From the 1890s until the 1950s, the Waterman Pen Company was famous for manufacturing awesome fountain pens. Their vintage pens are among the most famous and collectable in the world. I’ve always wanted one, especially one of their lovely Red Ripple hard rubber (also called ‘Woodgrain”) pens…but that was not to be.

Until recently.

No I didn’t get a woodgrain pen…but I did get something just as interesting:

This is a Waterman #12 ‘Secretary’ pen from 1904. Like all pens from the era, it’s made from hard rubber, and like almost all pens from the era, it’s an eyedropper. I like eyedroppers. Messy as they are to use, they are, nonetheless, idiotproof. Unscrew the pen-barrel, squirt in the ink, screw the barrel shut…and write! What could be more idiotproof than that?

Apparently people were stupider back then because the original box, which comes with the original instructions, have written on those instructions rather detailed steps about how to use an eyedropper pen. Although it’s probably not surprising that instructions were made that detailed – fountain pens were like iPads in 1904 and were only just becoming a commercial viablity.

I bought this pen for a variety of reasons, at the 2010 Melbourne Pen Show. The first reason is I didn’t own a vintage Waterman at the time and especially not one as cool as this. Second…I’ve never owned a pen this old that came with its original packaging and instructions! Third, it has a really sweet superflexible nib (also called a ‘wet noodle’) which oozes characteristics that most pens today would strip their gold to have.

Reading the advertising material on the box is a wonderful step into history, seeing just how Waterman marketed its products. The underside of the box is entirely devoted to warning the customer about fake Waterman fountain pens, instructing them to “make sure when buying a Waterman’s Ideal Fountain Pen, to see that our trademarks are stamped on every gold nib and on every holder”. I think it’s also very telling of how revolutionary the idea of a portable reservoir pen was at the turn of the century, when you read the instruction (that has shown up on every single pre-1910 pen-box that I’ve ever seen), that says (all in big, bold, underlined capitals):

“DO NOT REMOVE GOLD NIB FROM THE HOLDER”

When Waterman was advertising to a public which had only ever grown up using steel dip-pens with easily-broken, rusty nibs which had to be removed and replaced every few months, this instruction was very important, and again shows just how new the novelty of the fountain pen was. The pen itself is rather simple. Black, chased hard rubber with two gold bands around it. The nib is a New York Waterman’s #2 nib in 14kt gold, which is about as flexible as you could get. The pen fills easily (if messily) and writes smoothly. I love it!

Eyedropper pens such as this lasted until about 1915, when more practical self-fillers, such as Conklin’s crescent, Sheaffer’s lever and Parker’s button-filler began to replace them and become more popular with writers. But that doesn’t make those pens any better writers, just better fillers, and fountain pens of this vintage are as much fun to use as those made decades later.