This collection includes part of Parker´s ball point production between 1954 and 2020, and it has been built-up in two stages.

 

Initially, still in the decade of 90s, it started as an attempt of putting together nice pens: a simple aesthetical experience based on a special personal appreciation of a kind of object always present in the daily running of life and on an unbeatable tendency to put together and systematize things. A kind of ‘physical’ - and not only psychological - resilient need, based on an evident contradiction: minimalistic, almost irrelevant things like pens, added-up in such a typical experience of accumulation as a collection. Conceptually, a non-sense, destined to remain guarded in some drawer.

Later, already into the second decade of this century, the collection was re-taken, becoming in some way a more serious matter, not only to complement the largely incomplete first effort by giving it a broader dimension (that is, setting the goal to reach at least one thousand pens, as the title itself of the collection shows); but also, most important, to provide it with a more adequate base of knowledge. In less than ten years, the whole initiative was enlarged, thru a combination of on-line purchases (mainly on EBay), random shopping in antique boutiques, street markets or pen-shows, and some private deal. Plus a series of readings, meetings, talks and contacts that provided me with a deeper knowledge on what I was doing: a necessary step to add conscience, motivation and ‘reason to be’ to the whole process.

 

And there were some limits, or barriers on all that. First of all, they should be PARKER pens. Second, ball point pens. Third, if possible (and it hasn’t always been possible), cap-actuated pens. I set these limits because I believe that all experience should be comprehended in a defined framework. Unlimited experiences tend to dissolve into vagueness. In this case, I had in some way to balance the geographic amplitude of the origin of the pens (USA, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, India and Japan). But this has to be detailed a bit more.

 

PARKER. Since my childhood, in Italy, the name ‘Parker’ was a kind of status symbol for writing instruments. There was apparently no reason for that, since other brands were equally nice and fit for their function. But ‘Parker’, with its arrow logo, was something different. It sounded great; it looked fashionable; it was at the top. I remember my father giving me a dark blue Jotter for Christmas (the name ‘Jotter’ was – and still is, in any non-specialized context - a synonymous of ‘Parker’ or, better explained, a Jotter was called just ‘Parker’), and my pride at school, putting the pen on the desk to show it, not necessarily to use it. I suppose that something like that can have happened to other children like me along the years. This is the kind of feeling that remains on the bottom of your mind, leaving a sort of sediment of accomplished duty.

 

And, equally important, the last ten years of the collection setting process have been an opportunity to recognize, possibly as the main reason of my admiration, the long-lasting effort by Parker, like a community vocation, towards innovative research; accepting and even pursuing the risks of failure inherent to that, and the potential cost of such a human resources intensive allocation (as economists would say). The incredible number of prototype pens produced along the second half of XX century (sometimes just to decide that they were not worth); the continuous experimental effort displayed in the Research and Development Department, Technical Division and Model Shop; and the multitude of almost legendary figures of engineers, designers and inventors which passed thru the Arrow Park laboratories of the American factory in Janesville-WI; all this has in some way contributed to the strengthening of my perception that, during a considerable lapse of time,  and thru the rise and fall of the pen industry, the golden age of the ball pen market, the inevitable decline, the selling of the brand, the shut-down of the historic factories (Arrow Park, Newhaven, Meru), and even within the limits of a specific production line and scale, Parker had been an outstanding example of entrepreneurial daring; deserving for that reason a careful collector approach.

 

BALL POINT PENS. Parker’s production of pens started in 1888. Along more than 130 years, an enormous number fountain pen models has been delivered, so that it would have been economically, logistically and conceptually arduous, in recent times, to start and organize a complete collection of them. Maybe such a collection does exist somewhere, but this was definitively out of my reach, potentially bringing a standard ball point user much further his abilities, experience and limited knowledge.

