Since a lot of people’s thoughts turn to motorcycles when winter’s icy grip departs (at least, where winter can be said to have an icy grip), I suppose it’s appropriate that I get in a page for one of Waterman’s odd Harley-Davidson cross-market exercises while spring is still in the air.

The ongoing Waterman gusher continues with the appearance of the Préface as well.

A couple of fresh pen-maker’s references, for Baoer and Fuliwen.  The main utility of them, I’m sorry to say, is to save others a lot of disappointment in Googling by distilling that disappointment into a single quick dose.  The pages include a sample of their works, the 388 and the 2024 respectively, which despite similarity of name are rather different pens to look at.

It’s nearly three weeks since TWSBI announced the release of its new Vac 700, and almost a week that I’ve had one in hand to examine.  It is, therefore, long past time that I got a review page put together for it.

This has moved me to also work up some steam on other Chinese pen-maker’s pages, although I’m not quite ready to present what I’ve got about Baoer and Fuliwen to the world.  Soon.

The ranks of my Waterman pages have been swollen with a full four new pages!  Moving chronologically, there’s the Hundred Year Pen (although not, I’m afraid, with pictures of the popular early form of it), the vexing Dauntless, which I reiterate is not a Stalwart, the new-for-1950 Leader set for kids on their way back to school, and the modern Lauréat.  There is also a new inductee into the ranks of Unknown Watermans, which I invite scholarly comment upon.

If you listen closely, you can also hear the hoarse inducements of the carnival barker; there’s a freak show now open in the galleries.

Does that not sound like a late ’70’s kung fu film?  I have just finished putting together a page for a pen I’ve owned for years, but have only just sorted out the model-name of, the Waterman Super Master.  I have also just replaced a long-broken section in that pen, so the return is from the “to be repaired” heap of hard-luck pens I’ve got.

Other recent developments; new pictures of an early open-pointed Parker “17” and a flighter Parker Arrow.

This is not so much an addition to as an expansion of the site; the header now offers Portrait Galleries, where I have moved the chronological mug-books which once sat in the History Department.  There are also some other galleries there, including a shameless example of sub-arctic patriotism, and others will follow as I finish them up and as whimsy directs in the future.

I’m about 49 years late for the party, but as I’ve only just gotten a Parker 75 (and written up a page for it) I want to wish the 1963 version of the Parker Pen Company a happy seventy-fifth!  As the Parker 75 was the company’s gift to itself, I think they made out OK without me being there.

I’ve put together a slightly disappointing maker’s page for Aurora (a word I have remarkable difficulty typing), and a rather better one for that company’s 88.  I’ve also added the “Old Timer” sub-model to my coverage of Sheaffer’s protean No Nonsense, and posted sale notices for my Élysée, one of my Skylines, and the Conklin Mark Twain.  The last of those appears in a rather different venue, because I won’t tread on Etsy’s rules about selling things less than 20 years old, and the Conklin is 12 at most.

I’ve run up a little page of whimsy; a gallery of the various arrow-shaped clips used by Parker over the years.  It’s not much, but it’s new, so it’s news.

In addition to the appearance of reference material for the current version of Parker\’s IM, there is an all-new page for their Arrow.  All modern Parkers?  Can it be I\’m getting away from vintage pens?  No, it\’s mere coincidence of arrivals.