Hi All,

One of the nicest things about this forum is the fact that one can post a passing comment about even the most obscure pen, and there's a reasonable chance that a kind FPN colleague will reply with interesting and useful information about it. I had that experience when fellow FPNer Ari ("asamsky") contacted me about a forgotten post of mine in which I had occasion to mention just such an obscure pen: The Huron Pen.

It turns out that Ari had recently acquired a Huron of his own, and he has graciously encouraged me to add a topic discussing both pens. Here goes...

My Huron (photos below)...

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...is an oversized black-and-cream lever-fill flattop, in celluloid, of high-quality materials and construction. It features solid black ends on both cap and barrel; a plain ball-ended clip in the style of hundreds of 1920s pens; and a No. 8 Warranted 14K nib. (Like many other "No. 8" Warranted nibs, it's significantly smaller than the number designation might suggest; but it's not as grossly out of proportion as these nibs can sometimes be.) The barrel imprint includes only the maker's/model's name, with no hint as to place of manufacture, etc: The Huron Pen (underlining in imprint).

Until I received Ari's note, I assumed, without giving the matter much thought, that "Huron" must have been just another name placed on a run of anonymous celluloid pens. I was surprised to find out that Ari's Huron was a very different creature:

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As you can see, Ari's Huron is a slender BCHR model. It's also of good quality. It bears the same barrel imprint as my pen, and it also sports a Warranted 14K nib...a No. 2, in this case. The hard rubber construction alone suggests a production date earlier than that of my celluloid model (mindful of Sheaffer's introduction of "Radite" in 1924, I reckon my Huron was manufactured in the latter part of the 1920s). More interestingly, several design features of Ari's Huron seem to argue - in my view, at least - for a production date fairly early in the era of hard rubber self-fillers:

- It's a full-length clipless model (accommodation clip attached), and clipless non-ringtop pens seem more prevalent in the early hard rubber years.

- It has four breather holes in the cap; this arrangement seems more common in the early hard rubber years, less so in the later years.

- There's a "wasp-waisted" profile to the barrel threads and the section - again, this design feature seems more common among earlier hard rubber pens.

- Finally, Ari's pen - which might be taken for a lever-filler with a missing lever - actually seems to be a coin-filler; there's no evidence that a lever was ever attached. And I tend to assign coin-fillers, like matchstick fillers, to the early self-filling period.

If the above inferences are justified, we have two distinct datapoints here: an early coin-filling HR pen and a late-1920s celluloid lever-filler. That suggests that Huron pens were manufactured from, say, 1915 (maybe a year or two earlier?) until the latter half of the 1920s. (I readily acknowledge that the existence of a c. 1915 pen and a c. 1925 pen does not formally prove the fact of continuous production throughout that period, but the conclusion doesn't seem unwarranted.)

So we have a brand associated with pens of a reasonably high standard: the 14K nibs and good-quality materials/construction support that statement. And while I don't submit this generalization as being of overwhelming weight, the barrel imprints themselves can be seen as supporting it as well (I tend to think of pens with barrel imprints as being at least a cut above pens whose branding is confined to clip engraving).

I think this makes for an interesting story...what there is of it. I'm hoping someone out there can add more to it: a guess as to the maker's identity, thoughts about place of origin, etc. ("Huron" ought to offer some help there, but it could be any one of several counties or towns...or any place near Lake Huron...or it could be the name of a stationer in Perth Amboy owned by someone who liked the name "Huron.")

Anyway: many thanks to Ari, for letting me rattle on about his pen, and for sharing the photos. Hope there's something interesting here!

Cheers,

Jon

Many thanks to Jon for an insightful and interesting theory on this little-known pen company! I'm looking forward to hearing if anyone else knows anything about Huron.

No info to be found in the New York Times archive, I am afraid. Unfortunately I dropped my subscription to Newapapers.com.

One extremely speculative possibility - both Conklin and the Rapidwriter Pen Company had addresses on Huron Street in Toledo. Not that there is any evidence of a connection, but . . .

John

Jon, another distinctive design feature of the bchr coin filler pen is the raised thread on the barrel. This is similar to the raised thread on the early Parker and Waterman's pens with safety caps, which date from the period starting around 1914-16.

Ari, have you ever had your coin filler apart? There might be another clue inside, on the pressure bar. Some early coin fillers had the patent date "1.7.13", or January 7, 1913, imprinted on the pressure bar. Take a look at this picture of the Pressure bar on the Lakeside coin filler in this thread on Lion & Pen Topic 382. There is also a very good picture of the Raised Thread on the barrel.

Maybe the Lakeside and the Huron are related. They certainly look similar. Perhaps the lake referred to in the Lakeside pen is Lake Huron. ;~) In which case, both Huron pens might be Montgomery-Ward products.

George Kovalenko.

Also the Eagle Caplox pen.

John

There was also The Huron Rubber Company, Cleveland, Ohio c. 1902 (referenced here
)

I left the repair to Ron Zorn, so I haven't ever seen the pressure bar. He didn't have to replace it, so perhaps when I'm a little more confident about taking apart pens I'll take another look.