An Early Esterbrook Dip Pen Sample Card

[AAAndrew]

Here's a fun sample card of Esterbrook's "Legal Pens" that I've dated to roughly between 1876-1890. If you want to see how I came up with that dating, I have a short post over in the Pen History forum explaining my methodology. 

 

Cheers!

Andrew

 

[Estycollector]

Thank you @AAAndrew

[carlos.q]

Why were they called “legal pens”? Because they were used by lawyers?  🤔

[AAAndrew]

Yes, in a way. This was really just marketing. The 048 Falcon was a general purpose pen, and the bank pen was originally marketed at, well, banks. The engrossing pens, basically italic pens, were sometimes used for the formal titling of legal documents in more of a Blackletter/Old-English style. 

 

Esterbrook also later produced the Lawyer's stub, the Judge's stub, etc... Basically, later, when stub pens were being made, Esterbrook introduced their first stub in 1871, they were marketed at those who wrote a lot and needed to write quickly for a living. The pens were often named for the occupation which might use it. Here are a few names of different pens just from a quick glance at my collection inventory: Bank Pen, Commercial Pen, School Pen, Bookkeeper's Pen, Judge's Quill, College Pen, Ladies Falcon, Chancellor's Stub, Probate Pen, Postal Pen, Accountant, Barrister's Stub, Court House Pen, Cashier's Pen, etc...   

 

You find this more with American pens, whereas British pens tend to either describe the characteristic of the pen (Extra Fine, Oblique), or are given a name like Speedwell, Diamond Stud, Principality, or Croton Pen. But there are exceptions, just not as many occupation names in the UK as in the US.  

[Anne-Sophie]

Do you know if Esterbrooks nibs & dip pens were ever imported to France?

 

I am asking given that Lincoln used a Blanzy-Poure pen to sign the Emancipation Declaration.

 

 

[inkstainedruth]

I found something similar a number of years ago (but I think might have been Esterbrook FP nibs) on a card like that.  It was in a place up the street from Bromfield's in Boston, and I stuck my nose in the place while walking back to the MBTA station a couple of blocks from Bromfield's.  Not entirely sure where it is in my house, but I *think* I know where I stashed it.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[AAAndrew]

On 3/14/2025 at 4:11 PM, Anne-Sophie said:

Do you know if Esterbrooks nibs & dip pens were ever imported to France?

 

I am asking given that Lincoln used a Blanzy-Poure pen to sign the Emancipation Declaration.

 

 

 

First question: I wouldn't be surprised if they were. Esterbrooks were sold all over the world. They even had manufacturing plants in South America and Canada in addition to the US and the UK. 

 

As for Lincoln's emancipation proclamation pen. There's a story there. (of course there is)

 

First off, there were three Emancipation Proclamations. The first was for DC, the second was for the territories (not quite states yet), and the third, which is the one everyone references, was for the rest of the country, and was signed on Jan 1, 1863. The pen I mention in the quote below is the one used to sign the third proclamation, that freed the enslaved people in all of the US states. 

 

Here's what I wrote back in 2019 in response to a question about presidential pens and Abraham Lincoln. 

 

Quote

 

The only pen I know of that has a solid Lincoln provenance is a pen in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. It was given by Lincoln to the abolitionist George Livermore as the pen he used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Livermore then gave it to Senator Sumner from Massachusetts, who then gave it to the Historical Society. This was all within Lincoln's lifetime. The holder is made by Blanzy/Poure & Cie, and the nib is marked B&P Lawrence, Elastic New York.

 

In 1856, English-born brothers Benjamin and Phineas Lawrence started their stationery and fancy goods store in New York City. They specialized in imported luxury goods and stationery, mainly from England and France. The pen is almost certainly an imported British pens custom imprinted for the store. Now, how Lincoln ended up with a pen from a rather obscure stationer in NYC rather than from one of the much larger, and closer, stationers in Washington DC is a mystery.

 

...

 

As an interesting side-note to the Emancipation Proclamation pen, in 1863, C.H. Dunks, the successor to the gold pen maker Piquette of Detroit, disputed the claim that the pen used was the steel pen that's now in the Historical Society of Massachusetts. He claims that the pen used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation was one of his gold pens which he presented to the President shortly after his election. Dunks also claims that Lincoln used this gold pen to write his inaugural address, then put it away until needed to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. It is conceivable that when asked by Livermore for the pen used for signing, Lincoln was reluctant to give up his fancy (and very expensive) gold pen, so instead sent the abolitionist an old steel pen and claimed that was the one. But then the claim by Dunks confuses things by saying that Dunk's gold pen was given to Sumner who deposited it in the collection of the Historical Society of Massachusetts, but that pen is the steel one Dunks denies. All very confusing.

 

Back in 2017 when I corresponded with the Historical Society about the pen to get the details, the pen was actually on loan to the newly-opened National Museum of African American History and Culture. I'm not sure if it's still there, but at the time I had to contact the curator there to get some details that were not included in the accession record. The next step to follow up on this mystery is to see if any documents of Lincoln's estate show his possession of a gold pen by Dunks. That would be quite interesting indeed.

 

 

The pen in the Massachusetts Historical Society was reported in newspapers soon after it was gifted. 

Here's Jan 17, 1863, just days after the signing. 

 

 

Here's Jan 28, 1863. 

 

 

But then the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale has what they claim was a gold pen used to sign the proclamation. They don't say which one. But unlike the claim by Dunks, it is a Foley pen. 

https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2005512

 

There's also a contemporary story of someone asking Lincoln to give him the pen used to sign one of the proclamations and Lincoln pointed to a pile of pens on his desk and said "It's one of those, take what you want." The story does not indicate which proclamation that may be front. 

 

And then Hampton University Museum collection includes a postcard that supposedly shows the pen used to sign the first proclamation, and claims that it is identical to the ones that were used to sign the other two proclamations. 

 

 

There was obviously a great deal of interest in the pens used to sign such important documents. We have several pens that claim to be "the ones" with the one from the Mass Historical Society having the best provenance as it was extensively reported just days after the event. 

 

So, Blanzey-Poure made the holder but the pen was most likely a custom imprint of a British pen for a NY stationer. 

[Estycollector]

As always, thank you @AAAndrew. 👍