In praise of Indian ebonite

I love ebonite. It's a wonderful material. I particularly love those pens that are sometimes called 'woodgrain', with mottled red and black ebonite - in fact I've several times been sold a vintage Waterman or Bayard at a car boot sales as an interesting "wooden pen". While vintage pens often look faded and dull (and the black is often faded to a sort of olive green or brown), once they're polished they gleam beautifully, with the kind of soft glow you get from well polished wood.

Ebonite weighs right in the hand, too. Some plastic (acrylic, precious resin, lucite) pens feel just a little too light to me. Ebonite never does.

Ebonite is basically rubber, treated with heat and chemicals; it's plastic avant la lettre. It was what they made pens of up until the 1920s, when the advent of celluloid with its translucent patterns and brilliant colours changed the industry overnight. (Later on celluloid was replaced in its turn by plastics such as lucite.) If you collect pens you get into the whole business of acronyms - BHR, CBHR, and so on. (For the non-initiate, black hard rubber - that meaning ebonite - and chased black hard rubber - with patterns engraved on it.)

Problem. Unless you buy breakers or have lucky finds in junk shops, or grab third tier stuff, vintage ebonite will cost you dearly. Onoto and Waterman black ebonite pens for instance are quite dear - I particularly love the very slender lines of the early, straight pens, which have a sort of reverse bling to them, utterly austere and functional but their huge gleaming gold nibs a single point of focus - and if you want to collect early Waterman 'ripples', you will need a job at Goldman Sachs or a wealthy sugar daddy.

Then there are modern ebonite pens by manufacturers such as Bexley, Platinum,and Edison. The Platinum is over $600. Again, expensive. (I won't say ridiculously expensive, because Platinum are fantastic pens. But beyond my means, other than for a 'grail pen'. And I think a Hakase is on my list first.) The Edison, I have to say, is affordable, and a good pen at the price. But generally, modern ebonite comes dear.*

(Ebonite was still being used for some pens much later than the 1920s. But those pens, for me, don't have such a great appeal.)

Fortunately, several manufacturers in India are still producing ebonite pens, and I've had the opportunity to collect several during my travels. I even managed to locate some vintage ones for the exorbitant sum of 90 rupees each (about £1) in a stationer's shop in Vidisha, MP. Those are rather small ones. The modern pens are bigger - Guider and Ranga make jumbo pens if you want a really huge one - but in many other ways adhere to vintage design, with the torpedo/cigar being the most common. (I wish there were more flat-tops.)

Vintage ebonite pens - one has a Parker-style arrow clip

Fountain Pen Network's classified section is also a good place to trawl for modern Indian ebonite. I've acquired some Deccans and Ratnams from there; I haven't yet visited Hyderabad or had a chance to visit the Tamil pen-makers. On another trip perhaps.

• Deccan I love very much. These pens are classics, beautifully made and enjoyable to use. Deccan is the Lamy of Indian pens - I'm sure they would be surprised to be described that way, but they seem to love monochromatic designs, in brushed black (ebonite-pretends-to-be-Makrolon) or a wonderfully warm white (but that's not ebonite, to be fair). I have two in brushed ebonite; just lovely. You can get the other ebonite varieties too... but the black seems, somehow, their forte.
• Guider make classical ebonites. I have three matching pens, in black, brown, green - the 'traffic lights' colours of Indian ebonite.Very satisfying. I think I paid about £4 each for these pens, in a tiny, cluttered pen shop in the wholesale market in Mumbai.
  

  

  Guider pens

• Ranga (also sold as Varuna by Andy's Pens in the UK) seems to have the widest range of colours, including a yellow ebonite that's fairly mustardy - I must see if they can get a Colman's Mustard ripple, red and yellow, that would be really something! - as well as lighter blues and greens, and three-colour mixes. I'm not sure I love all of them equally; there's something about the standard two-colour marbling that is both austere and rich at the same time, the classic look, and the multicolours don't have that classic feel. But I do like their 'bamboo' pens. I think Ranga has the most extensive and adventurous range. Times of India had an interesting article on them. I must visit!
• Astra in Aurangabad makes ebonite pens of some distinction. You can only get these from Abhay Pens in the same city, its sister business, as it turns out, so I'm rather glad I had time to kill before taking the night bus for Ahmedabad. I particularly like the light fawn ripple. This business seems to have access to some very nicely rippled ebonite - these pens have a far bolder pattern than most Indian pens, though some of that may be down to my selection. (The ripple patterns of cap and pen don't always match. But I was allowed to swap a couple of caps around in the shop. These pens are machined, not hand-made, so you can do that.)
  

  

  Wonderful ripples from Aurangabad

• Ratnam and Ratnamson are, as the names suggest, related. I have a couple of each.
• Kim & Co of Kozhikode make good looking ebonites, but I don't have one - yet.

