HEMA FOUNTAIN PENS from HYDERBAD

Continuing my quest for fountain pens from Andhra Pradesh & Telangana…

I had heard about Hema fountain pens or rather, I had seen the name of Hema Pen Company on the net while browsing for information on fountain pens in Hyderabad, but I understood that they no longer manufacture fountain pens and there is Hema Pen Stores, also in Hyderabad, and when I called them to find out about fountain pens, they told me that they don’t sell fountain pens anymore and only sell general stationery…

But I instinctively felt that there are Hema fountain pens out there and it is only a matter of time before luck smiled on me…and luck did indeed smile on me and in the most unexpected of places … right in my neighbourhood, in a small stationery shop… I go with the intention of asking in small stationery shops about fountain pens but most of the times, I stop short and come back without asking…and most of the times that I have stopped and asked, I have been rewarded and how!!  I had found a whole set of Misak Pens in a dusty folder in a small shop in Hyderabad when I had stopped and asked… and again when I stopped and asked in this stationery shop near my house, the owner rummaged around in the bottom of his cupboard and came up with an old cardboard box which contained two Hema ebonite fountain pens…I only have to overcome my diffidence…!!

Here are the pictures of these two lovely looking ebonite fountain pens…

Hema FPs capped…the pens have nice flat ends…

Caps & Clips…nice flat clips…

Brand name on the barrel…

Hema FPs uncapped…

Hema FPs posted…posts well…

The nibs…I feel these are nibs customized for the Hema brand…in one, you can see the brand name HEMA with SWISS POINT along with some decorative etchings…and when I pulled out the nib, below all these, I saw the letters H.P.C. etched inside an oval …the letters presumably standing for Hema Pen Company…the other nib doesn’t have the brand name, and instead of SWISS POINT, we have SWISS ELECTRO POINT along with a kind of three point star and two small circles etched on the face of the nib…and again, below all these, I saw the letters B.P.D. etched inside an oval…I wonder what the letters stand for…and it was kind of refreshing to see SWISS instead of the ubiquitous GERMANY that one sees very often on Indian ebonite pens… 

The feeders…plain ones…

At present I don’t have any information about the manufacturer/s as such, which would have added some history to the brand…for the time being, we have to make do with pictures…!!!

As in the case of so many small fountain pen making units in Andhra Pradesh & Telangana that have closed shop, Hema pens too are no longer being made… so, for me finding these two Hema Fountain Pens was delightful and added to my collection of fountain pens from Andhra Pradesh & Telangana…

These are simple no-frills pens, but they form a part of the history of fountain pens in Andhra Pradesh & Telangana…and India…

And the search continues…

THE “MAJESTIC” HAUL OF VINTAGE INDIAN & FOREIGN FOUNTAIN PENS

The Majestic area in Bangalore is one of the busiest areas in the city.  It is a warren of lanes and by-lanes with a number of old and new shops from where one can buy almost everything from pins and needles to clothes and shoes; and added to the bustle in and around these shops are the crowds in front of numerous eateries and cinema theatres.  Someone unfamiliar with the area could easily get lost here and end up in a different area altogether. Whenever I am in Bangalore, I pass through this area through one of its main roads and go quickly to Gandhinagar to browse in the bookshops there.  A couple of years ago, I made brave to enter this bustling network of lanes to see if I could find some old stationery shops and also see if I could find some old pens.  I went in and out of a number of small shops and was able to put together a small haul of three Indian pens and four foreign pens.  I found the Indian pens in one shop and the foreign pens in another.  The ones I picked were the good ones among the pens in old boxes.

I found a Clipper and two Plato FPs and very surprisingly found a Cross, a Pilot, a Parker, and a Sheaffer…

Here are the photos of the pens…

All three Indian FPs…the two blue ones are Platos and the black with metal cap is the Clipper…

This pen is called CLIPPER AIR FLOW and along with ‘MADE IN INDIA,’ these letterings can be seen on the barrel…very faint… initially, I wondered what AIR FLOW meant and then out of curiosity, I opened the barrel and discovered that this pen has an aerometric filling system… the clip too is interesting…it kind of rolls into a very small cylinder towards the end…a ‘roll clip?’

The nib on the Clipper is interesting…a kind of eagle is engraved on it, apart from the brand name and IRIDIUM…the surface of the nib is not smooth and it is kind of rough…I tried to remove the roughness, but it remained and I felt the roughness is the natural texture of the nib and left it at that…

The writing on the barrel says…PLATO 66; REGD.; MADE IN INDIA; 1974 … the paint on the lettering has faded away and one can make these markings out if only one looked very carefully…this pen is almost 40 years old…!!!

The Plato No. 111…REGD.; MADE IN INDIA … again these letterings are very faint … and in this pen, there is no year of manufacture … 

The ends of the Clipper and Plato No. 111…

The tops of the Clipper and Plato No. 111…

Aaah…the foreign pens…CROSS, PILOT (B nib), SHEAFFER and PARKER… all these pens are in various states of repair, but I didn’t have the heart to leave them back and bought them anyway…and I didn’t have a Cross FP…

The nibs of these foreign pens…

Here endeth the account of the ‘Majestic’ haul…

POSTSCRIPT: My friend Hari had written a post on The Fountain Pen Network on his haul of vintage Indian celluloid FPs that he found in a shop in Kalasipalya in Bangalore (http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php/topic/269605-the-kalasipalaya-haul-of-vintage-indian-celluloids/) and that post reminded me of the pens I found in ‘Majestic’ area in Bangalore and inspired me to put up this post…thanks Hari…!!