Pen ID: KWINTO LADY??

[Turquois]

Hi, I am looking for help identifying two vintage fountain pens recently acquired as part of a bundled auction.

Pen 1 is marked "KWINTO LADY" on the cap, I have seen one listing for a pen with the same name online and there it said the pen was from Germany. I acquired mine in New Zealand. It is a piston filler with a gold nib and it is tiny! The nib has a logo that shows an animal (Horse? Mountain Goat????) in front of some mountains. This pen is the black and gold one in the pictures.

Pen 2 is a button filler with no markings on the pen but the same logo on the nib as pen 1 so possibly they were made by the same manufacturer. The clip design is very different from pen 1 though. It is longer than the KWINTO pen above it is just as skinny. It is the blue striped pen in the pictures.

I love them both and am trying to find out more about where and by whom they were made.

 

Thank you for any help you can provide!

 

Turquois

 

(No prizes for guessing my favourite ink colour ;-))

[Armo]

Those are Bock nibs but more than that I know not. Bock supplied many manufacturers mostly but not exclusively German. Very attractive.

 

https://www.nibs.com/blog/nibster-writes/nibs-germany

[Turquois]

13 hours ago, Armo said:

Those are Bock nibs but more than that I know not. Bock supplied many manufacturers mostly but not exclusively German. Very attractive.

 

https://www.nibs.com/blog/nibster-writes/nibs-germany

Thank you very much, Armo, the article was very informative and gives me some more leads to follow.

I was also investigating the Kwinto name (just as a surname, not a company name) and it seems to have originated in Poland many centuries ago and then spread through eastern Europe and also into Germany from there. It opens up the possibility that the company that made the Kwinto pens was based in one of the eastern European countries and was not active for long given the changes caused by WW2 in the region. I will keep searching!

Sadly the nib on the Kwinto appears to have a damaged feed, the water just runs straight through the nib when I flush it. This is particularly annoying as the rest of the pen including the piston still works and just requires a new cork washer. Ah well, just set it aside until i know more about pens!

[Bo Bo Olson]

Very nice pens. That marbled one is a very pretty pen.

 

I have some that are similar....I think made by Mutschler...who I believed also made Eros pans. A third tier German company from Heidelberg.

These two are Clippers, named after the famous Pan Am/TWA Super Constellation airplane............. They have a triple tail on the nib. Semi-flex nibs. (I worked on the AF Radar version....this is the Navy plane, painted prettier than the AF one.)) ,

It was the first AF 1, IKE's plane. One of the prettiest planes ever made.....a good name for a 2-3rd tier pen.

 

This is a Senator, marbled non-mandrel wrapped pen.  This is IMO late '50-early 60's, could be it's pure early '50's. I also have a no-name Windsor that looks very similar...In they had gone away from this mandrel wrapping by the '50's...I had to go look to make sure they were not mandrel wrapped.

 

(((I once had second tier mandrel wrapped pre&just after-WW2 Wearevers....as good as an Esterbrook. I do now regreat getting rid of them, but was noobie, and thought I had a limit to how many pens I could own.....))))

 

!@#$%^& Now I know hey that mandrel wrapped marbled green fountain pen has been sitting there decorting an ink well for so long. Got to fit it with a nib before sending it off for a new gaske.

This is a mandrel wrapped cracked ice from the '50's both are RESEWE (company still around but don't make fountain pens) made in Austria in the mid '50's Both semi-flex...don't remember if stubbed or not.

The first is a very small pen...lady size.

 

Non-mandrel...'50 Osami-Faber-Castel 540 maxi-semi-flex steel nib.

 

Osmia in the '20-30's (probably up until Faber-Castell took over and maybe even later)  made pens for other companies with that company's marking on them...like Akkermann stores in Nederlands.

 

There were some 120+ pen makers in Germany in the '30's that used parts from the big boys to make their pens sold in Department stores or the corner newspaper shops.

[Bo Bo Olson]

In Heidelberg.

Osmia started making nibs in 1922. It's nib factory got taken over by Degussa the gold and silver manufacture for debt in 1932, and they made nibs to when Mutchler closed down in @ 2000. The 1745's are now made in China, shipped to Germany in different pallets, caps and bodies and are made by screwing them together in Germany....making them made in Germany...I've bought them for 2 for €5.

 

Rupp made nibs from 1922 to 1970. (My first and still most flexible maxi-semi-flex is a Rupp nib....was out bid for the other two pretty pens with Rup nibs. Thomas/Kaweco (on the com) in his museum  has a pictures of the workers of Rupp's nib factory, and Rupp is just as a dirty worker as the other 8 or so men in the picture.

 

Bock started making nibs in 1938.

 

I also have nibs by Herlitz, another Heidelberg company. Heidelberg was once the Fountain Pen Capitol of the World with with Osmia, Herlitz, Kaweco, Lamy, Original Reform

 (A very good pen before he shut down his factory rather than make cheap pens to compete with ball points.....he later sold out to Mutchler who used his good name to make 3rd tier pens.)

Faber Castell, Mutschler, Mercedes, who worked for MB *Had his wearhouse in my little dorf/small village on the outskirts of Heidelberg....and I'm bound to be missing some other small makers.

 

I do have a couple old Bock nibs one gold and semi-flex.

Got a fake Bock too.

There was another company in Pfortzheim that made nibs...with a Bison.

 

Many of those companies were still making pens in the '50's where i would place your pens.

Your nibs could be made by Bock, Degussa, Rupp, Herlitz or any company up north in Pelikan or MB territory....or in Italy.

 

All it takes is a tool maker's machined stamp, and any of those companies would make one on $ demand.  Bock stamps the nibs with other company marks, for 40 or more companies even today.

 

I do drive by the Bock factory a couple times a year on the Autobahn. In the last five years that area has just exploded with industry from what was for decades,  a big building in an empty field. As one can see on Google Maps.

You could write Bock and ask them.