Pick a Pen Series: Parker Jotter Ballpoint

Palimpsest's reader, Claire, writes about her favourite pen:

A Most Reliable Pen

I do love ogling all of the fancy pens when I pop into Ryman, but to be honest, the pen I couldn't live without is my Parker Jotter Stainless Steel Ball Point Pen. There are no frills attached with this Parker, it’s a very simple retractable pen. I think it’s this simplicity that makes it such a reliable pen. That’s the most important thing for me when it comes to pens, reliability. I’ve had three of the cheaper Parker Jotter Ballpoint pens, all of which have met leaky, inky and sticky ends, ruining my notebooks. That was probably partly my fault for leaving them loose in my school bag but when you are in a hurry you do sometimes stuff them in your bag quickly. I've had no such problem with my Parker Jotter Stainless Steel Ball Point Pen which has served me well for about 5 years and counting.

At around £11 this pen is reasonably priced and I find the Parker Quink medium ball point refills last a long time. At the height of my finals exam revision the refills lasted roughly 5 weeks, that was a lot of writing. You can also use Gel refills if you prefer but they don’t have the same lifespan as the Quink refills. Also with Gel you do have to be careful not to smudge the ink on the paper. The pen writes very nicely on different pages including graph paper and square paper.

I've found the ink to be water resistant, a property that was very desirable when I confronted by a deluge of rain whilst trying to navigate using a map I had scrawled with my pen. In short the Parker Jotter Stainless Steel Pen is a great everyday pen that is affordable so you won’t have to be too worried about losing it if you carry it around with you.

Claire Grannell is a stationery enthusiast and works for Bags of Love who have a range of photo gifts.

Fred Chambers and his pencils

Mr Fred Chambers was a foundry manager at Stanton Iron Works and Mr Brown was a timber merchant from Nottingham. Together they founded a pencil making company which in 1915 became F. Chambers & Co Ltd. The pencil works moved to an old lace factory in Stapleford where it remained until 1973. Chambers Pencils was bought by Lyra in 1991 and today is producing pencils for the souvenir and advertising trade.

One of their old pencils was found by Palimpsest in an old box and was investigated in Pencil Archaeology. It looked like one of the pencils manufactured during the war years. The post attracted some comments one of which came from a resident of Wirksworth, Derbyshire where F. Chambers spent his retirement years and where he is fondly remembered today.

The Chambers website does not mention the past pencil ranges that the company produced but Palimpsest discovered a set recently: 11 short sharpened Chamber's Raynbo coloured pencils just 9 cm long, unboxed. Date of production unknown but another example of getting-the-spelling-wrong-on-purpose. 

Available on Inklinks.

Pencil Spotting (in the movies)

Palimpsest is not a fan of romantic comedies but You've Got Mail was on TV and just as I was about to switch channels I heard this:

"Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly-sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address."

Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) to Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) in email.

Now there's a thought.

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See other pen and pencil spotting adventures here and here.

Pelikan Erasers

Every now and then Palimpest hosts erasers. They are the heroes and the anti-heroes of the writing technology world: rescuers and eradicators.
Last year I've shown a delightful discovery of a Pelikan fold-out ad of erasers dating from the 1950s. Another Pelikan fold-out resurfaced recently but this time the erasers have no faces or bodies. The advertisers have perhaps decided that anthropomorphic rubbers couldn't cut it any more. 

Compare with older version:

Different graphics, different font, same text

Happy deleting.