I'm sure I have missed some manufacturers out. Please correct me!

 The one weak spot with Indian pens is the nibs. First, you won't get broad and italic nibs - the Indian market is one for fine nibs, generally. And secondly, you'll quite often get the sort of steel nib where the point is made by folding the steel over, rather than being tipped with iridium. Those can be quite scratchy. And thirdly, India is not Japan. There are no nibmeisters making Cross Emperors or grinding customised nibs for you.

There are ways round that. Many of the manufacturers now offer German nibs (Bock or Jowo) or can accommodate them. And because the pens are hand made, you can even send a nib you want a pen made for; I haven't done this, but I know people who have.

 There's another thing to note, which could be a dealbreaker for some. These pens are nearly all eyedroppers. Now that can be a plus. The larger pens will take a truly impressive amount of ink! But you also get the regular eyedropper problems; burping when getting towards three-quarters empty, NSIP (Not Safe In Pocket), and a filling process that isn't quite as easy as sticking your favourite piston-filler in a pot and letting it slurp. Personally, I don't mind.

So: Indian ebonites. A cheap way to collect ebonite pens. But also a marvellous insight into Indian life, and a way to support small businesses in the subcontinent...The human aspect of my collecting has been a wonderful surprise; pen shops like Fountain Pen Hospital in Calcutta, Apsara Pens in Mumbai, and Pen & Co in Varanasi, manufacturers like Astra, who let me visit their factory, collectors and users of fountain pens, have all impressed me with their enthusiasm and friendliness. India can be a difficult country for westerners to get to know, but my entrée to this little subculture gave me many happy days and not a few friends.



* One big exception to the 'modern ebonite comes dear' rule is the Noodler Konrad, in ebonite. I don't have one - though my experience of the Ahab and Nib Creaper has been that they're fun pens, but a bit like 2CVs - fun to drive, but you have to do a lot of minor fixes, which fortunately they're designed for you to be able to do.

Kaweco sport luxury variants

I was amazed when I looked closely at my black-and-white (think a fountain pen made out of Licorice Allsort) Kaweco Sport Art that it actually does have a gold nib. I thought they all came with gold plated steel, but this one clearly states 14k / 585. That got me doing a little bit of work to find out the history of the luxury variants of the Sport.

The Sport itself, by the way, was first issued in its modern form in 1934. Kaweco closed down in 1980, and the 'new' Kaweco company opened for business in 1995 with a range of Sports in 'outdoors' colours - camouflage grey-green, brown and dark blue. Brighter Sports followed the year after, but it wasn't till 2000 that Kaweco decided to produce a luxury version.

In 2000, Visconti made a limited edition of green celluloid Sports for Kaweco. Only 883 were made, which means I may never get my hands on one of these delightful gold-nibbed pens. (They combine Italian wickedly glowing celluloid with Germanic austerity of form, which hits two of my fountain pen sweet spots bang on. A bit like the glowing red Lamy 2000 auctioned a while back - Bauhaus, but in vivid colour!) And it's a piston-filler, too.

My black-and-white Sport's proper name is the Tango, and it was part of a four pen range that included also the Blues, Samba (purple and dark indigo), and Mamba (gold and brown marbling), issued in 2003 with the intention of bringing in new colours every two or three years. The pens were turned, not injection moulded like the basic range, and the colourful acrylics really make a splash.

I haven't found out when the current Sport Art range was first produced. These are:

• Amber
• Amethyst
• Lapis lazuli
• Amecitrin - a lovely yellow
• Aksehir - black and white, with Arab-calligraphy style loops
• Alabaster - pearly white
• Granit - white and grey, with an interesting ghost-like effect of grey showthrough
• Rosit - bright pinkish red, with soft stripes of two slightly different hues

Again, they are produced by turning from solid acrylic. The amber, amethyst and lapis are perhaps the most stunning, with their transparency and glittering effect, but I rather want to get my hands on an Aksehir, for the striking pattern.

I make that twelve pens to collect, if I stick only to the fountain pens, and excluding the Visconti version. Four down so far!

Martini Auctions sometimes have interesting prototypes of different Sport versions. At the moment there are some with silver pens and coloured caps; I must admit, they're not my favourites.

Sweet Joy befall thee!

Lamy Joy.

Photo from Lamy Twothousand on Flickr. I only have the black and red one.

What a beauty this pen is. Sleek shiny black. Cylindrical top. Tapered barrel.

Accents in red. Big red paperclip clip. Red disk closing the cap. Tiny red insert right at the end of the barrel, neatly balancing the clip.

Simple geometrical forms. Cylinder cap. Triangle section. Triangular nib. Flattened cone taper. An elegant oscillation between rounded and flat, circles and angles.

