Canter Bridge

This handsome volume reflects the high quality standards, cantankerous spirit, and eccentrically traditionalist preferences that seem to characterize many of us who are drawn to the impractical beauty we insist upon calling fountain pens.

An introduction and six chapters tell the story of this writing instrument, its long evolution, its demise in the twentieth century, and its rebirth as a collector’s item here in our twenty-first. Five lavishly illustrated entries meander their way from the pre-fountain-pen spectacle of rooms-full of ‘inexpensive scribes’ with quill in hand doing the work of a small iiterate class (‘Pre-1880s: before the fountain pen’, pp. 22-39) on to moderate levels of pen production (‘1880-1910: early marketing efforts, pp. 40-52) to the rise of a corporate behemoth (1910-1925: competing with Sheaffer’, pp. 54-85) to the fountain pen’s twentieth century misfortuntes (‘1930-1940: how the depression affected the market’, pp. 86-107); ‘1945: the war: how bargain debasement nurtured the ballpoint pen’, pp. 108-121) and finally to a day when–mirabile dictu–people write books about fountan pens (‘The future: the rebirth of the cottage industry’, pp. 122-128).

Mr. Steinberg is neither an economist or sociologist and so given to amusingly sweeping explanations of pen life: ‘By the 1930s the world was in the grips of the Great Depression. The public wanted to be dazzled by technological marvels to take their minds off their economic woes. Hence the uncommon popularity of the Schneider Trophy seaplane races and the land-speed record attempts … For fountain pen design, the Great Depression made utilitarianism and functionality the order of the day.’

However, Steinberg is a lover of pens and that’s why he’s a capable author of a coffee-table illustrated book like this one.

One closes this book with several impressions forming themselves in his brain.

First, there is the sheer technological challenge of making a pen where ink flows in the directions it’s supposed to, with tolerable evenness, and a refusal to leak. This is one of those small technological adventures that culminates in something the rest of us take for granted rather than at the cleaners with ink stains around the pockets.

Then there is the sheer variety that flourishes within somewhat unbending natural limits. As with dogs, there are only so many ways and means to make a pen. Yet the plethora of canine breeds on offer has its parallel in the dazzling display of pens of which photographs, paintings, and reproduced advertisements flavor this book.

If you are so inclined, you may well find a resource that will educate your more thoroughly about fountain pens. But probably not with a more satisfactory outcome for the appreciative eye.

Afterword to this review:

The author, Mr. Steinberg, has provided a comment on how the book I’ve reviewed synchs with an earlier book of his which most readers of Fountain Pens, Their History and Art could be presumed to have read first. When I wrote my review, I was not aware of this earlier work. I’m grateful to Mr. Steinberg for this fresh (for me) information and look forward to reading his earlier work. I suspect it will only enhance my appreciation for what he has accomplished in the book I reviewed.