So I started to collect ball points, very simple objects in their functioning, and nevertheless multi-faceted and almost unlimitedly diversified in their smooth profiles and sometimes unpredictable colors, shades, patterns. For some reason, I have always considered a ball point pen as an unavoidable accessory for human life; something you should absolutely keep into a pocket or a bag, since life would require the action of writing at any time. And fountain pens were too big, too heavy, eventually obsolete, and tricky, since they could even stain your shirt, your paper, your hand. Today much has changed, of course. Same thing happens with watches, cameras, desk-phones, exercise-books, toothpicks. But the real point is that I thought ball point pens would never get obsolete.

Here and there it is actually possible to find, among the whole bunch of ball points of the collection, some pencil. That’s no mistake. Pencils have gone together with Parker pens and can now be useful in showing Parker’s choice to couple them in sets, pairs or special packages, especially in the early years of ball point production, making easier the understanding of the details and peculiarities of different models. I could even say that, in some cases (ex: 21 line; or the standard Jotter itself), it would be difficult to appreciate in full scale a ball point pen line, without a concrete comparison with its correspondent pencil.

 

CAP-ACTUATED PENS. For some reason, from the beginning I was attracted by cap-actuated models. Caps going up and down to move the refill. No button. The whole mechanic incorporated into an essential pen body. The whole pen disappearing inside the pocket. Something technically essential and aesthetically fashionable, or at least so it looked. So, the collection started with the historical Parker cap-actuated big shots: 51, 61, 45, and the fantastic 75. Only these 4 pens would have been enough to justify a catalogue, with a half-a-century coverage; but you couldn’t make a representative Parker collection without Classic and Jotter, two button actuated, extremely long-lasting models, still alive today and strictly linked to the iconography of the brand itself  between the XX and XXI centuries.

 

That’s how it all began, with six ball point models and a respectable potential of growth (and of course investment). They got to be more than 30. A program for the future, when it started; and a source of memories, when I am now looking at the physical, handwritten catalogue I patiently set-up in the last ten years, remembering on-line nocturnal auctions, lunch meetings with hamburgers and Parkers, rarity hunting in antique shops and fairies, checking unclear information about old pieces that would never become totally clear (specific pen references are structurally imprecise, because pen production has been an imprecise art).

 

Along the way, other models were added – cap-actuated and button actuated – often at random but trying to catch-up with Parker’s innovative trend and limitless inclination towards experiment. Sometimes they are numbers: 15, 17, 21, 25, and 50. Or names: Duofold first series, Bird, Doric, Falcon, Minibille, Minim, Dimonite/Infusion, Reflex, Frontier, Galaxy and so on. Plus a range of Parker/Eversharp pens from the short period when the two brands merged. All of them will be briefly identified in a separate window of this site (‘Pens you can find here’). A special space will be dedicated to the Jotter and its countless varieties.

 

Finally, I need to acknowledge some of the main sources of information I have consulted in the process of learning about Parker ball point pens, in the last decade:

 

•  Jotter, history of an icon –

   Shepherd, D;  Hogg, L. G;  Parker, G;  Zazove, D.

   Brighton, UK, 2010

 

•  The Parker ballpoint pen –

   Hogg, L.G.

   UK, 2004

 

•  Parker ball pen repair – DVD

   Marshall, J.

   WES Video Production, UK, 2013

 

•  Penography –

         Parkerpens.net

 

Among very many EBay sellers in different countries contacted during the purchasing period, I’d like to mention only two, for the specific focus on this collection subjects: Parkercrazy from Florida, in the 2012-2014 years; and, more recently, Madisonfinepen from Wisconsin.

 

Also, I owe a reference to the visit at Ariel Kullock’s workshop/show-room in Buenos Aires in the year 2016, as a surprising meeting with creativity.

 

To Carlos Fernando Oetterer (R.I.P.), probably the main Brazilian expert in pens and a nice friend, many thanks for our deals and talks in São Paulo, as an irreplaceable opportunity for learning Parker’s things.