Those who are of a certain age like me, generally with greying hair (and mustache), remember the wooden school desks that had a hole on the right hand side where an ink bottle could be safely deposited.

This was the writing system we learned to master in both Ontario and Québec schools in the early fifties: we were probably the last North American generation of kids that dipped their pens into an ink bottle and learned to write each letter of the alphabet, one by one, endlessly copying them in long rows in lined notebooks, patiently, throughout the first year of school.

Although some remember having learned with pencils, rather than dip pens. The feeling was not the same. We learned to be meticulous, for fear of making a mess of things, which, at six years old, is inevitable anyways. Not that it mattered much except for adults. But adults made sure it mattered...

Just wondering, does anybody know if these ink bottles still exist? I have one of these desks. The hole is 1 7/8 inches in diameter.


Fernan

oh, yes, remember those desks well. 'tho my generation learned to write in the Big Chief tablet with that huge red pencil slung over one shoulder <g>

They are often listed on Ebay as "school inkwells."

They are priced based on how good shape they are in, chips and such. The ones in my school had bakelite covers with a little swivel over the hole. I think it is rare to find one with the cover.

Did your school have an "ink monitor" that went around with the large bottle and filled the little inkwells in the desk or did your teacher do that?

Andy

Far too young to be of that generation, although I know what you're talking about. They're the little round, white ceramic inkwells that used to be slotted into the circular holes in the right of students' desks at school. As Andy has said, they show up on eBay every now and then, keep an eye out for them. Alternatively, flea-markets and antiques stores might have them. Or, you could make your own well out of clay, fire it in a kiln and paint it white...?

Here in the US, in Pennsylvania (at that age), I learned to print in the first grade, to write cursive in the second and third - all with pencils, and did not touch a fountain pen until I was in the fourth grade, age eight. The summer before fourth grade, the "old" desks with holes for the ink wells were removed and my class had the first "new" desks with no ink well hole. However, we had glass ink wells that we poised on the desk tops. We just did not have the holes. The next year, penmanship classes ceased. That was the 1959/60 school year. It was sad.

But of course I remember that well. Also, the fact that any girl with long braids sitting right in front of me... holy cow!
The inks however did smell different -- IMO -- better than they do today.

Mike

I am too young to remember the desks in school BUT I live in New York and at the Post Office on 23rd street and 3rd ave. the counters still have the holes!. They have covered them with tape so people don't put trash in them! I look at them every time I am there and try to share the fact that they were for ink wells--nobody cares. I hope they don't get rid of them. It probably is the most beautiful post office under the "new" refurbishing including drop ceiling and linoleum. Beautiful murals too!(remember when buildings used to hire artists to paint murals and beautify the walls!)

I see those inkwells at flea markets sometimes. The ones they have around here are glass and have a ridge near the top to hang up in the desk hole.

When I was in the fifth grade in 1956, my school did away with the dip pens and inkwells. Everybody got Sheaffer school pens and washable blue cartridges.

Paddler

I'm jealous. The best we managed was Shaeffer cartridge pens in 5th grade because one teacher was determined to teach us penmanship.

I antedate the utility of them, but the early '70s when I started to school still saw the desks in use. I always preferred them for some reason....

I remember them, too, also in Pennsylvania, but in a more frugal and conservative school district, as it was (just) a little later and penmanship classes continued. We didn't use the inkwells, but in second grade we were issued loaner fountain pens to start learning Palmer cursive. The alphabet was on a border that ran across the wall just under the ceiling, I recall. Penmanship was graded and yes, we used the drill books. When we ran out of ink, the teacher filled the pen at her desk -- a safer choice! The pens were lever fillers. I look back at my handwriting even in my twenties, and it much neater and more legible than it eventually became! The passing out of loaner fountain pens, though, was discontinued after that year and ballpoints ruled except, perhaps, for the teacher filled-out portions of the report cards.

Weren't some of those beautiful murals WPA (Works Progress Administration) projects? The way the stock market is going we might get some more of those....

Here's one:
http://cgi.ebay.com/inkwell-for-old-school...1QQcmdZViewItem

Dunno about the inkwells, but we found four (!) of those desks in my Grandmother's shed this past weekend, plus I think she has two more in the house. Probably going to sell them since we don't really have room for them. I might like to keep one, though.

I'm younger (28 in a couple weeks), but even I remember desks with holes in them- we still had them when I was in school. They probably still have some now. But it wasn't until I started reading and posting here that I knew what those holes were for.

I wonder how close in size those ink well holes are to the newer cord holes in newer school desks/tables? Maybe one could drop such an ink well into one of those.

