Queen Victoria's Dip Pens

[TheFountainPenOfYouth]

Queen Victoria wrote thousands of pages worth of diary entries. Does anyone have any idea what dip pens (wooden? silver?) and nibs she used?

 

The best I know so far is that she probably used Gillott nibs since they were officially pen makers to the Queen.

[AAAndrew]

If someone could claim (and they did) to be pen-makers to the Queen then they did provide the Queen with her pens for a period of time. They may not have been the sole providers, but would have been a real provider of pens.

 

As to the holder, I rather doubt she used a prosaic wooden holder. Anything's possible, but if you consider any woman of any means had a writing set with a holder usually of silver or pearl or some other special material, then I doubt the Empress of India was using a common, wooden, holder.

 

I would not be surprised to learn that she may also have used gold nibs as well as steel. I'm sure she had writing sets scattered all over her residences.

 

It's obvious I have no specific information, just an idea of what people wrote with at the time. Have you tried the Birmingham Pen Museum? They may have more detailed information.

[sidthecat]

I have looked at a lot of dip pens in the last few months and the nicest ones in the 19th century seem to have been made of precious wood, mother-of-pearl and sometimes agate with gold-plated sleeves and solid gold nibs.

Her Majesty’s instruments would probably be similar, except that the pens would be sized to her hand, probably with hallmarked solid gold sleeves decorated with enamel and jewels. The nibs would probably be customized to her writing preferences. I’d imagine that she’d order them through her jeweler.

Every so often a bit of royal frou-frou comes into “Antiques Roadshow UK” and it’s always the highest of high-end work. I imagine the records of the Queen’s jewels and jewelers still exist and would make interesting reading.