Who Made The "glideaway Pen"?

[steven r]

Hello, i recently purchased this fountain pen and can not find who made it, The pen is inscribed "The Glideaway Pen" and also has the name CHARLES T KING, LYMINGTON (google search states he was a publisher), It is a nice looking pen with a round symbol on the clip, a 14 ct nib that says "warrented 14ct Osmiridium" The barrel has B.6 on the bottom edge. Any help will be appreciated as i am going cross eyed looking at hundreds of images of pens to find this one, thank you

[mike.jane]

Regardless it looks quite gorgeous.

But your answer I have not.

[Algester]

A quick vague search led me Perry and company of london an englishman may know more about the company as I feel it could be a 4th tier if not a 3rd tier company at best

[lmarine0510]

Hello, i recently purchased this fountain pen and can not find who made it, The pen is inscribed "The Glideaway Pen" and also has the name CHARLES T KING, LYMINGTON (google search states he was a publisher), It is a nice looking pen with a round symbol on the clip, a 14 ct nib that says "warrented 14ct Osmiridium" The barrel has B.6 on the bottom edge. Any help will be appreciated as i am going cross eyed looking at hundreds of images of pens to find this one, thank you

Judging by the name and the 'warranted' nib ('osmiridium' sounds like jargon for pot metal), It looks to me like one of those obscure 3rd tier brands from the 1920's or 30's. The marbled celluloid on a lot of these types of pens is quite beautiful. You will be hard-pressed to find another one exactly like it, as a lot of these were used and abused back in the day and most were probably broken or lost in the 80+ years it's been since they were made.

[steven r]

Judging by the name and the 'warranted' nib ('osmiridium' sounds like jargon for pot metal), It looks to me like one of those obscure 3rd tier brands from the 1920's or 30's. The marbled celluloid on a lot of these types of pens is quite beautiful. You will be hard-pressed to find another one exactly like it, as a lot of these were used and abused back in the day and most were probably broken or lost in the 80+ years it's been since they were made.

thanks Imarine," pot metal" set me on a new search--

osmiridium

A naturally occurring alloy of iridium and osmium with traces of other platinum-group metals, one of the first metals used extensively for tipping nibs; now disused because of osmium’s extreme toxicity. Osmiridium contains more iridium than osmium.

 

there are a few names who have used these nibs, Burnham, Wyvern, Esterbrook and i have just read an article from 16 sept 1927 when the write of the article Percy O Lennon visited the London factory Thos. De La Rue and co to see nibs being produced for Onoto from Osmiridium which was sourced from Tasmania. Going further i then checked De La RUE pens and i have found that the symbol on the cap is called Sunburst, so thanks for your reply, my search continues

[steven r]

Regardless it looks quite gorgeous.

But your answer I have not.

thanks mike.jane it is a handsome pen and writes very well, it has gone into my "to keep pile".

[Bo Bo Olson]

Sounds like a good nib, my Osmai's used osmium. Very pretty pen, defiantly second tier....and many big name companies made small batches for other companies or department stores and so on. Like Osmia made Akkerman pens for the Akkerman stores in Holland.

 

Warrented just meant it was 14 K....some are nails, some have flex. I have a Warrented nib with good flex.

[siopaopei]

nice-looking pen you got there.

[steven r]

A quick vague search led me Perry and company of london an englishman may know more about the company as I feel it could be a 4th tier if not a 3rd tier company at best

hi and thanks for your reply, do you think this could be an Onoto? my reply to Imarine is pointing me there, did pen manufacturers just put a a name on individual pens like this "THE GLIDEAWAY PEN" or do you think there was a batch of them at one time, also the charles t king is the same sort of inscription (meaning it does not look like it was done at a later date like you see some pens that have been personalised), also may i ask what people mean by 2, 3 and 4th tier, thanks Algester for your opinion.

[Algester]

Think of the major pen companies as the first tier pens you know companies like sailor, pilot, parker, faber-castell, MB, onoto, visconti so on and so forth the subs of these companies from like cross' franklin covey are second tier if I remember my stuff right and the minority of the pen companies are called 3rd tier pens going probably to the 10th tier pens these tiered pens only come up on vintage pens when pretty much there were shops scattered around the globe selling pens and competing with each other think of it the age of pharmacy before the FDA was formally founded (pretty much the time when stuff like cocaine and morphine were thought of as an all cure...)

[steven r]

Think of the major pen companies as the first tier pens you know companies like sailor, pilot, parker, faber-castell, MB, onoto, visconti so on and so forth the subs of these companies from like cross' franklin covey are second tier if I remember my stuff right and the minority of the pen companies are called 3rd tier pens going probably to the 10th tier pens these tiered pens only come up on vintage pens when pretty much there were shops scattered around the globe selling pens and competing with each other think of it the age of pharmacy before the FDA was formally founded (pretty much the time when stuff like cocaine and morphine were thought of as an all cure...)

Thanks Algester you have explained it very nicely, the names you have mentioned (faber-castell 1770s) were probably the pioneers of the market produced fountain pen, long before mine popped up, now you have got me interested in older history of the fountain pen, to be honest i have never heard or F-C or Visconti as i have not been collecting long and my first pen was a Watermans (and mainly the rest!) thank you,

[Ernst Bitterman]

The mark on the clip looks a bit Onoto-ish, and they are known to have made third-party pens.

[steven r]

hi, would like to find out more about names given to pens

did pen manufacturers just put a a name on individual pens like this "THE GLIDEAWAY PEN" or do you think there was a batch of them at one time, also the charles t king is the same sort of inscription (meaning it does not look like it was done at a later date like you see some pens that have been personalised), thanks

[steven r]

The mark on the clip looks a bit Onoto-ish, and they are known to have made third-party pens.

hi there, are there any other visual details that i can check to see if it was Onoto to rule out Onoto-ish, regards, Steve