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…