Saturday 30 July 2011

Pelikan M450 Vermeil & Tortoise-shell Fountain Pen


I saw pictures of this pen on a fountain pen forum a couple of years ago. It has such an old-world look to it and the combination of gold and tortoise-shell works beautifully. It's not a big pen by today's standards. With the cap screwed on, it measures just under 5 inches (or twelve cm), but it has a nice weight to it when you write. It's a piston-filler, which means that you need to twist the golden section at the back of the pen to draw ink up into the internal reservoir. When held up to the light, the body of the pen is slightly see-through so that you can see how much ink you have left.
Anyway, time for the pencast portion.



Yep, it looks like brown tortoise-shell to me.



The nib is 18k yellow gold with an iridium tip. Gold is used on the nib to allow for a little bit of flex when you write.



The clip is meant to represent a Pelican's head and beak. A nice touch.



The Pelikan logo on the end of the cap.




The cap and barrel end is vermeil, which is basically gold-plated sterling silver. Nice engraving on the cap.





3 comments:

  1. I enjoyed this post immensely - great pictures of the Pelikan interspersed with a very nice pencast showing off two Waterman inks. I have the Havana Brown myself as well.

    The tortoise-shell Pelikans have always appealed to me; there is a white and tortoise M400 that I find absolutely gorgeous. The semi-transparency is a nice touch.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Adwoa. I have the M400 white & tortoise-shell model as well, which I'll write up in the next few weeks. Now THAT'S a nice looking pen. Get one if you can.

    And Waterman's Havana Brown is a pleasant shade, too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This was the post that got me started, as you know :-) Thanks for the inspiration! I enjoy my M400 very much, even if I think the nib needs some fine-tuning (your M looks narrower than mine...). I'll sort it out one of these days.

    ReplyDelete