Ink Blotters

Back in the days when everyone used quill pens and fountain pens the one thing that could be found on every office or writing desk was an ink blotter. Ink blotters were usually made of a soft absorbent paper formed into a card and were used to dry up excess ink. Today, these vintage blotters, made in the 1930s and 1940s, are very highly prized and sought after collectibles. Ink Blotters were a very popular form of advertising that were often given away by fountain pen manufacturers, banks, merchants and especially Insurance Companies. Antique Ink blotters were as common as business cards are today.  Written references to ink blotting paper in America have been found beginning in the late 1700s. In the late 1800s, a patent was issued for improved blotting paper which featured a smooth surface on one side and a blotting surface on the other.  Rocker blotters were an important piece of desk equipment from the late 1880s until the 1950s. This type of blotter had a handle 2 to 5 inches long and a rounded surface 2 to 3 inches wide where the blotting paper was attached. Blotting paper is used to absorb ink or oil from writing materials.

Pen Boutique offer two very absorbent brands of blotting paper.

http://www.penboutique.com/j-herbin-10-blotting-paper-pad-refill.html

http://www.penboutique.com/p-8726-visconti-plasticized-blotting-paper.aspx

When was blotter paper first found in the United States?

























Blotting paper was first manufactured in the United States by Joseph Parker & Son in 1856. (no relation to Parker Pens)

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Pen Trivia - Left Handed Writers and Nibs

Bias against left-handed people is discrimination, conscious or not, against people who are left-handed dominant. Approximately 10% of the world's population is left-handed. Yet many common tools are designed solely for use by right-handed people, making them difficult, painful, or unsafe for left-handed people to use. These range from simple objects such as scissors to dangerous machinery such as power saws. Even in relatively "modern" societies, left-handed people historically have been—and in some places still are—forced from childhood to use their right hands for tasks which they would naturally perform with the left, such as eating and writing.

Left-handed people who speak Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, or any other right-to-left script do not have the same difficulties with writing. The right-to-left nature of these languages prevents left-handers from running their hand on the ink as happens with left-to-right languages. Because writing when moving one's hand away from its side of the body can cause smudging if the outward side of the hand is allowed to drag across the writing, it is considered easier to write the Latin alphabet with the right hand than with the left. Furthermore, it is considered more difficult to write legible Chinese characters the left hand than it is to write Latin letters, though difficulty is subjective and depends on the person in question.

Left-to-right alphabets can be written smudge-free and in proper "forward slant" with the left hand if the paper is turned 1/4 turn clockwise (90 degrees to the right), and the left hand is drawn toward the body on forward strokes, and left to right on upward strokes (as expressed in directionality of the text). It is also possible to do calligraphy in this posture with the left hand, but using right-handed pen nibs. Otherwise, left-handed pen nibs are required in order to get the thick-to-thin stroke shapes correct for most type faces.

Luckily Pelikan and Lamy offer left-hand fountain pen nibs for the left-handed writer.
http://www.penboutique.com/pelikan-pens.html?cat=291
http://www.penboutique.com/search?q=pelikano+480

Pen Boutique carries many of Lamy’s left handed nibs including:
http://www.penboutique.com/lamy-pens.html?cat=215&type=435
http://www.penboutique.com/search?q=lamy+logo


Question: When was the first pen nib invented?




























Answer: The first pens were reeds, bamboo, and bird feathers (quills), and quills were used extensively from the 5th through the 1st century BC, notably for the Dead Sea scrolls. By 79 AD, Romans were using metal-nib pens dipped in ink.

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