Those Esterbrook Pens

[Maja]

Esterbrook only ever advertised and marketed a copper colored pen.  I've got quite a stack of Estie catalogs, ads, etc., and don't recall ever seeing an announcement for a brown esterbrook J.  Some will call the darker copper, "Root Beer" but I don't go along with that designation.  The pen is copper.  Plain and simple.  While you may find a difference in shading between various copper pens, there was only one color made.  You'll find shade variations in the other colors as well, grey, green and blue particulalry, but I'm not going to give them special names to describe the colors like others have.  Esterbrook surely received different stocks of plastic in which introduced the different shading.  It was not intentional on their part.

 

Best-

Brian

Thanks Brian and Keith, for the clarification. Having said that, this page ( click on link here) on Richard Binder's site would have me think otherwise, so I guess you can see why some confusion arose. I know Richard has a disclaimer that the information should not be taken as "absolutely authoritative", but still there is big difference in the Copper and Brown barrel colours shown...

 

These colour variations are a nice added feature of Esties. My Estie is definitely a "Copper"-coloured one, but it would be nice to find a "Blue" estie that is more purplish

[Gerry]

I believe that you have it correctly Maja. Keith and I discussed the Greens a little in the thread about the bandless Estie - where I mentioned that my bandless was unlikely to have had a barrel swap because of the unique hue the green was - a lot darker than other greens I have. Keith also remembers having a darker green somewhere. After seeing Binders photos, I tend to agree with him, there appears to be a variation in the browns and greens that isn't just sample variation - I have more subtle variations in my reds and even within the greens. I am a believer that these two (Copper/Brown) represent distinct colour lines...

 

Gerry

 

[Edit

I do admit some trepidation with my opinion though, seeing both Brian and Paul Hoban tend to clump Copper/Brown into one category. The Greens are separately listed in Hoban's book for the early pens as Foliage Green and a Fern Green..]

Edited December 30, 2004 by Gerry

[Brian Anderson]

[Edit

I do admit some trepidation with my opinion though, seeing both Brian and Paul Hoban tend to clump Copper/Brown into one category.  The Greens are separately listed in Hoban's book for the early pens as Foliage Green and a Fern Green..]

Notice the 1938 catalog places Foliage Green as a $1.50 pen, similar to this pencil (sorry for the poor photo):

 

http://www.esterbrook.net/images/150pencil.jpg

 

Fern Green was the standard $1.00 pen for the time, and the common green pen you see everyday. Fern Green simply becomes named Green by 1941.

 

Likewise, there's confusion about the naming of the Gray family. Pearl Gray is actually the $1.50 version like this:

 

http://www.esterbrook.net/images/150pearlgrey.jpg

 

Dawn gray is the standard $1.00 version which is simply changed to Gray around 1941.

 

Richard has some good Esterbrook information on his site, in fact a couple of nibs on his site are from my collection, however, I disagree with his naming conventions for these colors.

 

Best-

Brian

Edited December 31, 2004 by Brian Anderson

[Maja]

Thanks for the follow-up Brian! (and your photos are just fine with me )

[Brian Anderson]

Just to show I'm not a real scrooge when it comes to proper naming convention, I used a copper (the light hue) bandless model B with flat feed 2442 nib today. I've been on a streak of the same two or three 51's lately.

 

One word....

 

 

Yum.

 

Best-

Brian