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…