MRHR Matador with 18K Overlay

[Jeph]

I was desperately searching through my piles of pens looking for something that I could work on today. I did not find anything, but I did run across the one grail pen that I do own. It was hidden away in its velvet sleeve protected from the evil light, villainous water and most of all my clumsy fingers. I took it out and admired it for a while, and then put it back away. Later, I decided to finally test it to see if it worked. It did. I decided to take some pictures before I put it away again.

This is a beautiful mottled red hard rubber Matador lever filler with an 18K nib and 18K gold overlay. The color is very rich and there are only a few dings on the overlay. I still can’t bring myself to ink it and take it out of the house but at least I can share some pictures of it. Note that the feed is made from the same pattern MRHR as the rest of the pen.

The nib reads:
MATADOR
18CTS (TS in underlined superscript)
OSMI-IRIDIUM
2
IMPORTE’

The base of the barrel overlay reads (all on one line, line breaks represent font change):
MATADOR
DOUBLE
OR 18CTS LAME’ (TS in underlined superscript) ((“M” assumed, imprint faint))

66346635663666376638

[jacksterp]

That feed is wild!

Beautiful pen - a real stunner.

But, I would have to ink it...

[MisterBoll]

That is a beautiful pen.

[Ondina]

An absolutely beautiful pen, and uncommon, as well. It always leaves me in awe that some are so very fortunate to be able to run through piles of pens and dig out such made out of dreams pens...Congratulations.

[piscov]

This is one of my favorite pen makers. And yours is the most beautifull I´ve seen so far. It looks like a French made overlay or at least made for the French market.

Let me know when you want to sell it!

Best regards

Vasco

[tandaina]

I adore Matador. My favorite pen of all time is a worn old Matador (barrel nearly gone clear) with a steel nib that blows away every other flex nib I've ever used. It beans a Waterman wet noodle. This pen. Wow.

[Jeph]

First, let me make clear that I most certainly DID NOT find this amongst a pile of junk pens. This pen is something special that I landed by taking a big gamble a while back and was so overwhelmed by it when it arrived that is scared me to even look at it. So I placed it in a protected place near where I keep my finished pens that are waiting to go (back) into my rotation. It is so well protected that even the velvet sleeve is not normally visible.

The urge to ink it was too great, so last night I spent an hour flushing the blue ink residue out of it and another hour letting it dry. The sac pressure feels very strong. On a normal fill I was able to expel 0.4 ml of water afterwards, although once I did get 0.6 ml. I do not know what I did differently that time and I could not repeat it.

After a short ceremony that was mostly simple stalling to give me time to work up my nerve, I filled it with Diamine Red Dragon. The #2 18K nib writes a nice EF line just like I prefer. There is some feedback, but not a significant amount. It is smooth except for lateral strokes while flexed. I am not sure if I will address that or not. Yes, it does have plenty of flex. I was also struck by how much shading I was getting out of the un-flexed EF line. There were also regular skips. I did lots of experiments and found out that both the skips and the shading were directly a result of pressure. When I let up too much trying for the finest line possible I would get the skips and when I inadvertently applied a tiny bit of extra pressure the flex sent more ink onto the page. I think that with practice that pen would write wonderfully within the limits of my handwriting. Writing sample attached.

For the record, I cannot imagine this pen ever being for sale.
6667

[KrazyIvan]

Love how the feed matched the pen.

[Carole]

Jeph, I'm very happy that you inked your pen, and loved reading your description of being overwhelmed when you first saw it. That's about as perfect an example of a true pen lover as I've ever heard. That said, it's good to know you're using the pen. About the feedback on lateral strokes while flexed, I've experienced that same thing with vintage gold nibs--so I try to only flex on downward strokes because I worry about springing or other damage. There's a wonderful amount of tipping material on this nib, so I'm sure you'll enjoy using this pen for a lifetime! Just as it was meant to be. Congratulations!

[VertOlive]

Whoa. WhattaPen! Congratulations and thank you for the writing sample!

VO

[Jeph]

A bit of clarification, the overlay is (heavy) 18K gold plated, not solid gold.

I should also note that this pen absolutely HATES flying. It was positioned nib up during the entire flight and at least half of the ink was in the cap when I opened it up. The worst any of the other pens had was a little ink creep on the nib.