PENHOLDER Dear friends,
I woke up after siesta hearing the question from thewife - where is my penholder? While preparing things for Karthika, I did not feelher urgency of pen stand. I just wentand took it from the table, kept behind the Land phone. It was slightly hiddenby the telephone cover. It was the pen stand brought by my son from Jeddah, aparabola type finish, with a separation in middle. Even from my boyhood days I have seen penholders. Asdecades pass through, their design and size has increased. Penholders in homewere never thought of at one time. It was mostly used in offices at that time.Later penholders became a gift item. Present day penholders have their volumeincreased, contain more items. Incidentally pen holder costing high is a giftitem now also. This posting is a nostalgic look in penholders. It has no very informative or serious contents. Sincerely, Gopalakrishnan. 19-11-2021 1 Ink bottle,dip pen holders In my boyhood days the pen holders were made of wood.It was a rectangular wooden container. In the two ends two dip areas were thereto keep ink bottles. In between them slots were carved to accommodate dip pens.Mostly blue/ black and ink bottle at one end, red ink bottle in other end waskept in the dip area. It prevented slipping of bottle. The nibs of pen weredipped after removing cover of bottle, wrote on a rough paper one or twoletters and then in the paper after flow of ink were good. Periodically, thenib was dipped in ink bottle before exhausting ink in the pen so that noletters become not legible clearly. Writingwith same clarity of ink was an art. Black ink was used by document writers and by subregistrar office. The court also used black inks. Additional pens were there inthe stand, if nib failed in writing. Changing of nibs was periodically done,availability of ink was daily looked in to by subordinate officers. In the court the nib of the pen is broken after issuing a capital punishment Other offices mostly used blue and red inks; use ofgreen ink was not there. Use of red inkwas limited in offices. But in schools red ink was used by teachersfor all corrections. In teacher’s room three or four ink stands were kept,shared by teachers. Additional thing kept was chalk piece to absorb excess inkby rolling chalk piece on the letters. Blotting paper was attached to a smallhalf cylindrical wood and used in offices. 2. Changing ofdip pens to fountain pens. After change of dip pens to fountain pens, still inkbottle continued in offices. In officers table ink filled pens were kept on twoflexible cylindrical fittings and spare ones in slot. Gradually ink bottle andfiller took the position in shelf. In the morning subordinate staff ensured inkis filled in pens. Fountain pen quality increased by years. Parker, Pilot etc.were/are good quality pens. Nowtoo many use ink pens. About a year back, in my area in Chennai an exclusiveink pen shop was opened and still functioning. Ink pen has a spider to control flow of ink to tip ofthe pen. It has a neck which is opened and pen is filled with ink using filler.Protecting nib, spider etc., cap is provided Some pens have ink suckingarrangement. Pen is simply opened removing cap and ink is sucked in. Earlierpens had the problem of leaking through neck and spider. 3 Pen holdersin attractive painted metal holders. Pen holders appeared with four. cylindrical holders.Ink started appearing in violet and green colors in addition. At what time theorders came is not sure, gazettedofficers had to sign in green ink and high level officers had to sign in redink. Teachers continued correction in red ink. Students had to useblue/violet ink. With arrival of fountain pen many started to keep pensin table drawers also 4. Penholder Pen holders in conical or cylindrical shapes startedto appear, for holding more pens, pencils, high lighter pens. Whitening ink or correction fluid appeared to remove any portion tobe deleted by just applying the liquid over letters. However whitening liquid wasin bottle and applying brush kept separately. In homes also by the time keeping pen holders became afashion to keep on writing table. It became a piece of attraction in homes inthe drawing room over the table. 5 Appearance ofball point pens. With the appearance of ball point pens, ink pens faced a down fall.Bank instruments were not permitted to write using ball point pens for some time.Now permitted. Now in offices each table has pen holder, in homes foreach student has separate pen holder. Ball point pen comes with different typesof flow and color inks. Debit and Credit cards are signed using good flow ballpoint pen/ink pen. Gazetted officerattesting is no further required, with the order - Xerox copies with SELFATTESTATION are sufficient for all official submissions. Now gazetted officers sign with blue ink. Documentsprepared in computer with black color and printed in black ink are accepted insub-registrar office. High lighter pens are used in offices and homes. 6 Price of penstandprice Stationery shops have different models of pen standfrom plastic to wood and metal. Depending on thetype charged pen stands are priced from 50-00 rupees to 1000-00 rupees or more. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/1700688304.2001055.1637331082626%40mail.yahoo.com.
