Here is my nurses set with the 2 bands. Not showing much wear except for age. No one is going to walk off with this ladies pen set

Not a jeweler's overlay -- that's the mark of Waterman's Italian agency. You can read a bit of background here, but note that that page is quite old and has been corrected and amplified in many regards since. See Letizia Iacopini's book on Italian overlay Waterman safety pens (she was the author of the website, too).

Wow... I didn't know to own a such unique Doric. I know it was a rare color, but not that it was so much rare. Mine has a #9 Adjustable Nib and no engraving and no box. I'll try to take some pictures, but I'm very bad taking photos. What's strange it's to find two of these rare pens in such a short distance in Italy: we both live in Tuscany... Simone

This time no mobile phone, I'm at home and I can use a digital camera...
So here some photos, renmant of many attempt...








You can also find the full resolution versions at their wiki page, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

This is an instance where provenance would be informative.

If it could be established that several black and pearl Dorics had been found "in the wild" in central Italy, one might hypothesize that, in addition to the examples given in the USA to salesmen, some were used as export models. There are certainly parallels, where production variations not sold in the USA (or distributed in extremely limited numbers) were sent to other countries.

On the other hand, I suspect that with the black and pearl Dorics, there is another backstory. In the later 1980s and first half of the 1990s, a huge number of vintage US pens made their way to Italy. Italian collectors were buying nearly every pen they could get their hands on, paying several times the US collector price. Italian dealers came to US pen shows and bought whole tables of pens at a time; American dealers brought suitcases full of pens to Italy. In this virtual torrent of pens, some very rare examples were bought without any awareness of their being anything special. To give just one example, I remember selling a bandless Duofold Senior to a dealer in Rome who happily paid my asking price, but then asked if a band could be put on it! At least I spoke Italian, and could explain why this was not a good idea, but most of the foreign sellers active in Italy didn't speak much Italian at all. It seems most likely that the black and pearl Dorics under discussion came to Italy under similar circumstances, some 15-20 years ago

• Congratulations on your find. I am very familiar with this pen having owned this model. This Doric, as has been pointed out, was not a catalog or production item. The plastic is leftover stock from the Deco Band era but Wahl found a way to use the material in a special way - the pens I have seen were given by Wahl to successful salespeople. Most I have seen have an engraving on the barrel with the recipients name. Your pen appears to have only the initials on the clip.

At the Chicago Pen Show a few years ago, one of my pen friends brought one of these pens to the show for show and tell. His story was fantastic. Apparently his pen was given to the Thomas Alva Edison, who was in a hospital just prior to his death in 1931, by a friend of his who acquired the pen from Wahl directly. Edison accepted the pen graciously but never used it. Instead he gave the pen to the Dodge family (yes Dodge automobiles) where the pen remained. In my collecting career of over 40 years I have owned one oversize and one standard size and I have only seen maybe 5 oversize models. So the pen is very scarce if not rare. Don

Un po' scolorita, ma mica brutta.

Wow, color is not so bad. I think I have a spare Tibaldi nib, so will you sell me that pen? Simone

Yes the cap is certainly from a later model.
But the combination is not so bad.

Simone

"KENBAR" and Barkers Kensington, get it? The Barkers Building on Kennsinton High Street, London, is now a shopping center with, for example, a very high end Whole Foods Market. It was built in 1932 and used to house a department store. Here's a link w/ some photos of the carvings on the exterior.

http://www.martin-ja...folio34803.html

You've got a neat store-branded pen. Wicked looking lever!

THE "KENBAR" PEN

LONDON 712

Thanks for the comments on my pen. A certain Italian man keepa many beauties like this pen in a spa in Tuscany, I was fortunate to have swept this one up to muggy Texas.


Don't worry, if you're the crazy Aussie / Ulsterman, you are welcome in my threads!

Interesting, never seen a Summit with anything other than a basic filler system...iirc lever fillers.

Regards
Hugh

Good chance the nib is correct.

Great specimen! The original box is truly rare.