Writing Instruments

The overall performance of the latest London sales of Old Master pictures and ‘important’ works of art was fairly mixed but the auction houses did at least welcome the return of some big-ticket items.

The 1920s deal between Ryosuke Namiki and Alfred Dunhill to make luxury pens for the Western market created some of the most collectable fountain pens.

Specialist auction house sells early versions hailing from the US

In a large collection of fountain pens offered at Cornish auction house Barbara Kirk (15% buyer’s premium) most well-known makers were represented, but among the rarer ones were no fewer than 19 by the Italian manufacturer Omas.

An example of the first commercially produced typewriter – one of only five in private hands – has sold for €100,000 at auction in Germany.

The annual London Writing Equipment Show at the Holiday Inn in Bloomsbury on Sunday October 7 will be a sell-out, says coorganiser Jeremy Collingridge.

Among the first sales of BADA 2018 was this modernist Archibald Knox silver and pink enamel inkwell sold from the stand of The Peartree Collection for more than £10,000.

A dazzling red and black herringbone-patterned Conklin Nozac cushion point pen and pencil set dating from 1932 and with an ability to write 7000 words before running out, is for sale at the Eastern Pen Show on March 4.

Mark Twain said that his Conklin Crescent Filler fountain pen “was a profanity saver as it cannot roll off the desk”.

The wide-ranging sale at Hansons (17.5% buyer’s premium) at Etwall on February 21 included a 20-lot section of fountain pens which offered a brief overview of this largely affordable area of collecting.

Typewriters on which famous books came into existence have featured on these pages before, but not for some time – and certainly not machines of a kind that that continue to be used by their owner to this day.