Eisenstadt Pens -- St. Louis, Missouri

[Parkerfp]

I'm trying to get contact info. for Silviu Pincu, who wrote a very nice article about the Eisenstadt Co. about five years ago.  His info. in that article is excellent.  I have lots of supplemental material I've just unearthed that I'd like to share.  Don't really have time now to write the (supplemental) article myself, but I think it will be of interest, certainly to Eisenstadt collectors.  Eisenstadt is such an interesting and long-lived company, in their own archives, their fountain pen business (ca. 1924 to ca. 1931) barely even registers.  They were a St. Louis jeweler / wholesaler from 1853-1984.

 

Silviu or anyone else interested in Eisenstadt, please contact me!

 

Thanks,

 

Tim Barker

[Azuniga]

Since there was something about Eisenstadt Pens, I just add some images for the pen lovers

[Nantucket Workbench]

I'd love to get mine to shine like that!

 

As a woodworker, I'd like to know why Eisenstadt incorporated a square in their logo. It has a lot to do with why I wanted the pen. I'm easy...

[Misfit]

I didn’t know about their pens. Thank you @Azuniga for sharing the images. The nib is very cool looking. 

[inkstainedruth]

Not a brand I was familiar with, and somehow missed this thread before now.  Of course, the question for me is whether they were manufacturing their own pens or hiring some company to design and make the pens for them, but with the Eisenstadt imprint on them (I might not have thought about this, except for the posting in another thread about I'd worked at doing layout and pasteup one summer in college for a company that printed books and magazines).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[VacNut]

They are quality pens. I always thought their innovation was the reverse lever. 
Conceptually it pressed down on the lever more completely and filled the same size sac with more ink….maybe.

 

The styling is more classical at a time when the industry was moving towards streamline.

[Misfit]

Is it easy to find Eisenstadt pens? As a Missourian, I should at least try to get one. 

[VacNut]

They are commonly listed on auction sites, just not everyday. Condition is usually not a concern since they are black.

I know of a smaller and a larger pen model.

I think the posted pictures are of the larger pen.

[Misfit]

Thank you @VacNut  

[Brian-McQueen]

Pearce at North American Pen Auctions and Andy at The Hoosier Pen Man like Eisenstadts.  You should reach out to them. If you google those names, you will find them.

[Vintagepens]

Eisenstadt was a jewelery company; their pens were just one of many products they offered, and were surely entirely subcontracted.
The reverse lever's main advantage was that it wouldn't catch when being returned to a pocket.

[Parkerfp]

David -- Not sure why you state Eisenstadt pens were "entirely subcontracted."  Eisenstadt Mfg. Co. was a very large jeweler in St. Louis with their own significant building and manufacturing facility in downtown St. Louis.  I'm pretty certain they designed and produced all their pens in-house.

 

Tim Barker

[Vintagepens]

On 1/20/2026 at 2:19 PM, Parkerfp said:

David -- Not sure why you state Eisenstadt pens were "entirely subcontracted."  Eisenstadt Mfg. Co. was a very large jeweler in St. Louis with their own significant building and manufacturing facility in downtown St. Louis.  I'm pretty certain they designed and produced all their pens in-house.

 

Tim Barker

Because fountain pen manufacture was a highly specialized industry. Even quite large pen companies relied heavily on subcontractors. Eisenstadt was a big company, but their fountain pens were a sideline -- and not a big one. One can get a pretty good idea of this from the relative scarcity of Eisenstadt pens today. 
Back in the 1920s full vertical integration in the fountain pen industry was limited to a handful of the very largest producers. I can't think of a single retail chain of the era, however large, that did *any* of their own fountain pen manufacturing. That includes department store giants such as Sears and Montgomery Ward, as well as jewelers such as Tiffany, Black Starr & Frost, Bailey Banks & Biddle, etc.

[VacNut]

I guess I would draw the distinction between manufacturing versus assembling. Could other mfrs have made the components, so Eisenstadt could assembly them in their own factories?

[Parkerfp]

At the very least, Eisenstadt assembled their pen models in their St. Louis factory.  I've found wanted ads placed at Eisenstadt's onset of pen-making for tradespeople in the manufacture / assembly of pens.  Their advertising also stressed one of their unique qualities was that the "Incomparable" pens were like fine watches, made by the same artisans who made Eisenstadt jewelry.  Could be mere marketing hyperbole, for sure.  Could also just mean that Eisenstadt "jewelers" assembled the pens from sourced, outside parts.  Whether or not all the component parts came from somewhere else, who knows?  I do know that the gentleman who invented the reverse lever filler was a jeweler who manned the brand's rollout displays at a jeweler's convention in St. Louis in 1924.  I also know that the unique Eisenstadt clips and engraved levers would have been right in the jewelry firm's wheelhouse for fabrication.

 

I'm going to keep digging in the company history.  The Missouri Historical Society Research Library here in St. Louis has some excellent Eisenstadt archive material.  Among the smaller pen brands, Eisenstadt fountain pens do stand out as extremely well made.  I believe their relatively short run (less than 10 years) was mostly due to their very conservative, old-fashioned design -- they were more like pens from a previous generation at a time when the major brands were pioneering colorful plastic, streamlined cap and body designs.

[Parkerfp]

One other thing about Eisenstadt pens...

 

Has anyone ever seen examples of red or -- especially -- blue hard rubber Eisenstadt pens?  Dick Johnson always had me on the lookout (as a St. Louis collector) for blue examples, and I've never seen one.  Also, Eisenstadt advertised "enamel" pens and diamond bands as high-end model options -- never seen examples of these either.  There is a nice pic of a black/white plastic Eisenstadt on-line, which is very rare:

 

https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/search/label/Eisenstadt