Rare Higgins Artist Fountain Pen-Need Information

[InkDog]

 

Try Document Black. I think colored inks are always going to be too watery. I've not tried any others because I draw, I don't write with fountain pens. I use art papers not journal papers. If you really want a waterproof fountain pen ink, its the ONE. The Platinum and Carbon ink are scratchy and clog too fast, too much maintenance time.

[BaronWulfraed]

​ETA: Hmmm. I just looked at the Dick Black website, and the Higgins Fount India is labeled on the bottle as being "not waterproof". OTOH, it's cheap enough that it might be worth picking up a bottle just to play around with it....

 

Could that be how they made it fountain pen friendly -- by not using the normal binder?

 

FYI: isn't the company Dick Blick?

[Bo Bo Olson]

 

Haven't tried that one, but I tried D'A Archive Black and it was very dry. I've tried some of the other Document colors, and they invariably had spread and bleedthrough issues.????????

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

Ruth I don't have that problem at all with my 8-10 13 DA inks, or I'd not have 8-10.

DA Royal Blue is a tad towards (blue) purple......(Wiki and 3/4ths the world disagree with my childhood crayon box to what purple is...Crayons are right.....purple is sort of blueish.....violet sort of redish.) I replaced Waterman blue with it....well saturated. No problems.

I normally chase two toned shading inks. DA makes two toned shading inks and saturated inks that do not shade.

 

Golf is a stand alone greenish ink. Alone it is good enough, shades well, but if comparing it to other greens will beat Lamy Green.... .and lose to the rest. Sort of like R&K Alt Green gold is a stand alone green ink.

 

One of the problems is Dr. Jansen, names the same ink after 'someone' famous, like Huckelberry Finn ( regular old brown..for me a nothing ink, don't shade...don't jump out of the page like Royal Blue), or Sherlock Holmes, which I don't think I have...don't know, in he don't list what colors those names are. .

Such as my B&M ordered a local great intelligent Duchess, who unfortunately was married to the Stinky unbathing French; brother to the king Loui14th. None of the French bathed, and only the king had a chamber pot, so under the stairs of Palace of Versailles....so her land was destroyed by the French in an inheritance war. So by me, DA Royal Blue is Liselotte von der Pfalz. Her somewhat Barrock Heidelberg Castle got the hell blown out of it.

 

Bordeauaux red is two toned shading ink, like the Golf mentioned, The first DA ink I bought. In I'm paranoid about using reddish inks in my piston pens, it's still around. Should use it in my C/C pens. Or clean it out after each filling.

 

In purple.....Aubergine, purpurviolett and Schuetze...Sagittarius centaur...well is more a dark violet.

Moss Green is a spring green shows up better in a F or M than an EF. Shades.

Saharagrau is more unexpectedly a grayed green than a gray or tan or brownish ink, with the name Sahara...a nice odd shade....like it.

 

Cement grau ....does remind me of a flight-line as dawn starts to crack, after a night where the flight line has had light rain.

...............

kuperbraun......is sort of a close miss. a tad washed out. Don't shade so the trade off ain't there.

With Havana, Waterman Havana contaminated my mind...expecting much darker it was then too light......is a very light cigar leaf color, too light for me. Got to check it out again.

Ockergelf....is way, way too light for me....I'd have to go to the back yard ink alchemists to see how to make it readable....I expected more Ocker............now that I think of it more like his Havana.

In none of them did I notice......invariably had spread (feathering?) and bleedthrough issues.

What papers are you using?

[InkDog]

With permission of Penboard.de....they make much better pictures than me. Mine has a slight different gillochiert pastern. A '30's Fendomatic, a German Fend pen, made in Milan.

It is a Safety Pen.

 

Boy was I dumb, when I first opened the pen up at a live auction....I grumbled, not only did they steal the gold nib, they took the feed too...... ..... .....until someone twisted the nib out....duh I knew that...duh. Right.

Is a first stage superflex nib; Easy Full Flex......close to, but not quite a wet noodle.

Yeah, thats how this one works too.

[InkDog]

Yes Dick Blick. There's only a few waterproof black fountain pen inks out there. DeAtramentis Document Black (NOT their regular black), Platinum Carbon (pigment ink, grainy and scratchy, slow drying, pen clogging), Blackstone from Australia (good one but don't leave in more than a week), there's one other I can't remember the name of right now. None of these are what I would call writing inks. Noodler's Black is actually pretty waterproof but only on artist papers, but wouldn't really trust it myself.

[inkstainedruth]

@ BaronWulflaed, et. al. -- Yes, Dick Blick (stupid autocorrect... ).

@ Bo Bo Olsen -- I have only had spreading issues with the De Atramentis Document Inks; their regular line have generally been well behaved (with the exception of Anthracite/Albrecht Dürer, which was pretty dry, and more of a shading black).

