MERLIN ED Ebonite Fountain Pens - from Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, India

In my quest to locate Indian handmade fountain pens, I often take the help of my colleagues in the college where I teach…I had mentioned earlier in one of my posts that Andhra Pradesh, the state where Hyderabad is located, was at one point of time a hub of fountain pen manufacturing activity…and many small towns had FP-making units…almost like a cottage industry… names of places like Rajahmundry, Tenali, Vijayawada, Guntur Machilipatnam, Kadapa keep cropping up when one talks of fountain pens from Andhra Pradesh…Rajahmundry, Tenali, Vijayawada are names still associated with pens...but pen units in Machilipatnam and Kadapa seem to have closed down…

And when my colleague Pavan told me the name of a pen shop in a town called Warangal (a town which is two hours by rail from Hyderabad)…I added the name of one more town to this list…and got in touch with the owners and asked them about ebonite fountain pens and they said they had two models…a large one and a small one…I requested them to send me two large pens (in fact, they had only two)…

And when I received the package and opened it, I was surprised to see the size of these pens…one pen was slightly longer than the other…the name MERLIN appears clearly on the clips of both pens…I called them simply Merlin-1 (the bigger one) and Merlin-2!!

Merlin-1 is slightly less than 7 inches capped; 5 ¾ inches uncapped; and 8 ¼ inches posted; and Merlin-2 is 6 ¾ inches capped; 5 ¾ inches uncapped; and 8 inches posted. Both are ED filler pens and really huge. I filled the barrel with water to check the reservoir capacity, and though I didn’t measure the amount of water it held, I realized one could go on for quite some time with a single filling. The nibs are regular iridium point nibs; though I feel a pen of this size needs a nib that is equally solid in terms of name and looks. Both pens look very strong and sturdy and the photos of the thickness of the barrel walls bear this out. When I saw the clips first, I felt there wasn’t enough gap near the top, but when I clipped the pen to my shirt pocket, it went up till the top and sat snug. Here are some pictures…


Both Merlins capped...


Both Merlins posted...


Clips with MERLIN on them...


I like this swirling design on the cap jewel...


Oh yeah...BTW, that is the MB 149 in the middle...

Thanks...

SOME OLD INDIAN FOUNTAIN PEN BRANDS - 3 - PRESIDENT

The third in this series of Old Indian Fountain Pen Brands is a fountain pen brand called PRESIDENT…I am presenting two FPs here…one has a black plastic body and a gold coloured metal cap…and the other looks like it has a celluloid body, but from my experience with the Parko FPs, I am not too sure…but the silver and black pattern looks very good…

The pen with the black barrel has a kind of nib which is partially open…the front is open and the sides are covered… a semi-hooded nib or a semi open nib? The other pen has an open nib…both nibs have the brand name imprinted on them…the imprint can also be seen on the barrels of both pens…clearly visible on the black pen and the colour on the imprint seemed to have disappeared on the celluloid-like FP…and it says ‘unbreakable’ below the brand name on the celluloid-like FP…

I have come across the name PRESIDENT w. r. t. fountain pens earlier…but I not sure whether these pens and those are made by the same company…I will have to do a little bit of re/search in the pens shops to find out if PRESIDENT FPs are still being made and sold…

Here are some pictures of the PRESIDENTs…











There are some more...

Still on the crime fiction trail - 2nd haul @ Best Books Sale - Part 2

So, I walked around looking at the books on the shelves and books arranged on the floor hoping to see a book or books that would put a kind of closure to my second visit to the books sale…and among the books arranged on the floor I happened to see the spine of a biggish book with ‘Ian Rankin’ on it…I was not too sure initially because Rankin’s books are usually of the paperback size and then picked it up tentatively…the book surprised me…it was the most unexpected book that I hoped to find…and I didn’t know it existed…this was Ian Rankin – The Complete Short Stories, comprising two of his short story collections A Good Hanging and Beggars Banquet plus Atonement – A brand new Rebus story … was this book going to signal the end of my quest this time? Should I quit and leave while the going was good? This book provided that slight rush and I wanted to linger a bit more…



