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...