More pen safari adventures

[amk]

Here in France some, though not all, of the sales are happening - a few of the towns which cancelled their summer events have now rescheduled them. And this weekend saw 3 separate sales two of which did me rather well for pens.

First off, yesterday's find:



I thought this was just a dip pen holder and was about to pass it by. Then I caught side of the lever, which is the typical shape for Gold Starry - then the Gold Starry 18 carat nib, which though crumpled and with a broken feed can I think be brought back to its original glory. It's quite a large nib, too.

Gold Starry started off importing English pens, IIRC from Conway Stewart, then started its own manufacturing operation (pens are proudly marked 'fabrication française'). It's one of the main French brands together with Edacoto, Stylomine, Bayard and Waterman.


Then today I found a whole bunch of pens. Lots of Parker Vectors but also these three magnificent beasts. Everyone will recognise the safari and al-star, two really nice Lamys. They both have F nibs which I'll probably swap out for B or 1.1. But the third pen is a darling; it's a Stylomine 303, a French pen from the 1940s/50s and which to my mind has the same functional but characterful design lines as the Citroen 2CV (early 50s).

It has a French speciality as a filling system, the accordion sac. Unfortunately this one is ossified and since no one makes them any more I'll have to replace it with a straight sac which isn't quite as efficient. At the top of the pen, the blind cap comes off and there's a metal cage containing a transparent cap that acts as the button-fill - really typically French to give you an ink window but make you remove the blind cap to look at it.

And then I found a lovely 1950s (I think) bottle of Waterman '88' blue ink still in its impeccable box.

That's been a splendid haul. The rest of this year will have difficulty matching up to this weekend!