These 3 Waterman pens will be auctioned separately in our Winter Fine Sale on 4th December 2018:
A Waterman's no.20 'World's Largest' safety pen
in chased hard black rubber with screw cap and number 10 nib and measures 17.5 cm.
Estimate: £500 - £800
A Waterman's 'World's Smallest' safety pen
in hard black rubber with gold nib and original blue box. It measures 5.1cm.
Estimate: £200 - £300
A Waterman's 'World's Smallest' eyedropper 'doll' pen
in hard black rubber with gilt clip to the screw cap and it measures just 4.1cm. Often called the “Doll Pen” because one rests in Queen Mary’s doll house, on the King’s Library Table.
Estimate: £300 - £500
Waterman announced their new safeties at the end of July of 1908. Initially they were offered in only three sizes (12VS, 14VS, 15VS, each in just one standard length) with the option of gold filled barrel bands and the choice of smooth or chased black hard rubber, or "Cardinal" red hard rubber. The 1908 Waterman catalogue, published at the beginning of October, extended the offerings to include standard and short models, as well as silver filigree overlay.
L. E. Waterman's early pens were "eyedroppers" – collector's jargon for pens lacking a filling mechanism, that have to be opened and filled using an eyedropper. Although self-filling fountain pens had been made in small numbers since at least the beginning of the 19th century, eyedroppers were the norm until the 'teens of the 20th.
A Dunhill Namiki Maki-e fountain pen decorated by Shogo Lijima c.1930
the cap depicting houses beneath three mountains, the body with a gateway leading to the cap decoration, cap with a gold band stamed R14k, the knib signed Dunhill, Namiki, 14k
Estimate: £2,000 - £3,000
Shogo Lijima is generally considered Namiki's premiere artisan. He was born 1894, studied under Shorin Ueda in 1908, and began working for Namiki as a subcontractor in 1926. He joined the Namiki Co. in 1928 and became the leading member of Namiki's elite Kokkokai group assembled by the legendary Gonroku Matsuda in 1931.
For more information about any of these pens, please email clientservices@gorringes.co.uk or call 01273 472503.