At work; 1.5mm of sharp italic, flowing wet.A section that feels as if it's part of my hand.

Doesn't post. Obviously.

Practicalities. Nibs swap in, swap out. £7 or so for a new one. Swaps with Safari and Vista. Swaps with Studio, Al-Star, Accent, CP-1, Logo. Up to 1.9mm, down to extra fine.

This is a lot of joy.

Ratnam 'vacumatic'

I saw this pen in Apsara Pens, in Mumbai - fountain pen central of India - and I just had to have it. The bright, translucent purplish celluloid - there's a lavender tinge to it in natural light, which doesn't quite come out here - the classic looks of a Parker Vacumatic. It was in the case with so many other lovely vintage pens, but it far outclassed them all.

Then I opened it. Heck, what's going on? This is a Vacumatic - but it's got a Sheaffer Triumph nib! I wasn't expecting this!

Of course, being an Indian pen, it is not a vacumatic filler - no diaphragm, no button to push. Nor is there a vacuum-fil system. It's an eyedropper. Simple.

So my first breathless passion for this pen has now settled into an amused love of a beast that looks like one kind of pen, pinched the nib design off another, but is actually something else entirely. A typically Indian mix.

Kultur vulture

My nine Kulturs. Eight FPs and a rollerball.

These are cheap pens. You can get that transparent red one in Carrefour supermarkets for about ten euros. They're related to the Phileas, the US version of the pen which has more metal furniture and looks generally a bit more expensive (and fetches ridiculous sums on eBay), but they are basically entry-level Watermans.

And I love them. I love their size - unlike most cheap pens, which are skimpy, skinny little tubes that hurt your hand, these are generously proportioned, curvaceous beasts. They have a certain deco feel, and there's that wonderful black dome on the cap.

The nibs are big, too - great big steel nibs filled up with quite a lot of design, usually in F or M, that write very readily and, in my experience, quite wetly. (Though the cap is not airtight, so unless you use the pen regularly, it's prone to drying out.) Again, for an inexpensive pen, you get an awful lot - contrast, say, the Parker Vector which gives you a horrible little nib which is just a perfect nail.

I love their variety, too. Look at the green glitter one. I've got the case for that one, a plastic translucent green glitter case that looks as if it should have sunglasses in it. There's the purple and red marbled one with extra 'gold' bands - I love that one; it looks like an astronomical picture of far away galaxies. My least favourite is probably the one on the right, which has a horribly clingy, rubbery texture. It may be robust if you drop it, but it's about as appetising as a half-eaten dog chew. There are demonstrators, there are glitter pens, there are metallic versions.

There are some special (not limited) editions, too. I've seen a French World Cup football ballpoint, though I don't know whether fountain pens were included in that edition; there are at least three different Lara Croft versions (I've only ever seen the rollerball in the flesh), and there are a bunch of Kulturs done up for Harley Davidson with flames or chequered flags.

Unfortunately prices seem to have got a bit crazy. Certain auction sites are selling the school pens for five euros more than the supermarket! But when I see one at a good price I grab it. They are really quite lovely pens.

In praise of cheap pens

I find a lot of cheap pens at car boot sales. They're "school pens", quite often - a dying breed, maybe, as so many schools now insist on the use of ballpoints, but an attractive breed if you get the right ones; made for duty, so robust and forthright. Some are horrible cheap things (Reynolds, 1970s Platignums), but others are rather good - the Parker Vector, though I think it's ugly, is reliable, and comes with an extensive range of jazzy screenprint decorations, while the Waterman Kultur is one of my favourite pens. (You can still get the Kultur for 10 euros or so in many French supermarkets, in the translucent plastic version, though I prefer the slightly upmarket versions with yellow metal bands and marbled designs, or the glitter pens with their tiny flakes of 'gold' in the translucent plastic. And I'm still looking for the Lara Croft pens.)

Waterman I think has a slight edge here, not just because it often seems to have taken a successful mid-range design and redesigned it for cheapness. The firm seems to have done well in manufacturing cheap pens that didn't feel cheap: the Forum, for instance, whose contrasting plastic rings and tassies give it a good 3D feel. (The Reflex with its hideous sheet metal clip isn't so successful in my view.) The Graduate in metal is another nice pen, a tubular flighter that just seems to have an edge on the Vector metal version - it's just that bit more classy.

Parker Vectors, left - Waterman Forums, right

Oh yes, the Flash. A Waterman pen about which I can find almost no information on the internet, but which turns up with fair regularity, and actually there's nothing wrong with it at all. I keep finding spare caps, too. (I wish I could find a spare Parker 51 cap, but I never can. It's always the little Flash cap, which is quite striking with its vertical fluting.)

