The Parker Duofold is one of the
quintessential vintage pens. It is possible that more words have
been written about this pen and the later Parker 51 than any other.
There are abundant advertising references, as Parker was a very
heavy advertiser, and the Duofold was most successful, being one of
the best selling pens for nearly a decade. This is the pen that made
Parker one of the top tier manufacturers in the 1920s. A Parker
Duofold is one of the dozen or so pens that most collectors would
place in the core of a fountain pen collection.
 Unlike
any pen in this world … or any other — That was the slogan
for the Parker advertising campaign launched in September 1956, in
advance of the Christmas season, to introduce its newest and most
revolutionary fountain pen. The pen was the striking new
Parker 61. It was Parker’s ambitious entry in the “no-mess
filling”. The first fountain pen that actually fills itself by
itself, requiring no action from the user. The pen has no button, no
lever, no plunger, no squeeze bar, and no cartridge or converter
(these last two being several years in the future for Parker). The
pen sucks up a fill by capillary action. To fill the 61, you just
unscrew the barrel and immerse the back end of the pen
 The
U.S.A. of the 1950s and early 1960s was enamored of TV Westerns:
Bonanza,
Gunsmoke,
Have Gun – Will Travel,
Wanted: Dead or Alive
— the list is almost endless. So it’s really no wonder that when
Parker introduced its first cartridge-filling fountain pen in 1960,
the pen wore a name that tied it to the ubiquitous Colt .45
Peacemaker: the Parker 45. The name was a cultural
nod, of course, but its real purpose was to tell the pen buyer that
this pen was as easy to load as the “other” .45 — just open it up
and drop in a new cartridge. An added value was the inclusion, as
trumpeted by the 1961 advertisement here, of a converter that
allowed the pen to use bottled ink or cartridges as the user
preferred. The
45 is a really durable
workhorse of a pen. Not only did the 45 introduce the world to the
now-standard cartridge/converter filling system, but it also offered
the user the ability to interchange nibs without having to send the
pen to Parker or even take it to the repair department of the local
Parker dealer. The nib unit simply screws out of the nose of the
shell. As time went by, the variety of available nibs grew to
include extra-fine, extra-broad, stub, left-foot and right-foot
oblique italics in different sizes, and more.
Courtesy Richard Binder,
www.richardspens.com
 As
World War II drew to a close, the G. S. Parker company began
thinking about its future product lines. The flagship “51” was going
strong, even in the limited numbers that Parker was allowed to
produce for the civilian market, and it appeared to have a bright
future once wartime restrictions were lifted so that Parker could
deliver pens in quantity to pen stores around the world.
The Vacumatic had already begun to show its age; and the company set
out to replace it. The “51” had shown that people were eager
to buy pens with metal caps and monochrome plastics — so to create
its next open-nib pen, Parker essentially took the streamlined shape
of the “51” and replaced the hooded nib and its collector with an
ordinary open nib and feed. The smoothly tapered clip came from the
striped Duofold line. The result, introduced in 1946, was the
Parker VS. The “VS” part of the name is generally
thought to have stood for “Vacumatic Successor.” It’s a good looking
pen, and Parker also improved the design of its venerable
button-filling mechanism to make it easier to work on and more
reliable.
Courtesy Richard Binder,
www.richardspens.com
So basically what we are looking at here is the basic shape of the
Parker 51, but offered with an open nib and using a button filler
system. These are great pens that for some reason do not get the
respect they deserve. If you like the looks of the Parker 51, but
are somewhat put off by the hooded nib, this is definitely the pen
for you. |