That week, I had read Jon Stock’s column in The Week where had written about John Le Carre, the espionage novelist (?) and mentioned the film version of a novel written by Le Carre and another novel by Le Carre praised by Graham Greene as the greatest spy novel ever written…I couldn’t remember their names at the Sale, but still thought I’d take a look and see if the titles gave off clues…I went over to the shelves near the door where Le Carre books were stacked and went through the titles…no clues…then I started reading the blurbs…I wanted to buy at least one Le Carre novel…I zeroed in on Smiley’s People and then temptation overtook me and I selected Our Game too…but I knew these were not the novels that Jon Stock had written about…and then from the nearby shelf I thought I saw Rankins beckoning me…I once again succumbed and went over but didn’t know which one to pick up, because I was not sure which ones I had purchased recently…I chided myself for not preparing well before coming to the sale and took a chance and picked up Strip Jack hoping that this was not already in my collection…I knew my wallet would become considerably lighter and there is a higher authority who would wish to know where these books came from…but at that moment I was after my fix and didn’t think too much…I paid for these books and came home with the bundle…

The first thing I did was to check my Rankin collection…Strip Jack was not in that collection…relief…I then searched for The Week and read Jon Stock’s column again…alas…the Le Carre novels he mentions are Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold … well, something to look forward to in the next Sale…

In the meanwhile, I finished reading three Parker-Spenser novels…Early Autumn, Valediction, and A Catskill Eagle…Spenser is so addictive…

Parkermania - still on the the crime fiction trail - 2nd haul @ Best Books Sale - Part 1

When I went to the Best Books sale the first time this time, I got pretty much what I was looking for, except books by Robert B. Parker. I asked them about it and they said they'd be getting a new lot of books and that they'd inform me about the Parker books and took my phone number. I didn't think much about all this and left. But I was pleasantly surprised when I got a call from the Best Books people informing me that they have some Parkers and asked me come and get them. I said I'd come and see the books, but couldn't go there soon because of the strike here in Hyderabad. I got a call again and also a message informing me that they had extended the last date of the exhibition. So, I took some time off two days ago and went there...

I was shown at least 25 books by Robert B. Parker...ooofff...I was not expecting this...I didnt know what to do...how many to select...I tentatively started looking at the books...I was a bit careful this time...I wanted to look for only Spenser novels... Parker has other books too, which I discovered when I ordered 5 books online without doing a bit of homework...while sifting the books I realised that I had quite a pile of Spenser novels in front of me...I then took away the books that I already have and was left with nine Spenser novels...I didn't want to leave behind any of these and with a glad heart I took all of them...Chance, Valediction, Playmates, Small Vices, A Catskill Eagle, Back Story, Hush Money, Early Autumn, and Pale Kings and Princes...



This was an unexpected bonanza for me...but somehow, despite the depletion of my wallet weight to a great extent, I still went around to see if could lay my eyes on something that was not really on my list...

SOME OLD INDIAN FOUNTAIN PEN BRANDS - 2 - SEVIKA

This is the second in the series on Old Indian Fountain Pen Brands. The featured brand here is SEVIKA; and we have three models of this brand and these three models are distinctly different… two of them have open nibs and one has a semi-hooded nib (can we call it that?)…the name ‘SEVIKA REGD’ (Regd. Meaning ‘registered’, implying that the brand name has been registered at the government office concerned with brand names, and therefore the pen is ‘authentic’) is imprinted on the barrels…the nibs too have the brand name imprinted on them (further strengthening the authenticity??)…and one of the feeders also has the brand name engraved on it…one cap has a metal covering and this cap also has ‘sevika regd.’ imprinted on it…the other two caps have bands, one broad and the other narrow…the clips are again different, as are the cap jewels and barrel ends…

I have no clue regarding the date or place of manufacture or name of the manufacturer…the pens are NOS and are in fairly good condition…there is tarnish on one of the clips and on the cap jewels and barrel ends…the nibs look good and when inked they would write well, I suppose...here are the pictures...











Thanks for looking...there's more to come...

