Old Writing Instruments & Related Tools

When I was a child we lived in Europe (The Netherlands) and we used ink pens that you literally dipped into little glass ink pots sunk into holders in the desks. We learned penmanship, and the use of blotter paper, and the skills gained were vigorously monitored… we had workbooks on various topics, and the teacher/headmaster would review the latest lessons penned in. If something was unsatisfactory, he would stand up, dramatically tear your workbook in half, throw it in his garbage can, and issue you another blank book. Your job was then to go back and re-write all the earlier lessons to get back in sync with the class. This is no joke. It never happened to me, but I saw other fellow students traumatized this way.

In any case, when you got to 5th grade, you were issued a fountain pen. It was like you’d finally “made it” in the modern world… no more ink pots (filled by the teacher from a rather large carboy, by the way). So I became fascinated with early writing instruments like fountain pens, because in the US we had side-stepped the whole drama in school using pencils and ballpoint pens. While I remain a steadfast proponent of pencils, the history and craft of ink-based writing implements still interests me.