Not really directly related to calligraphy and lettering, but perhaps of interest to one or two of you who are interested in the history of vintage steel pens.
As some of you may have notice I have been interested in vintage pens for a while now and have been doing some research into the early history of the US steel pen industry. Several books have been written about the British steel pen industry, specifically Birmingham, but there are no secondary sources for the US equivalent. While I have no intention of writing a book, it has been interesting unraveling and teasing out the few strands there are in primary sources here in the US.
I've primarily focused on the manufacturer Turner & Harrison, with a minor focus on other Philadelphia makers. There's another gentleman working on a book-length treatment of the more famous Esterbrook steel pens, so I've stayed away from them and kept my focus on Philly, and T&H in particular.
One of the first things you encounter when trying to do this research is the inter-connectedness of many of the companies and people in the early years of the industry. Steel pens had been made in the US by hand since very early in the history of the country. One of the most successful, and the first to advertise was Peregrine Williamson in the first years of the 19th-century. (an early 1808 ad of his boasts of an endorsement from the president, Thomas Jefferson). Successful industrial production of steel pens doesn't come to the US until the 1850's-60's, several decades after Birmingham. One of the issues was the poor reputation of American pens compared to their British rivals. The other was a dearth of skilled workmen.
One of the first truly success pen factories we know anything about was the Washington Medallion Steel Pen Company. It was formed out of the American Steel Pen Co., but was eventually bought out by George Harrison and George Bradford in 1861 to form Harrison and Bradford. The next big player was Esterbrook. Richard Esterbrook brought a group of skilled Birmingham pen makers over and started up the company in 1860. One of those men, John Turner left after five years to manage Warrington & Company. After a decade of both success as well as tragedy (three fires in 10 years) the company dissolved and John Turner joined with George Harrison (of Harrison and Bradford) to found Turner & Harrison. George Bradford, after the dissolution of Harrison and Bradford went on to run the short-lived George Bradford Steel Pens before joining the established company Miller Brothers Cutlery to found their pen-making division.
Other smaller companies like Leon Isaacs and George Malpass get intertwined as well. Leon Isaacs was a highly-regarded smaller manufacturer of quality pens called Glucinum Pens ("The slickest pen ever made"). In 1899 they were bought by Turner & Harrison and became their flagship line.
George Malpass had an even closer set of ties to T&H. In 1869, the young George Malpass married John Turner's daughter, Rosina. In 1870, they lived with her parents. George started out as a worker on the factory floor of Warrington, probably where he met the boss's daughter. He later went off on his own and filed a few patents under his own name and began his own pen company, George Malpass Pens and his own Keystone Pen Works. When Turner's partner Harrison died, Malpass was convinced to come back to the family and was brought in as John Turner's partner, and they merged the Keystone Pen Works into T&H's own Falcon Pen Works. Upon John Turner's death, George Malpass took over as president of Turner & Harrison.
Untangling all of this, like I said above, has been rather a lot of fun, as well as frustration. To keep it all straight I've had to resort to some diagramming. I've attached my sketch below. For those of you who are members of the Birmingham Pen Museum (and you all should be), I have a brief article coming out in the next newsletter with a sketch of John Turner's life from his time as a young apprentice in Birmingham, to his rise as a major figure in the American steel pen industry.
I'm thinking of somehow putting together another article with vignettes of the early industry. There are some quite fascinating events that happened to various folks related to the steel pen companies, large and small. Like questions that arose in court whether it was possible to tell if a note written with a quill and another written with a steel pen were the same handwriting. Or the story of how Esterbrook stole the idea of the Falcon Stub and released their Jackson Stub to great fanfare and claims of originality in 1889 three years after Leon Isaacs started selling the same design and copyrighted the words "Falcon Stub" and "Stub Falcon." And how 1889 was the beginning of the end of the Leon Isaac company. It not only saw the much larger Esterbrook steal a significant design from them, but also that same year their founder died (Leon Isaac), his partner's (M. Voorsanger's) young and promising son (age 23) died suddenly on his own doorstep as he was saying goodbye to his fiance on his way to a sales trip to the south. And the five-year-old son of their main agent and partner in NYC, David Tower of Tower Manufacturing, died suddenly from sickness. It was not a good year.
I could write a whole article on the trials and tribulations of Aaron De Haan, of the De Haan pen company. How he was falsely taken up for robbery while traveling through the small town of Batavia, Ohio while a traveling salesman. How later his wife was robbed of her jewelry and their maid was falsely taken up for the robbery by the police, but De Haan, remembering his own experience, intervened and convinced the police to release her. How his daughter Minnie was saved from a runaway horse by a dashing young French dentist attending further school there in Philadelphia. After the rescue he slipped off into the crowd, but later the same day they happened to meet at a social event, and how later they came to marry and move to France. How the De Haan's were one of several Jewish families of Dutch origin connected to the steel pen industry in Philadelphia. (Leon Isaac, Voorsanger, Koshland, De Haan)
It's a rather obscure corner of the industrial history of the US, but I find it fascinating because not only is it connected to objects of interest to myself, it's connected to interesting people trying to create a whole new industry in a vital and exciting time.
Anyway, just thought I'd put this out there in case anyone may have a passing interest.
Andrew