SOME OLD INDIAN FOUNTAIN PEN BRANDS - 1 - PARKO

On one of my wanderings in my city Hyderabad a few months back I saw a small stationery shop, actually very small, more like a hole in the wall, but was stuffed with books, ledgers, ball pens, and other kinds of stationery items. I hoped to find some fountain pens and I was not disappointed. The owner showed me a big box full of fountain pens, but it was more fountain pen parts than fountain pens though, and the few pens that were whole were very old ones. There were names of old Indian brands that I didn’t know existed (not that I know all the brands!!) and the metal on some of these were discoloured, sometimes rusted, but the insides, especially the nibs looked good and the feeders too. And some of the nibs were unique; some were open nibs, some were semi- hooded. I selected the good ones and bought them, at least for posterity’s sake and for documenting & cataloguing them. I had bought similar old brands from various other places too. I don’t want to do a full blown post with all these pens; instead, I want to keep posting pics of one brand at a time, once a week or so. For some brands I have more than one kind of pen, and for some there is only pen. For starters, here is a brand called PARKO…

I don’t think there is any doubt about the inspiration for the brand name…at least the body of one of the three PARKO pens that I got looks like the legendary Parker Vacumatic…there is a broad cap band on each, and if looked closely, one can see the passage of time in the tarnish…the material looks like celluloid, but I think it is not...though I felt I detected a faint camphor odour, it could also be wishful smelling… I don’t know how old these pens are, but my guess is they are more than 40 years old…the outer design could well be a thin sheet of plastic covered over a plastic body, because one can see the joints where the two ends come together…all the nibs have PARKO imprinted on them; and the barrels too have PARKO along with ‘leakproof’ printed on them…all these three are ED fillers and are NOS pens…

Here are some pictures…

The Deccan Masterpiece in White

Some three months back when I had dropped in at the Secunderabad branch of Deccan Pen Stores to generally be among pens, Zubair, who is in charge of that branch, told me that a new pen was being designed and that it would be white in colour and that he has asked one to be kept aside for me. I started dreaming about this pen from that day on…what would be its shape? Would the material be ebonite? and white ebonite would indeed be a rare thing…or would they use celluloid? Flat top? Round top? Ball clip? Flat clip? What nib? All this and more…

I didn’t hear from Zubair after that for a long time and I was getting impatient…so, I called him…he said they were getting made and I’d surely get one…some more days went by…I called again…similar response…and after some more days I called again and then he said...only a couple of these pens were made and they were already reserved for somebody else earlier…and so… the white pen dreams began to fade away…slowly…he was apologetic though…almost feeling helpless…

And then…out of the blue…I get a call from Zubair informing me that he had managed to get one specimen for me…his uncle had made a couple more…the pen started taking shape in my imagination once again…I couldn’t go there the same day, but my excitement kept mounting…I went two days later and he handed me over this pen…I went ‘wow’… I hadn’t anticipated this shape and size…it was the Deccan Masterpiece in white…with the cap jewel and barrel cap in black…it didn’t look like ebonite or celluloid…I asked Zubair about the material…he said that this material came as part of a packaging from Germany some years back and was lying around…some kind of plastic…or nylon based plastic…and his uncle saw this and decided to attempt a pen out of this material…

I opened the cap and saw the nib…good…and opened the barrel and saw the aerometric filler…I was not thrilled…I am partial to ED fillers and piston fillers…I asked Zubair about this and he said the initial attempt was to make an ED filler, but there were leakage problems and so the aerometric filler was fitted…I got it inked then and there and it writes beautifully…I tried taking photos against different backgrounds and it was against the blue silk background that the pen stood out…I have also included a couple of photos against a maroon silk background…

As usual, the Deccan Pens people don’t have a name for it…since it the Masterpiece in white, I wanted to give it an appropriate name…so many names came to mind…The Deccan Masterpiece Pristina…The Deccan Fleur de Lis…the simple Deccan White…The Deccan Masterpiece BnW…the Indian ‘Dakshin Shweth’… and so on…maybe all you readers can chip in with your names too…