@ InkDog -- I haven't tried D'A Document Black; I sampled their Archive Black because when the inks first came out reviews seemed to suggest that it was more of a black-black than the Document Black. But I found the Archive Black -- although not having the spread and bleedthrough issues of the the other Document line inks I tried -- to be even drier and scratchier than Anthracite/Dürer in the regular line ended up being, although Archive Black was definitely darker (Anthracite is a shading black).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Tweel]

One very broad clue to the pen's age is in Higgins' address on the box. "Brooklyn 15" means it was made between the introduction of postal zones in 1943 and the introduction of zip codes in 1963.

[sidthecat]

Bo Bo, I used to live up the street from Heidelberg Castle, back in my college days. Lovely place, although I confess I only really came to appreciate the Baroque style when I worked on Sofia The First.

 

So I did a quick search of eBay and found a few unopened bottles of old Higgins India ink. Think it might still be viable after half a century?

Edited September 7, 2019 by sidthecat

[InkDog]

One very broad clue to the pen's age is in Higgins' address on the box. "Brooklyn 15" means it was made between the introduction of postal zones in 1943 and the introduction of zip codes in 1963.

Thanks. That fits in with the type styles on the box.

[InkDog]

Bo Bo, I used to live up the street from Heidelberg Castle, back in my college days. Lovely place, although I confess I only really came to appreciate the Baroque style when I worked on Sofia The First.

 

So I did a quick search of eBay and found a few unopened bottles of old Higgins India ink. Think it might still be viable after half a century?

Generally their inks don't survive well. I have a new old stock large bottle of Higgins India ink from probably the 40's. I just tested it again after a few years, its really watery, bleeds like hell and is no longer waterproof. Pretty much the same story for other vintage india inks, they separate or dry up into black hard clumps. The exception is the old FW India Black inks I've collected, going back to late 60's probably, all are still perfectly useable and waterproof, even their colored ink sets are like new from same era. The only one of their inks that hasn't survived as well is the white ink. Whatever they were doing was pure genius and is lost to history.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Thank you Ruth.....Shading Blacks...ill wonders never cease.

 

Sid, I am behind the moon here, Firefox don't work right for me right now, not taking typed letters, and as I was about to ask you what Sofia the First was, it jumped me to various Youtubes, that showed me a modern cartoon series.

What did you do with that series?

 

One of the better Baroque palaces in the neighborhood, isn in Bruckshal. Baltazar Neuman, designed the stairs, that were so 'delicate' for the time some G feneral said if he set off a cannon near by, they would fall down......they did not seem the least bit delicate to me. But as a local SS HQ inthe war the palace was bombed flat....except for the stairs.

Eventually skilled Polish restoration workers restored the whole thing.....did a fantastic job.

The Noble's didn't have Yachts back in the day, so did the Status Game with Palaces.

[joly1]

The ackerman pen is garbage. Don't waste your time.

I own four of them and I always manage to make them work. the multi feed choice allows you to adapt the pen to many dip nibs, the delrin body is sturdy ,it works with indian ink, the only drawback is its tendency to leak when carried away.So I do not agree, it is not garbage ,you just have to give it some care to make it usable ,the osmiroid indian ink pen has its flaws, the pelikan graphos is far from perfect ,the speedball indian ink pen is bulky ,but they are your tools it is up to you to get service from them.

[Paul-in-SF]

I would like to add my experience with an Ackerman pen to the discussion. I don't use it for drawing or calligraphy, and so I have replaced the G Zebra nib that came with it with a FPR flex nib, which works very well with my handwriting. I am also going to try it with a #6 stub nib if I can find one where the shoulders are not too wide to fit into the cap, which is an issue. I want something that flows enough ink that would show shading and sheening to advantage in my regular writing.

 

I like the fact that I can use "dangerous" inks such as iron gall or shimmering/sparkly inks, or even calligraphy inks, because it is made to be easy to take apart and clean, but it still functions as a fountain pen. So far I haven't had any problem with ink flow that required me to squeeze the ink reservoir, although I am only halfway through my first fill of the reservoir with regular fountain pen ink, maybe thicker inks are a problem. (edited to add: I looked at the website and see they have two pens, one with a pump and one without; mine is the one without) You can also buy extra capped ink reservoirs so you can travel with several colors, if you're so inclined.

 

I like that the design is so non-pretty and functional, that you can easily swap nibs, and use any kind of ink. It's early days yet but if I had to pick a desert island pen this might be it, as long as I could also bring several nibs and inks with it.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Paul-in-SF

[sandy wp]

I would very much like to acquire at least 1x Ackerman pen.

Similar to @Paul-in-SF, I want it to be a well used and a multi-functional tool.  One that I can give my kids to learn cursive (which they don't teach in school anymore), calligraphy, to create art.  To be free with their curiosity with nibs and ink, free to make it - theirs.

@joly1, you seem to have many.  Are yours the pump or fountain pen versions?  Is one better than the other?
Do you have to tinker with the nibs and feeds to get them to work better?

Thank you muchly!

Edited December 24, 2020 by sandy wp

[sidthecat]

Bo Bo...how kind of you to ask. I was the character designer on the show, and it was the most fun I've ever had in animation. I'd generate drawings and a crew in Korea (later Canada) would turn them into 3D figures. I carried on a running fight with Standards and Practices for the whole span of the show...it started when someone noticed the bound feet on the Chinese princess.