I like the Pelikano - I've already blogged about this lovely little pen - and I like cheap Lamys, too, because Lamy doesn't forget its design principles when faced with creating a less expensive pen. For instance, the Lamy Joy calligraphy pen is, as far as I'm concerned, another design classic - the same 'paperclip' clip as the Safari, a wonderful red that contrasts with the glossy black of the pen - and as always with Lamy, the engineering delivers functionality in the form of easily swappable nibs. I see a lot of Rotring Artpens, too, though for some reason I have about five in 1.1mm and never see the other nib varieties at car boots.

Then there are the lookalikes. I got a cheapie Stypen recently which looked to me as if a Frenchman with no understanding of Bauhaus design had got hold of a Lamy Safari and tried to make it into a French retro pen. Not a success. (On the other hand I have a Stypen wood-barrrel, metal cap pen that is just as delightful as the Faber Castell Ambition, and much more comfortable to write with. For me, anyway.) But I'll come back to lookalikes at some later date; there's an interesting thread on FPN about (mainly) Indian lookalikes, and that's before you get on to the Chinese clones, which are a huge subject in themselves.

Stypen pretending (not very well) to be a Safari

 And the Pilot V-pen. I love it when I get a chance to buy a lot of these for almost nothing - I got seven for a euro recently! Lovely cheapie pens that work, and that are fun to doodle with.

So what's so good about cheap pens?

• They're cheap!
• That means you can have lots of them. Which is nice when you want a pen you can chuck around, or to give a pen to a child who's just ready for their first FP, or to someone who has never used one.
• And which is also nice when you manage to find all the different Waterman Kulturs, because a whole range of pens does look pretty, and on my income I couldn't have ten Waterman Man 100s, not unless I was very, very lucky at car boot sales for the next twenty years...
• That means you can play around with nibs or repair techniques or Frankenpen-making, without the fear of messing up an expensive nib or cracking priceless old celluloid. Want to make a Lamy 2000 BB into a cursive italic? try it on an old Parker Vector first.
• I remember once at Covent Garden there was quite an impressive bass singing one of the smaller officer parts (Mr Redburn? Mr Flint? I forget) - and then John Tomlinson came on as Claggart and suddenly, you knew the difference between pretty good and bloody-hell-this-man-is-a-force-of-nature good. I think cheap pens can sometimes help us appreciate the really great pens. I don't mean cheap-and-nasty pens, I mean good, functional, nice cheap pens; then when you get your hands on, say, a vintage Parker Vac or Duofold, or a Waterman 92, or a Sailor King of Pen, you can just feel the difference. 

And by the way - someone else's take on cheap pens. Worth a read, particularly if you're heading to eBay to grab some cheap Chinese writers.

Waterman 'torsade'

This is a lovely little pen I picked up at the big braderie (car boot) at Houilles, near Paris. It wasn't a great day for pens; nothing vintage and nothing very classy. It was a better day for notebooks and paper, to be honest, and I did get a nice Harris tweed jacket for 2 euros which when I got it home proved to sport a discreet Harrods label in the lining. But not much in the way of pens.

(Real frustration; seeing a lovely 1970s Pelikan box... and finding out it had nothing inside it.)

But I did find this one, which seems to be a Waterman 'torsade', though it's something of a mystery as to exactly where in the Waterman range it fits. (The cap top has the rounded W logo which looks very seventies, rather than the later calligraphic W with a loop at the top, or the W-in-hexagon which I find on most modern Watermans.) Oh, and it takes Waterman cartridges.

Torsade? since it's a French pen, lying on a nice piece of toile de jouy

 It's a tiny pen, really petite - 11.5cm capped. The clip (folded metal) is elegantly simple and completely plain, the end of the barrel slightly tapered from about a third of the way in, and the chrome bright. On the cap, just below the clip, is the word 'Waterman' in that rather rounded script that makes me think of bad science fiction TV, and under that, 'made in France' in a more classic typeface.

Rounded and very 60s/70s 'W' logo

But the first thing you notice is that wonderful shimmering effect from the twisting facets that run almost the entire length of the pen before they fade out on the tapered portion of the barrel. As you look at the pen it seems to spin gently. The facets seem soft, not sharp, and the whole pen has a lovely gentleness to its outline. (Chrome can often be a rather severe material making pens look more like the kind of thing I fear in a gynaecologist's hands than the kind of thing I want to write with, but here, it's just pretty and shiny)

Now; further mystery. Searching for 'torsade' on the web shows me chrome and gold plated versions, even gold nibs; but none which, like this one, have hooded nibs. I thought hooded nibs went out of fashion in the 1960s?

So I'm really not sure what I've got here. But whatever it is, (1) it cost a euro, and (2) I like it.