Here are the pictures…

On the crime fiction trail - haul @ Best Books sale

This time when I decided to visit the old books' sale by Best Books @ YMCA, Secunderabad...I wanted to look out for crime fiction...and buy only crime fiction...of late, Vinod has been writing a lot about crime fiction and crime fiction writers who he had recently encountered and I have picked up the madness...I am already a fan of Elmore Leonard, whose books Vinod recommended and I have around 10 books of Leonard now...and recently Vinod wrote about Robert B. Parker and in a fit of enthusiasm and impatience, I ordered five Parkers from Indiaplaza...three of them are from the well-known Spenser series, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them...and Vinod was at it again more recently when he wrote about James Patterson...and fortunately for me Vinod also mentioned in a recent blog that the Best Books sale would be on soon at YMCA Secunderabad and that stopped me from ordering James Patterson books from Indiaplaza...and the Best Books people also sent me a message about their sale...and off I went there two days back...I had four authors in mind...James Patterson, Robert Parker, Elmore Leonard, & Ian Rankin...

And this time at the sale, I didn't have to ask anybody where the books of these authors were stacked...most of the time it would be a random selection of all pulp fiction on one table, romance on one table, and two shelves of 'Literature' books and other genres scattered around...one had to really search through the stack of pulp fiction to find one book that one was looking for...but this time, quite surprisingly, I didn't have to search...all Pattersons where stacked in one place, similarly, were the Elmores and all the Rankins were on a shelf...so, no time wasting searching this time...only selection was left...I selected 3 Pattersons...Kiss the Girls, Roses are Red, and Four Blind Mice; 2 Elmore Leonards...The Hot Kid and Out of Sight; 3 Rankins...The Black Book, Mortal Causes, and Black & Blue...and I wanted to try reading an author who I'd never heard of earlier...and the books by Peter Robinson looked tempting...I added 2 Robinsons...Past Reason Hated and A Dedicated Man...I could not find a single Robert Parker book and enquired at the counter, and they promised to search for some from their stock and let me know...after putting together my murder and mayhem books, I strolled around to see if I can find anything interesting...I found a rather thick and nice looking book calling me out...I went closer and saw that it was Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle...I bought it for a lark and later I read about it on the net and discovered that it would make very interesting reading indeed...

The Conical Nibs in Indian Fountain Pens - Journey from America to India via China

Way back in the 1980s, when I was in school in Mangalore, a coastal city in Karnataka, India, fountain pens were still seen around with students and I remember we coveted the Hero FP with the hooded nib…the Hero 330…it was a foreign pen, you see…and it had a pump filler (as we called the aerometric filler during those FP lingo-ignorant days)…much better than the locally available ED fillers (mainly Camlin and Wilson) that we were compelled to use (and now rue our ignorant decisions to cast them aside…)…the pump fillers did not leak (so we thought) and they looked sleek with a hooded nib and wrote a fine line and all that…the fathers of many students in our school worked in the Persian gulf countries like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Oman, etc., and on their half-yearly visits to Mangalore some of them would bring back Chinese FPs as gifts for their children…and these guys would get a chance to flaunt them in school the next day and we would beg them to have us use it for a while…and one day one of them brought an entirely enticing and charming FP to school and we couldn’t stop drooling…it had a different kind of nib…an encircled nib…and it also had a retractable ball pen at the other end (if the ink is exhausted, you don’t break any sweat, you hold the other end, and you unscrew and let out the ball pen and continue writing…wow!!)… it was like an FP dream coming true…and for many many months this guy carried the most enviable FP in school…it was the Wing Sung 727…and the nib was so utterly innovative and charming that we marvelled at the manufacturer’s ingenuity and all that…and now in retrospect, I realised that that was my first introduction to the ‘conical nib’… FPs were only for writing at that time and we carried on with whatever we got grudgingly, longing for the fashionable use-and-throw Reynolds ball pen that some of my friends (the same sons of Persian gulf-based fathers) flaunted … ironic…

