, addendum to “Waterman’s First RHR Pens”.
When I found this color image in an ad in Geyer’s Stationer, Apr 13, 1905, p.63, I thought that I had finally found an earlier RHR Waterman’s pen ad. But it turned out to be a bust. The ad consists of five ink bottles and traveling inkwells, or “pen fillers” as the ad calls them, and seven vest-pocket and chatelaine pen pouches, or pen “pockets” as the ad calls them. At first it looked like there was a RHR Waterman’s fountain pen in one of the leather pen pockets, but if you blow the picture up, and look at it closely, there is a spiral of slightly darker reddish-black swirling through it. It’s just a mottled pen, as it turns out. The picture is part of a two-page ad, pages 63 and 64, and the other part of the ad, the one on the other page, consists of a line-up of pens. The pens listed on the next page are shown in sizes #12 to #18, by the way, and are still said to be available only in “plain, mottled, and chased rubber”. Oh, well . . .
George Kovalenko.
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