Traveler's inkwell

Ink Supply for on the Road

Already long before the invention of the fountain pen, resourceful men had found a solution to the problem of not having ink on hand when traveling. For this purpose, inkwells were specially packed so they would not break so easily underway.

Bottle 636
in a polished wooden case

Bottle 638
in a polished aluminum case

There are samples of wooden cases; however, later on, rather metal was used to make the cases, often aluminum. Simple constructions of the kind were very suitable for writing with a dip pen. However, in order to fill a fountain pen, you needed an additional eyedropper or, as explained in the catalogues of the company Pelikan, a "Füllheber" - a special filling mechanism. Transporting this pipette separately was inconvenient and carried the risk of soiling the immediate environment. Therefore, the eyedropper was enclosed in a shared cardboard box and was then integrated into the cap. These kind of glass bottles received the suffix "F" for "Füllheber".

Filling bottle 656

It was not until in the late twenties that the development of the fountain pen had taken a larger step forward. At this time, ink bottles were made of hard rubber were also able to take over the filling function. A spray nozzle was installed underneath the sealing screw cap. It allowed refilling the pen without needing any further tools and aids. Due to this construction, the user did not have to give thought to how to transport the ink soaked eyedropper after having refilled the pen.

Filling bottle 660

Filling bottle 672

Interestingly enough, in 1929 - the year in which Pelikan celebrated a great success in bringing its own self filling fountain pen on the market - the company had no traveler's inkwell for self-filling fountain pens in its product range. It took Pelikan until 1934 to introduce an ink bottle that stood on its side. In its basic structure, the ink bottle corresponded to the model 72S and was made of a particularly resistant synthetic resin. In parallel to the lying model, Pelikan also produced an upright standing model (660).

Kaweco-bottle

However, each of these models carried the one disadvantage the Pelikan fountain pen had already eliminated in 1929: There was no possibility to read the filling level from the outside. The company KAWECO in Heidelberg, Germany solved this problem with the production of the traveler's inkwell no. 249 made of black synthetic resin with green see-through sides.

After World War II, hard times came up for the fountain pen industry. The ballpoint pen began its course of success. While traveler's inkwells have always been a niche product, it does not come as a surprise that, under these circumstances, Pelikan decided to take this product from the market after the war. The last traveler's inkwell (model 660) was taken from the market in 1957.

01/2010
Martin Lehmann