And now many years on and re-entering the quaint and wonderful world of FPs, I learnt many things…the nib on the Wing Sung FP that I saw then was actually ‘inspired’ by the legendary Triumph nib introduced by Sheaffer in the 1940s…and as many FP sites tell us, it was an innovative design and vastly improved the functionality of the nib…and my efforts at getting hold of the legendary Triumph has so far not proved successful…and the only Triumph kind of Sheaffer FP that I managed to locate in a small old shop happens to be an Australian Sheaffer…though I don’t feel entirely fulfilled with this Triumph(!), I thought this can be a useful starting point to look at how far the nib and its design has travelled…from USA to China and from there to India…



A year or so back, on a visit to Deccan Pen Stores, here in Hyderabad with Hari, I saw the Wing Sung 727 again, and the sight of the pen took me back to my school days…and, mostly for nostalgia’s sake, I bought two, one in burgundy and the other in black…I filled the burgundy one with black ink and used it for a while…the writing is smooth and all that…and when I took it to my workplace and showed it to my colleagues, they were amazed at the shape of the nib, similar to my reaction 30 years ago when I saw it first!! Some things don’t change…here is a picture…



Just as I was re-entering the world of FPs…I heard about Ratnam Pens in Rajahmundry and remembered having read about it in a magazine article…one of my colleagues told me she had actually been to their manufacturing unit while on a visit to Rajahmundry and had purchased a couple of FPs, but alas, she had misplaced them or lost them…I started hounding another colleague who was also interested in FPs and he finally managed to trace some distant cousin who lives in Rajahmundry and asked him to send two pens…he kept one for himself and gave me this ebonite pen with the conical nib…as soon as I saw the nib, I knew that it was the ‘legendary’ Wing Sung nib…I still had no idea that an ‘original’ existed…!! I remember I was slightly unhappy on being given a Ratnam FP with a Chinese nib, whereas my colleague kept the other open nib Ratnam for himself…again, in retrospect, I am pleased that I was given this pen…I hear Ratnam no longer makes this kind of pen…(I am not completely sure of this though…)…In fact, this Ratnam ebonite FP was my first conical nib FP, even before I bought the two Wing Sungs…this is how it looks...



And then on another visit to Deccan Pens, Abids, I came across a Brahmam ebonite FP with the Wing Sung conical nib…it looks like the 146, with a white dot on the cap and all that…again, this Brahmam FP also has a two-toned conical Wing Sung nib…



The Swarna ebonite with the conical nib was totally unexpected…a friend of mine had seen my post on the Swarna Sumo and wanted a similar pen and asked me if I could help…I called up the Swarna people and requested them to send me 3 Sumo pens in different colours…they sent me 3 totally different pens…anyway, my friend was happy with one of them and took it…and I had the rest for myself, and one of them was this black ebonite with the conical nib…now, this nib is not two-toned as the Ratnam and Brahmam FPs…looks similar to the ones on the Wing Sung 727s…



It was after I got this pen that a pattern started forming at the back of my mind…and I thought of putting these pens together as examples of pen-fusions…Indian ebonite bodies with Chinese nibs inspired by an iconic American nib…the nibs are all Wing Sung nibs, but, I am not sure how these Wing Sung nibs came to the Indian FP makers…does the Wing Sung company sell conical nibs in bulk? Or were these nibs cannibalised from old Wing Sung 727s? Or is somebody else making these nibs with the Wing Sung insignia?

Anyway, keeping that part aside…if you had noticed, the feeder in each pen is different from the other…lets have all the feeders (Wing Sung and Indian ebonites) together in a combo photo…



But I still didn’t have the Sheaffer Triumph to complete the picture…I was becoming desperate, I wanted to do the post, but felt it’d be incomplete with the Triumph…and then out of the blue I came across this Australian Sheaffer conical nib FP... I don’t know whether this pen is also called the Triumph…and so, this Australian Sheaffer was the last one to become part of my ‘conical nib’ gang ironically…

I don’t know whether these examples of Indian ebonite FPs with conical Wing Sung nibs are examples of ingenuity or just fusions or attempts to make an Indian variant of pens with conical nibs… I felt I should put them together in one place…