Being 51, I just missed using the dip pens. We started with pencils. But we had the old desks with ink stains on them. The ink wells had been removed. When we moved to the big city of Lincoln, IL while I was in third grade, they had new desks without the ink wells.

Open inkwell + chalk dust = treacherous lumpy bits = ink blot = cross teacher = sullen resentment at the unfairness of it all.

I remember using those desks in 1987 for certain. I'm not sure about any years after this however.

I am definitely grey, but sans mustache. We had those desks when I started school, but alas, we didn't get to use pens. I wonder how lefties managed with the inkwell on the right.

I not only experienced these desks as a Catholic School student, I actually still have and use one---dark brown wood, a little beat up, with a huge drawer under the seat and, yes, an inkwell. The nuns started us out with wood-handled Eberhard Faber dip pens. Every morning, they would come to our desks with something resembling a long-spouted oil can, from which they would pour royal blue Skrip or Quink into our little inkwells. This sounds awfully old, but it was still happening in my school as late as the end of the Sixties! And it is how I was taught the Palmer method. The nuns were very strict about neat handwriting. By fifth grade, we could use fountain pens, usually those leaky Sheaffer school pens, but never Bic ballpoints or felt-tipped markers. Starting in Fifth, we had to keep zippered writing cases at all times supplied with a fountain pen, ink cartridges, compass, protractor, mini-ruler and several well-sharpened Mongol pencils. This "can I borrow a pen" thing was unthinkable, up there with "I don't have any paper." (We had to keep marbled composition books for each subject and a good stock of loose-leaf paperalways on hand.) The wooden desks eventually gave way to formica and metal ones, without the inkwells. I love my wooden school desk, though. You can adjust the extension of the writing surface and the angle is perfect!

I went to school after this era (in fact I think my school was built after this era). I don't remember having desks like this in primary school. But my German school had old cast iron and wooden desks with the hole for an inkwell. We didn't actually use inkwells in class, though.

Hmm. I think that's about my only happy memory of German school. Wish I had one of those desks.

I love German school supplies---the leather "Maeppchen" and the great student fountain pens like the Pelikano and Geha, quite superior to those Sheaffer school pens.

Hey Fernan.............I recall those desks and ink wells, used them for 8 years. They were messy and challenging I have several copies of the old nib pens and occasionally use them. They write just fine. Another thing about the desks: the top of the desk was braced to the side with a piece of wood on 45degrees, forming a sort of cubby hole where I used to keep candy hidden.

Your experience is mine and I enjoyed it. I prayed hard, however, not to be made the 'ink monitor': an unavoidably dirty job, particularly since the nominee had to mix the ink from powder, before pouring it from a large bottle into the ink well of each of thirty desks.

I was milk monitor, which, although it meant freezing nose and hands in winter, going outside to carry crates of thirds of a pint of full cream milk, was a clean job and made me popular with my peers.

These things said, I enjoy my pens and semi-skimmed milk today, too. Indeed, probably more.

Some of those murals were gorgeous!!

It's simple--there were no lefties, just children who had to be forced to write with their right hands.





The Pelikano is pretty nice, but are Sheaffer school pens really so bad? Do you mean the little "drugstore cartridge pens"? I used one in school (still use that pen to this day) and own a bunch of them now, and while they're undoubtedly cheap, they seem to write well on the average, and I've never had one leak on me.

Wow this thread is amazing. In the early seventies in Venice (Mestre actually, or mainland Venice, the same town and two extremely different faces) in Elementary school (first-fifth grade) all desk had ink holes, even the newest formica-lined had those holes in the upper right. No inkwell was provided and probably most desks were never used with one. Seriously old ones (unlined, raw tough wood) had no hole, but a moveable metal inkwell hidden under the desk, sturdy enough to work after decades unused. It was a metal rectangular device fitted with simple small rails under the desk, ready to pop out when pulled out. At the time we exploited the squeaking rusty concoction to enrage the teacher, moving those was (rightly) forbidden for safety reasons, making them popular because of high risk and danger potential. No dip pen was never issued or required, we learned with pencils and later ballpoints, fountain pens were tolerated and many of us used them, boys enjoying the Super Pirat eraser and girls the fancy looking pen and handwriting. I'm told filling inkwells with ink was a task for senior janitorial staff members.
Once I tried to write with a dip pen back then, taking my bottle of blue Sheaffer ink (liked the bottle, not the ink) and my dip pen and nibs. Messy and slow, I left them for good after two days. Probably the ink ( normal FP ink ) was too thin and watery to be used practically with a dip pen. But now I'm glad to remember those stains.

