Writing Utensils and Art, German-style

 In thinking about Christmas, I recently began to think about toys from my childhood, but also about some of my favorite things ... beautiful things ... GERMAN things.  And so my mind wandered to developing this post about writing utensils.

Faber-Castell is one of the oldest manufacturers of art and office supplies.  In fact, their logo states they've been in business since 1761!

While they might LOOK like ordinary colored pencils, there is a difference in a quality made product like this compared to the cheap school supplies we buy each year at Wal-mart.  The lead is the perfect softness to draw and shade; the wood quality holds its point without constant sharpening.  The colors are vibrant.  I am no artist, but holding one of these pencils makes me feel like one.

As a child, I also loved to paint, and this Faber Castell is among the best of the basics.

Another classic supplier of office supplies and writing instruments is Pelikan.  Pelikan was founded in 1832 in Hanover.  It eventually went bankrupt but restarted in Switzerland.

As a child during my summers in Germany, there were no Crayola crayons ... I had these "wax pens" (Wachsmalstifte). 

VOCAB TIDBIT:

Wachs = wax.  Mahl = draw.  Stifte = pens.  

Crayon = wax drawing pen.

Pelikan is also known for manufacturing fountain pens.  Even when I was a child and teen in the early 1980s, my German cousins and friends still got to use fountain pens in school!  I thought they were SO lucky, although they did not.

sample of German school standard writing

Some day I will share a post about the "Old German" penmanship that my grandparents used prior to World War II.  While it was still the Latin alphabet we use now, it looked very different in script form:

sample of Old German Script

Anyway ... back to fountain pens (Füllfederhalter in German) ...

VOCAB TIDBIT:

Break it down, Füllfederhalter.  Füll = fill.  Feder = feather.  Halter = holder.  

 If you are envisioning the old fashioned "quill" fountain pen made of a feather with a nib on the end, then you can guess why Germans call this writing instrument a filled-feather-holder.  Makes sense, doesn't it?!
In short, German students might just call their pen a Füller.

When I became a teenager, my Opa gave me a very old, valuable fountain pen with a golden nib.  It is a special item that I still treasure.  While modern fountain pens (the ones my German cousins and friends use) had replaceable ink cartridges like these:

my fountain pen draws up ink from a well (or bottle) like this:

After people gave up their feathered quills that were dipped in ink, a new fountain pen was developed with a suction system that drew ink up into the pen.  This You tube video shows how those pens work:

I have done some self-study in calligraphy and still love to try my hand at chalk art or other such lettering work.  Someday maybe I'll have more time to devote to making my art more presentable ... but for now, I am just having fun attempting to be moderately artistic: