Monthly Archives: April 2022

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Montblanc Crystal Bowl-Paperweight

While Montblanc is most famous for being a manufacturer of high-grade writing instruments such as fountain pens, rollerballs, mechanical pencils and…ahem…uh…b…ba…ball…ballpoints…for the longest time, Montblanc has also been a retailer and manufacturer of a lot of other things besides.

In more recent times, Montblanc has started exploring areas such as watches, jewelry, cufflinks, and even cologne, but while some people think that this is a relatively recent trend, with other such niche companies also expanding outwards (Victorinox which manufactures the Swiss army knife, is a good example), Montblanc has been making a lot of other things besides pens, for many decades – not something that most people are generally aware of, because all they ever really associate the brand with, is its pens.

Regardless of this, it does happen to be true, even if the non-pen Montblanc products are less well-known or well-advertised as its luxury writing instruments.

From pen stands to inkwells, rocker-blotters to desk-blotters, notepad holders and portfolio cases, the company produces a lot more than just pens! The fact that these items are not always as fully advertised as its other products means that you can sometimes find some weird, interesting, and different items for sale which have since fallen through the cracks of advertising history.

A good example is something I found on eBay about a month ago, which came to me all the way from the USA – a solid crystal paperweight-bowl, sold by Montblanc, probably at some time back in the 90s.

The difference between Montblanc’s accessories ranges, and its ranges of pens, is that unlike a good portion of its pens, Montblanc’s various ranges of accessories are not part of its regular product-lines. You could buy a brand-new Montblanc #149 in 1952, and you can buy a brand-new Montblanc #149 in 2022. But you can’t buy a Montblanc Meisterstuck inkwell brand new today, or the matching blotter new today. They’re simply not made anymore. You can get them as NOS, NIB condition, from stores which never successfully sold them to begin with – but that’s about the closest you’re ever going to get.

This is why so many of Montblanc’s more obscure products…are…obscure! They were produced for short periods of time, and then they’re just forgotten about!

It was by pure chance that I found this crisp, sleek, rather minimalist glass bowl paperweight on eBay, complete with the original packaging. It’s from Montblanc’s “LifeStyle” collection, which was from a few decades back. Considering that they’re not made anymore, I thought it’d make an interesting addition to my collection of writing accessories.

A bit of research confirmed that the piece was a genuine Montblanc item, and I was also able to find a pretty decent idea of the original sale-price…which sounded frightfully expensive for a fancy paperweight – even if it is trying to be useful by doubling as a glorified snack-bowl! Either way, I estimated that it was, even with postage – a 75% discount – so I decided to buy it. It would take a while to get here from the ‘States, but I was prepared to wait.

And the wait was worth it. The bowl is not, as the photos might suggest, a perfect square. The sides are not straight, and instead taper inwards towards the base. The Montblanc star logo, and the company name are engraved on the base and on one side, of the bowl. Not sure why it isn’t engraved on all four sides, but there it is.

The bowl is surprisingly heavy. It’s large for what it is, but still much heavier than its size would suggest. It’s originally advertised as a “paperclip bowl”, which sounds rather pretentious for something which is basically a glorified snack-bowl, but it is nonetheless a useful and interesting desktop accessory. And it’s certainly heavy enough to stop papers from blowing away – with or without paperclips, or chocolate bonbons – filling up the bowl in the middle!

The bowl itself is hemispherical in shape, and the entire piece is absolutely flawless. There’s no cracks, chips or other damage anywhere on the piece. A few marks from age and grime which were easily polished off, but nothing which marred the beautiful smooth finish of the bowl – and smooth is the key word here – it’s so well-polished that it literally slides across my desk!

Apart from the fact that it exists, that it was in such great condition and came with all its packaging, another thing which surprised me about the bowl was its sheer size! From edge to edge it’s about 4 inches across, and two inches high, so it’s not some insubstantial little trinket, and you could probably store a lot of loose change, or chocolate bonbons or…yeah, even paperclips…in here, if you wished. So while it would’ve been very expensive, and heavy, and rather simplistic, it does have the advantage of being good quality, and of being large enough to serve a practical purpose.

 
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Sterling Silver Edwardian Roller-Blotter, ca. 1905.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved weird, quirky, interesting antiques – especially anything related to writing – my main hobby.

It’s for that reason that I’ve always wanted to buy a roller blotter.

“A what?” I hear you say.

Yeah, like a lot of people, I didn’t know that roller blotters were a thing, either! But, apparently they are, and ever since I found out that these things existed, I’ve wanted to own one. Problem is, they’re not exactly common, and hardly any pen or stationery companies still make them, so getting your hands on one can be tricky.

The first time I saw one, it was this tiny silver thing on eBay – and god almighty the price was gigantic…probably because it was some vintage thing made by Montblanc. But ever since I realised that they were a thing that you could buy – I had one hanging around in my brain on the back burner as being something that might be neat to add to my collection.

And recently, that dream came true! I was poking around on the internet and found about half a dozen of these things for sale! Antique ones, made around the turn of the century, all with silver handles, and with rollers in various states of…uh…rollability. After scanning over about four or five different options and weighing up condition, price, size, postage, and so on, I finally settled on one! It was a great price, even with the postage on top of it, and it’s certainly a writing accessory that most people will never have seen before – so it’ll be a heck of an addition to my collection!

Of course, anything at that price is never going to be perfect, so naturally, a certain amount of restoration was required before the new blotter could be used. This mostly consisted of a bit of light sanding of the wood, and shaping of the metal to make sure everything was straight and true – and finally – wrapping the wooden roller with some blotting paper so that it could be used.

Affixing the blotting paper to the roller took a bit of ingenuity, to be sure. As there’s no way of sliding a cylinder of paper around the roller, or of affixing it into place, all you can do is cut a strip of paper, wrap it around the roller and then glue it in-place – but not onto the actual wood itself – if you did that, you’d never get it off again! And that might be problematic if you wanted to change the paper later.

What I ended up doing was using a tiny amount of sticky-tape to tape the paper down onto the roller, wrapping the blotting paper around, and then gluing the paper back down onto the starting point of the paper, thereby reducing the chances of the paper slipping off the cylinder.

It’s a bit more work than simply wrapping the paper around the base of a rocker-blotter and clamping it in place or whatever – but it works!

But does this whole roller-thingy actually work? Absolutely, as you can see from the photograph above! So long as the blotting paper is wrapped tightly and secured firmly in place so that it doesn’t unwrap or slide off the roller – it’s a perfectly workable blotting solution.

And it takes up less space on your desk than a traditional rocker blotter!

 
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Dropping In: Sterling Silver ‘Drop-Action’ gravity-operated pencil-holder. Sampson Mordan & Co. 1912.

This is pretty neat, huh? I bought this on eBay about a month ago, as an addition to my collection of writing instruments. I’ve always wanted a drop-action pencil, ever since a friend showed me one in her own collection. One day I was browsing eBay, and found a few which were for sale, and ended up buying this slick, smooth-sided cylindrical deal from the late Edwardian era.

The pencil is in sterling silver, and is made by the famed English manufacturer, Sampson Mordan & Co.

Sampson Mordan – the man, not the company – was an 18th and 19th century English silversmith and inventor. In his youth, he was apprenticed to the equally-famous English locksmith, Joseph Bramah (of ‘Bramah locks’ fame).

Mordan didn’t become a locksmith, but he was fascinated by mechanical doohickeys, and ended up inventing, in the early 1820s – the first ever mechanical pencil! The pencil operated on a screw-type mechanism where by rotating the pencil advanced or propelled the shaft of graphite out of the tip of the silver housing, allowing a person to write with a pencil without getting graphite all over their fingers, and without having to constantly sharpen the point. Since the action of the pencil’s mechanism propelled the graphite out of it, they became known as ‘propelling pencils’.

Mordan made a HUGE name for himself as the inventor of, and chief producer of, graphite propelling pencils! Largely made in sterling silver and gold (he was a silversmith, after all), the Sampson Mordan silversmithing firm started cranking out all kinds of whimsical designs for pencils. In the 1800s, there was no such thing as a portable fountain pen, and the ballpoint was a century away – so having a compact, easy-to-operate writing instrument in your pocket that you could whip out at any moment was very useful. Mordan (and other companies) started manufacturing all kinds of novelty shapes and styles.

You could buy pencils which were shaped like rifles, golf-clubs, cricket-bats, wine-bottles, and polo-mallets! In sterling silver, or in a wide variety of gold.

One of the company’s greatest inventions came out in the late 1800s – the drop-action pencil holder!

Pencil-holders had existed before Mordan, but they were all slide-action. You grasped the barrel of the holder, and then with your other hand, you pulled the slide down the barrel, and the pencil inside slid out, held in place by the clutch-ring inside the mechanism. These were good, sorta, but the need to always have two hands free to operate them was always a bit of a faff!

The drop-action pencil-holder, by comparison, was a big improvement!

The mechanism is very simple, and works entirely on gravity (so long as you have the right pencil size!). After seating the pencil firmly in the circular clutch-ring inside the barrel, you press the release-button on the back of the holder. The whole thing works on a catch-and-release system. Pressing the button both drops the button down, and twists it slightly. This releases the clutch-ring that holds the pencil, and allows it to drop down through the barrel and out the end of the holder, exposing the pencil, and locking the ring in place.

The holder with the pencil extended

When you’re done writing, you press the release-button again, and, with another in-and-twist motion, the clutch-ring is released from the barrel opening and drops back into the base of the holder.

Hence ‘drop-action’. That said, they’re also called gravity-action pencils, because they work entirely on gravity. Since the pencil could be operated entirely by one hand, it became very popular. Such holders were compact, portable, easy to use (which made them great when you were busy and needed to take notes) and economical, because they allowed you to use up the last few centimetres of a pencil before having to throw it out when it at last, wore down to a stub!

Pencil-holders like these started losing favour among writers after the First World War. When fountain pens started coming onto the market, the need to always carry a pencil around with you diminished greatly, and eventually, pencil-holders and propelling pencils started losing ground to the modern mechanical click-action clutch-pencil used today.

The hallmarks on the silver barrel. Originally it was just “S.M.” for Sampson Mordan, but after he died in the 1840s, it was changed to “SM&Co.” for Sampson Mordan & Company. SM&Co. ended in 1941, when the factory in London was bombed by the Nazis during the Blitz

Regardless, antique silver and gold drop-action and slide-action pencil-holders are still popular, and still collected today, for their artistry, their uniqueness, but also for their practicality – unlike the antique propelling pencils which relied on specifically-sized graphite leads or rods to operate – these pencil-holders simply require another pencil!

Such holders do have a few drawbacks – ONE – their small size means that only small pencils fit into them, so you can’t have anything longer than 2-3 inches – TWO – the pencils have to fit into the clutch-ring that holds the pencil-stub in place inside the barrel. This means you have to whittle down the pencil to fit in – THREE – modern hexagonal pencils are a bit fiddly. They still work, but it’s better to use pencils which are cylindrical, instead, since they slide in and out of the holder more reliably. You can use a hexagonal pencil if you want to, however you’d have to round-off the edges on the shaft first, to prevent them from rubbing on the sides of the barrel and jamming the mechanism.

The release-button and the slide-and-lock mechanism may also need some cleaning with a bit of oil for lubrication, but once everything does work, it works very smoothly, with a solid ‘click’ at each end of the slide, to indicate that the pencil has been locked into position.

The final drawback to these pencil-holders is that for them to function – they must be in really good condition. Any big dents or dings on the sides of the barrel will render the holder completely useless, since they would jam the sliding mechanism inside, meaning that the pencil would be stuck in the open or closed position. If you’re looking to buy such a pencil for your own use – always check for dents – even a small one can incapacitate a pencil with relative ease.