And...finally...I had posted this on Fountain Pen Network and had received a number of responses and in all this hullabaloo I forgot to mention a unique Indian handmade conical nib made by Ratnamson (Rajahmundry) which is called the Ratnamson 42P...this is a pen made to order by my friend Hari...He chose the plain body silver model (P denotes plain). The interiors of the pen are made of Black Hard Rubber, The barrel overlay and the cap are solid silver. The 14CT gold conical nib is hand hammered to give the shape and engraved with Hari's first and last name. The tip has been flame torch welded at his request, usually they use reistance welding to fix the tip...here are a couple of pics of this example of an Indian handmade conical nib...(these photos were taken by Hari and is part of his post on FPN...)





The post has become too long, but I couldn’t help it…

The Brahmam Duofold - Big Orange

Dear friends...

I have resumed posting after a long long time…lots of things happened in between which kind of prevented me from posting on a regular basis as I was doing before…that means I was not off reading and writing as such, but somehow something went awry and this kind of lethargy engulfed me and sometimes even when I had strongly made up my mind to write, I would sit there staring at the screen…anyway, hopefully all that would be gone with this re-start…during this time some of my friends would urge me to write and post something and after sometime, they too gave up…but this time, I am determined, I am sitting here in front of my laptop typing this out...I am back…

This post is about a pen that I instantly desired the moment I saw it...this is the pen I’d like to call the Brahmam Duofold Big Orange. I was at Deccan Pen Stores, Abids Branch, Hyderabad, on a mission some time back; and after that, as is customary with me, I asked Mr Wasim if he had anything special to show me…and he took out his special folder and showed me this pen…I fell in love with this pen at first sight…I was shocked and surprised (honestly!!)…I asked him the price and when he told me, my face kind of fell…I wanted this pen desperately and I was in a wretched condition, financially (I still am!!); but I think I lost my senses…I was not in a position to listen to my heart, my head, my conscience…anything at all…I told him confidently that I haven’t brought the money, and that I would buy it and that he should keep it in reserve for me till I call him and tell him that I can’t buy it…Mr Wasim knows me quite well in this sense because I have enacted this drama once before, but the cost of that pen was only a fraction of the cost of this pen…so, what to do now…the only recourse was to beg, borrow, or steal…the only option that appeared sane was to borrow…and so I borrowed vehemently from different sources and managed to put together the total cost of the pen…and triumphantly went and bought the pen, without even giving a thought to how I was going to repay the loans…I had the pen with me, that was enough…

I called it the Brahmam Duofold Big Orange…it is an eyedropper, made of celluloid and looks like a Big Red (Parker Duofold Red Permanite Lucky Curve Pen...look it up!!)…I always wanted to have a Big Red, but when I realised how much it cost, I put my desire in the backburner…and this was the closest that I could get to the Big Red…this is the Big Orange…I loved the orange colour and the natural black patterns on orange…the nib as the picture would show is Iridium Tipped Broad and is a US made nib…the name ‘Brahmam’ is engraved on the clip and ‘Brahmam Pen’ on the barrel…it has three gold coloured rings on the cap; a broad one in the middle, and two thinner ones around it…Mr Wasim told me that the clip and rings were ‘gold filled’…the cap jewel and the barrel cap are in black, and I think are made of ebonite…because discussions with a couple of fountain pen makers on celluloid fountain pens revealed that celluloid pipes are usually closed with ebonite caps to make fountain pen caps and barrels…

This pen is now more than 6 months old and you can make that out by the partly faded imprint on the barrel…and in the initial days I think the cap fell on a hard surface, (I don’t know when this happened, I don’t remember) and chipped the edge…I didn’t realise this and I happened to see this suddenly and couldn’t do anything about it…couldn’t have got a replacement even if I was willing to pay for another cap…these are designer pens…only a few are made and sold out as soon as they reach the shop…I felt sad, for the pen…such a lovely pen and this chip on the cap…this made me love the pen even more…it had a flow problem initially, but the Deccan people got it rectified and it now writes like a dream…