the nib of this pen) was a brand of Helios pens, or an independent nib/pen manufacturer that supplied to Helios, or whether the Helios pen (like my own pen) had a "donor" hkz nib? The plot thickens 😉 

 

[Paul-in-SF]

Its too bad all those photos from those older posts are no longer viewable. 

 

At this location: https://www.tenpen.it/reading/history-italian-fountain-pen-vol-1 is a pair of large Acrobat documents called History of the Italian Fountain Pen (parts 1 and 2) by Letizia Jacopini. I downloaded them because I wanted to have them available and maybe even print them out, but they are hundreds of pages and the cost is prohibitive. (She was selling the books on FPN in 2009.) Anyway, there is an entry on Helios (for some reason it's under E for Elios) starting on Page 242 of volume 1. It's fairly long so I won't quote it here. 

 

A few things gleaned from the article: they were located in Milan; pens were produced from mid-30's to late 40's; they had business arrangements with Germany for raw materials and some pen parts, and a few of their pens were considered to be in "the German style." There was no mention of HKZ anywhere in the article however, nor anywhere else in the books. I wonder if some of the pen parts they got from Germany might be these nibs, since they have appeared in at least two Helios pens that we know about. Call it a stereotype if you like, but that logo has a certain Germanic flavor to it, in my eyes.

[Vintage_BE]

I also found a post dated 29 September 2014 on Fountainpenboard that contained a (no longer available) picture of an “Unknown, probably Italian made pen. "HKZ" stamped on nib and cap, "Helios" imprint on barrel”. This would seem to confirm that there is a link between Helios pens and “hkz” nibs. 

[sanpei]

3 hours ago, Vintage_BE said:

I also found a post dated 29 September 2014 on Fountainpenboard that contained a (no longer available) picture of an “Unknown, probably Italian made pen. "HKZ" stamped on nib and cap, "Helios" imprint on barrel”. This would seem to confirm that there is a link between Helios pens and “hkz” nibs. 

No possible give any opinion without images, could be a frankenpen or a Helios not made in Italy from SILGA...

[fabri00]

Here there are pictures of several helios pens with also nibs, but all branded helios, none hkz.

 

https://www.fountainpen.it/Helios