Didn't imagine I would kindle such pleasant memories even as far (from my point of view) as Seattle and Venice.

Thank you for sharing your memories.

No, I don't have any recollection of an ink monitor. The inkwells I rememember were made of glass with a metal cap.

I will be looking out for them when I have the opportunity to spend time sniffing around flea markets and antique shops, specially in the same areas where I went to primary school (Montréal and Québec city).

A few months ago, I saw a French film called "Les Choristes" (The Choir Boys). It's about a man, at the end of World War II, who's looking for a job. He gets one in a school for orphans and troublesome boys, set in the countryside. In one scene, the boys are doing an exam, dipping their pens in these inkwells with their inked-stained hands. I did not notice, because I was not attentive enough, to verify if the dip pens the kids were using were indeed Sergent Major and if the ink was truly Herbin's Violette Pensée, as these were the standard in France for more than a century. Beautiful, moving film by the way. Great singing.

I also remember the inkwells in the Post Offices and the Banks that were still in use in the Fifties. Very few of those left today.


Fernan

We had those in the 70's in England. Again, no ink in them, although we did, I recall, grow mustard seeds in them one year. The desks we had, with fixed seats, were really quite uncomfortable, probably by design.


cheers
eric

My mother was in a Catholic school. They smacked any child trying to use their left hand with a yard stick. She was smacked many times before she learned to use her right hand.

Listen, I love Sheaffer; in fact, Sheaffers are the only true vintage pens that I collect, but their school pens---yes, the drugstore cartridge ones---were always leaking on us. We had ink stains on our shirt cuffs and clip-on ties, not to mention fingers and cheeks, all the time. I finally convinced my parents to buy me a better pen, and so I received my first Parker 45. I don't think that those school Sheaffers could hold a candle to Pelikanos or Gehas in terms of quality, solidity or writing smoothness. However, I am glad that yours have been problem-free and that you like them. I'd probably buy one just to remember those school days, leaks or no leaks! Are they still made?

Oh! Thats what those holes are for! I never really knew what they were for, nor was I curious, but now it makes sense!

Yep, my mother went to Catholic school, and she's told me some stories. Hardly a child got out of there unbruised, but by God's own wrath, they had discipline!



Hmmm...I don't doubt your experiences at all, and you're certainly not the only person to have mentioned this. Maybe I've just been really lucky, I don't know. Out of curiosity, from where did they leak? Was it between the section and feed?



Well, that's certainly a step up. Maybe Sheaffer unfortunately made their school pens a bit too inexpensive, which forced them to skimp too much on the design somewhere.



They haven't been made since, oh, the early 1990s I think, but they're still available on eBay (occasionally NOS). There appear to be fairly distinct groups of people who like them and people who have had no end of trouble with them, so maybe the problems vary by when the pens were made (although I have at least one of each design ). They seem very much like the Skripsert and NoNonsense pens internally, including the basic feed and nib design, so I'm not sure where the skimping on cost might have gone wrong. Some of them are quite rough and some of them write better than more expensive pens I own--it depends on how lucky one is.

I missed out on actually using the dip pens, but I did use desks with holes in the right side in the 1970's, and they had been used with bakelite ink wells. The desks were slam top wooden desks and we kept all our books in the desk. The chairs were steel tube 'b' shapes with plywood backs & bases. One year they used a ghastly light green paint which didn't totally dry before the start of term, and our shorts stuck slightly to the tacky paint for the first couple of days.

I can't say I remember my school days with fondness, but I don't hate them either.

Regards

Richard.

They haven't been made since, oh, the early 1990s I think, but they're still available on eBay (occasionally NOS). There appear to be fairly distinct groups of people who like them and people who have had no end of trouble with them, so maybe the problems vary by when the pens were made (although I have at least one of each design ). They seem very much like the Skripsert and NoNonsense pens internally, including the basic feed and nib design, so I'm not sure where the skimping on cost might have gone wrong. Some of them are quite rough and some of them write better than more expensive pens I own--it depends on how lucky one is.
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Those that I used, and that most of my Catholic School classmates used, leaked, if I remember correctly, at the section. Maybe it was extreme nib-creep. They were available in several colors, some bright, but we were allowed only blue, burgundy and black barrels. I'll check on ebay and see if I can secure one just for old time's sake. Thank you!

You can find them at flea markets and yard sales for only a dollar or two. I have a dozen of them with representatives of all three designs. None of them leak. The leaky ones were probably all thrown away years ago.

Paddler

Examples: