A recent discussion about Stanley’s 20th-century “Perma” cases and their ruling pens reminded me of an uncommon four-pen set that I acquired as part of a lot of modern drawing instruments.
At first I had assumed that the selection of pens in the case was a custom assortment that someone had ordered from Stanley, as they seemed to be a real variety of styles. These include the patent swivel nib pen with indexed adjusting screw patented in 1912 by Stanley’s general manager HT Tallack (who also revised the 1925 edition of Stanley’s Mathematical Drawing Instruments book), a more modern hinged-nib pen with unadorned steel adjusting screw, and two plain steel drawing pens (unhinged), one fitted with Stanley’s improved square-grip handle.
However, it turns out that this was a standard catalogued set that Stanley offered from around 1924, listed as set number M2129 “Drawing Pens, set of 4, in morocco case, M2122, M2112, M2114, M2115”. The 1931 catalogue contains the same set with code number P2098 at £1 7s 6d, which continued to be sold until at least 1938 according to Stanley’s revised price lists. This date range fits with the more modern 286 High Holborn Stanley logo featured inside the lid.
This particular assortment replaced the earlier set of four drawing pens all with hinged nibs in the 1919 catalogue (L2093 at £1 10s), and before that in 1909 there was the more traditional “Set of 6 Drawing Pens, to fit one handle, in morocco case” (J1093 at 22 shillings for the highest quality; see also CJ1093 in my 1908 Canadian Stanley catalogue). The latter was a pattern that went way back to the mid-19th century. These were not unique to Stanley, but were offered by most major makers.
The inclusion of full pens reflects a move away from the earlier removable nib sets for the sake of greater convenience. After this time, sets of ruling pens gradually waned in popularity with few makers offering them after WW2. However, I do have a late Thornton ruling pen set that bucks this trend, reverting to the old pattern of separate nibs to fit a single handle.
This AG Thornton Ltd Minerva series five-pen set with a black enamelled metal handle probably dates to the second half of the 20th century. The pens are all of simple construction without hinges, and are threaded on the inside to fit the handle (unlike their 19th-century predecessors which tended to have the thread cut on the outside of the nib to screw into a recess in the handle).
However, by the time this set was made few manufacturers still offered such multi-pen sets with a single handle, making the Thornton example a bit of an outlier. Even so, with the introduction of interchangeable-nib tubular technical pen sets in the late 1950s, manufacturers such as Rotring initially offered multi-nib sets with a single holder.
Only by the 1980s was it deemed necessary to supply sets of full pens as standard, thereby removing the need to constantly screw and unscrew drawing points from a solitary handle. A case of those who fail to learn from history being doomed to repeat it?
