Vintage Fountain Pens

This summer I was asked to help my friends go through their mother's craft room. She past away and had two rooms filled with years of art supplies. I was able to fill my small hatchback with all the goodies I helped sort through. Most of the supplies are going to be used in my classroom for future generations to learn from. There were a few choice things I kept for myself such as easels, palettes, and acrylic paints.

Among the those choice things, I found a cigar box filled and with an  assortment of calligraphy pen holders and nibs. Mixed in with these were the fountain pens and ink shown in the photo above. I love fountain pens and have bought myself very inexpensive ones from JetsPens.com over the last few years. I have fallen in love with the smooth lines they create and you can only imagine how excited and giddy I was to find such treasures hidden amongst the supplies. I went to work researching the pens to find that they are lever pull fountain pens from the 1930's. The last of the three lever pulls is a radiograph style fountain pen that has a small wire at the tip that releases the ink as you write. With love and care I spent hours cleaning them and turning my hands black and blue in the process. Needless to say, I was in heaven.

Other treasures I found were the vintage mechanical pencil, on the bottom of the photo, with a tiny cardboard tube of replacement lead. I immediately added these to my father's old drafting tools he passed onto me. At the top of the photo you can see replacement graphite and a red lead holder. I have always wanted one of these and was pleasantly surprised with how nice this one is weighted. It has become one of my favorite writing utensils to draw with and I carry it with me always.

After helping my friends sort through their mother's art supplies I decided I needed to clean and purge my studio too. This was one of the inspirations for the new and improved studio as discussed in the previous post regarding the new light and plants. My hope is when I die that my art and supplies will go to loving homes and to people that will cherish them. So back to work I go, creating as much art as I can, while I can.