Of Pens & Dusty Corners

 

Exhibition Case of Birmingham-made Pens - image ©The Pen Museum

 

A further recent addition to my continuing descent down the rabbit hole of retro-analogue-ishness is a brand-new fountain pen. Nothing exotic or expensive, just a basic Parker cartridge pen. I've tried replacing my long-lost fountain pens in the past, but none of the newly purchased pens would ever write decently.

Enter my latest attempt; the Parker Jotter, only £7.75 online and it writes perfectly: no skipping, scratching or splatter. I have started using it for note taking and making up the cards in the Zettelkasten. It has been a re-introduction to actual handwriting, a personal skill that had all but atrophied over the years of keyboard use and scrappy note taking in biro.

I can't say my handwriting was ever very pretty; I think our generation was the first where the skill wasn't really valued at school. If you can, look at a sample of the writing from anyone born and schooled between the wars; my Dad for example had a beautiful hand and I still have a few examples of his writing filed away in the family documents boxes.

The new Parker was made in France, which is a welcome change from all-Chinese manufactured goods as it at least indicates that some real manufacturing is at least partly alive and well in Europe; although I suspect most is just rebranded anyway. This lead me to thinking about my childhood in Birmingham. Most Saturdays, after the morning matinee at The Grove Cinema (6d. in the front stalls and 9d. at the back) would see me and my mates troop off into town for a good wander round the city centre; the highlight of which, for me at least, was the Museum of Science & Industry in Newhall Street, which was housed in part of the old Elkington Plating Factory, which itself backed onto the Birmingham Fazely canal. In fact, moving from one half of the museum to the other entailed walking through a covered walkway going over the cut itself.

In this area of the museum was housed an impressive collection of steel pen nibs; some plain, others fancy and many arranged in ornately decorated exhibition cases: the fruits of a once thriving industry based in the Jewellery Quarter of the city. Sadly that industry like so many others is long gone, as is the old museum: closed in 1997 and since largely demolished to make way for a 'development'. Part of the museum's contents were eventually moved to a new home in Curzon Street: 'The Thinktank'.

What was once a free-to-visit dusty, oily Aladdin's Cave of wonder has been replaced with an expensive-to-visit palace of flash, with fewer exhibits, lots of effects and much-reduced substance. A bit like social media versus conversation; slick, quick and requiring little concentration; completely missing the point of places like the old museum. You weren't directed around a carefully choreographed curation of objects in a forced way; the point was, you did your own exploration and on the way you absorbed the real content of the exhibits and their accompanying commentaries almost by osmosis: I learned almost as much in that place and the nearby Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery as I did at school.

I suppose that to the current generation of children and young adults, the place would look old fashioned and seem a bit tame, although then again, we were children at a time when the world was becoming shiny and modern and casting off the remains of the Victorian era that seemed to have persisted well into the second half of the twentieth century; so who knows? Retro and dusty might yet make a return and become a thing...

The Pen Collection is now held at The Birmingham Pen Museum.