One of the cool things about collecting pens is the fact there are a seemingly infinite number of colors and patterns available in pens. Want a Black, blue, or green pen? No problem. Want a gold pen or a sterling pen? You bet! Want a purple pen or a pen with a cow on it? They are out there, and many more combinations, too numerous to mention. And with the advent of some of the new modern custom pen makers, if you dream it, it can be had.
RHR Yours Truly
Back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s this was not the case. Like Henry Ford’s Model T, you could have any color pen you liked as long as it was black. Mottled hard rubber became an option offering a mix of red and black, but the real game changer was straight red hard rubber. You couldn’t be missed when you pulled a pen this bright out of your pocket. Head to toe, all red. Of course, some may argue red wasn’t really intended to be red in the first place, it was supposed to be orange. Either way, one thing is for certain it wasn’t black.
RHR Aikin Lambert
Many manufacturers produced pens in this material, but few are found today. Whether this was due to popularity and actual production numbers, or the eventual fragility of the material one is left to speculate. Waterman, by nature of it’s sheer size, is one of the more common surviving brands out there. The venerable Waterman 52 in Cardinal, as they called it, is for some, a must have in a collection (I am still looking for a good condition pen at a fair price).
RHR Maywood
Unlike black hard rubber pens, which are often chased with some pattern on them, red hard rubber pens are often not so. Plain red seems to be all that is necessary and is a statement all by itself. It is quite common for every piece of the pen to be the same material, cap, barrel, even section and feed to be of red hard rubber.
RHR Aikin Lambert Open Showing RHR Section
While neither red nor orange, Morrison used a material they called Tuscan, a dark red, and Parker produced a pen in a dark material somewhat similar called Pompeian Brown. But I digress…
Tuscan HR Morrison’s
For the new owner of a vintage red hard rubber pen, over time the material tends to become fragile. Posting the cap is usually not a good idea as doing so could put stress on the cap lip and create cracks. As with most vintage pens, the saying, “The cap IS the pen” is certainly no more true than with red hard rubber. Finding replacements is difficult, if not impossible, and can take a long time, or require cannibalizing whole pens for the right part.
Red Lined HR Yours Truly with MHR section and end caps
No matter how you slice it, red hard rubber pens are stunning. I think there’s room in every collection for at least one, and I know there are a few more going to be finding their way into my collection in the future.
Cheers!
Brian