There Is A Woman In My Fountain Pen !

Who is this and why is her photo inlaid into this Good Service pen? I threw this question out to several people and the responses were varied. They ranged from the pen was given to loved ones at the time of this woman’s death, marriage, birthday or anniversary. The inlay is very smooth and not just a photo glued on to the pen. It is inlaid and quite well done.

What I do know is that this is a pen manufactured by either National Pen Products , probably using parts produced by C. E. Barrett, also of Chicago, or by Parker, who also made some Good Service Pens. Good Service was a Sears Brand, sold in their stores and through mail order. I would only be guessing, but I might lean toward this being a Parker product due to the green marble, and feed/section which look similar to several of the Parker Challengers and Parkettes that I have.

Anyway, back to the lovely woman in my pen. If anyone has seen other examples of these types of pens from this time period (30s – 40s), I would love to see them and hear what they were used for or why they were produced.

As for the restoration, it was a straight forward lever filler repair. However, as you can see the section and feed were brittle and came apart when I attempted to knock out the feed. This was easily fixed as I had a spare Challenger feed and section that fit the barrel and nib ( a Warranted 14k ).

I thoroughly cleaned the inside of the barrel and cap which were caked with blue ink, replaced the feed and section and refitted the nib. A size 16 latex sac was used to complete the filling system. The gold parts polished up nicely and the pen (and picture ) were polished and buffed.

Here is the end result. I like to think that the woman on my pen is much happier with her new surroundings.

For good measure, here is a photo of the imprint. I believe the faded logo in the middle is the Sears and Roebuck logo.

11-30-2012 Edit: David Nishamura has written an excellent web article on Doric Inlays in which he publishes Wahl Eversharp brochure that details that they will do similar inlay work to their Doric pens. Interesting reading and a glimpse into what was done to this pen, perhaps. Both Companies were in Chicago…..

A link to David’s excellent post is here.

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