New Additions

I don't beleive I have the jones for Southern Pen Company pens. At least, not yet. This one came to me last week for ten bucks som it was not difficult to resist. 

The coloring is the same as other Southern Pens in my accumulation. Difference is the tapered ends of the cap and barrel. It's not like the barrel was designed for posting. It is not. Alos apparent is how the celluloid creates the pen. Over time the joints in the cellulod have become pronounced. Some clesning and lighting helped! On most Southern pens you can see the edges of the celluloid if you look hard enough. Note the same cap band and large S logo on the clip.

My second acquisition is a stellar almost like new early BCHR pen from the New Diamond Point Pen Company. I lije this company. Incredible output. More on that in a future post.

No scratches, etc. Gold is all there. My only question is the coloring of the cap dome. Did it age to a mellowed yellow from white?

Easrlier models had the D inside of a circle on the lever tab.

In left wondering if the cap domes came in other colors.

Union Pen

Always a sucker for pretty plastics or interesting hard rubber this baby came to us a few months ago, sans clip. Nice pen. Pretty hard rubber, I guess. Darn, no nib. Well, it came with the stub of the Z clip secured inside the cap by the cap liner and it needed to be removed.

To remove the small part of the clip inside the cap the cap liner had to be removed. My method.

Thoroughly, and I mean thoroughly soak the cap in water with some dish soap. I’ve used tile cleaning liquid in the past without any harm to the finishes. It is stronger and ink absolutely hates the stuff. The cap was soaked overnight and rinsed in the morning. Residual ink continued out of the cap so soaked it for another twenty-four hours. It should be ready for Step 2.

2I  I have a few ballpoint pens with rubber grip sections that can be easily removed. So I remove one of the rubber grips and placed it on a tapered piece of metal (could also be wood dowel) that fit the rubber neatly inside the cap.

3.   Using the friction of the rubber the metal was turned to see if it would grab the inner cap. There was some movement. Still tight.

4.   To help the cap loosen the grip on the inner cap I heated the cap with a hair dryer. Any hair dryer will do. Just don’t keep it there for a couple of minutes until the cap melts or turns into a torch.

5.   Tried inserted the metal again and tightened the rubber against the cap liner and turned. Ouila! The cap liner came right out. No damage.

6.     Washed the inside of the cap and cap liner thoroughly again and it awaits a new Z clip.

The gold on the two cap bands and lever is all there. No, or if any, brassing. All it needs is a clip. The search is on.

The Union Pen Company was supposedly a lower tier subsidiary of the Morrison Pen Company of New York. Morrison seems to have had their hand in all types, models, and tiers of pen making in the 1920s and 1930s.

 

The nib is a WARRANTED 14K gold type. Writes very smoothly. With a new gold clip that can be recycled from our favorite online auction service, this pen will be killer.

There is one small flaw that might bother some collectors or users. On the opposite side of the barrel where the lever is located there is a small hump where the ring that supports the lever is located. It is probably no worse than a small scratch. I wonder what would happen if I judiciously heat it. Will it revert to its original shape? To my amazement there was a small positive change. Am not going to push it. No need to destroy the pen. At this point micromesh might be the way to go.

Just found another Union Pen on the online auction service. More unusual finishes.

 

This one has the clip and UNION on the lever. Also has the initials LM on the tab that stand for Louis Morrision. There are at least two cracks in the pen and the seller wants an arm and a leg for it. Pass.

Another can be found on Peyton Pens site in red wood grain celluloid. If you look closely you can see GEM on the lever tab. Morrison didn't seem particular about the tab design.

They look like great pens and very collectable. Let's seee how amny more we can find.

Kahnstone, Kelleystone, or Keystone?

 

A recently acquired gold-filled overlay pen that is marked KEYSTONE on the clip and lever raised the question, “Who made this pen?” There are online discussions in pen blogs that suggest Keystone pens (and pencils too) were made by either Wearever or a nefarious huckster named James Kelley.

           

                       

                                      

There once was a Keystone brand attributed to David Kahn of Wearever that, similar to the clip design on the overlay pens, contained a K inside of a diamond or a K inside of a keystone shape. The type-style used for KEYSTONE on the clips is the same. The rumor is that overlay pens were made by Wearever during the 1920s and the K stands for Kahn. If so, where are they?

Good research on Keystone and Kelley can be found on the Leadheads Blog, that I do not believe tells the entire story, perhaps, there are more stories to tell?

James Kelley was an enterprising entrepreneur who appropriated the trade name Keystone from Soper & Sievewright, a maker of taper-cap eyedropper-filling model overlay pens, when their copywrite of the name expired. Kelley marketed lower-priced pens and pencils with the name Keystone through the 1920s and early 1930s. However, extant Keystone overlay pens appear to be of substantially higher quality than that would be produced by a low-budget operation.

Surpsingly, of five Keystone pens recently sold online four had either British or French 18K nibs and four of the pens came from France. Three have an overlay design that includes a heart-shaped indicia or cartouche that matches the overlay design used by my pen and that used by Morrison. Two models have a wave design common to many American makers. Each was sold by a different seller. Let’s assume that the three were made by Morrison. Overlay styles were not generic. There have features that point to specific pen makers or from jobbers who sold overlays of specific patterns. In my opinion the patterns here point to one maker – Morrison, or whoever sold them the overlays.

Three, including mine, have the same design clip with the K in the diamond. Unfortunately, the model from Germany does not have a clip to compare. However, three of the five have the name KEYSTONE with the K in the diamond on the lever.

             

                      

Model from France above.

                          

                       

Model from German ebay above

                 

                   

 Another model from France

          

 From Peyton Pens website

My pen has an 18 carat French accounting nib of unknown vintage. Was it a replacement? And, of the other pens? All replacements? As best we know Morrison did not market their product in France, Great Britain, or Europe. Should gold-filled overlay pens have had a certain cachet in France we should see pens with 18 carat nibs by other makers in similarly representative quantities. Do we? What if Kelley took his act to Europe or found a buyer for a hundred or so pens in France? Methinks greater investigation is needed.