Beyond the glass mountain

About Glass Nibs

Old glass-tipped pens are a real rarity these days. Drop or tap the end of a nib once and the irreparable breakage only adds to the value of the remaining intact nibs. However, you can also buy new glass pens to enhance your handwriting experience, especially if you use them on a sunny day.

On the small island of Murano, north of Venice, glassblowers began making glass pens around the 1700s as an alternative to the quills used until then. Sharing the secrets of glassblowing with outsiders was punishable by death, so Murano glassmakers dominated this market for a long time. These glass-tipped pens were popular worldwide in the 1920s. The tiny grooves in the nib acted as capillaries and held a small supply of ink.

With one dip in ink, you could write about one sentence. Unlike steel nibs, which were already common in the nineteenth century, glass nibs had distinctive properties that made them indispensable for writing through carbon paper.

With the introduction of carbon paper—a copying paper made using extracts from indigo plants—the demand for ordinary fountain pens that could produce carbon copies increased.

Glass-nibbed fountain pens appeared on the market during this period, alongside the development of fountain pens.

To make a carbon copy of handwriting, the writing instrument had to be pressed firmly against the paper. The ballpoint pen, invented by László József Bíró, eventually solved this problem. A nib used for copying had to be very rigid to withstand the necessary pressure: conventional nibs would splay under that pressure, interrupting the flow of ink.

Around 1912, Kaweco switched from glass to agate nibs with a twisted tip. Agate nibs could withstand the pressure needed to make copies, but they were considerably more expensive to produce than glass nibs.

Below is a Kaweco Sport fountain pen with a glass nib.

Montblanc also offered glass-nibbed fountain pens, including the M.G. 400 safety pen and the M.G. 420 button filler. The modified logo read “Montblanc Glass Fountain Pen”. The glass-nibbed range was a simpler type. The pen had a cap about 12 cm long. A 1930s catalogue described it as “a cheap pen for carbon paper”; another listed its price as just 3 RM (Reichsmarks). This made it the cheapest fountain pen in the range, followed by the Reflex student pen at 4 RM. By comparison, the model 129 cost 50 RM in the same catalogue.

Later, so-called carbonless nibs were also made in the conventional nib shape. Various designs prevented the tines from splaying. Pelikan, for example, produced nibs for its 100N models using much stronger, stiffer material than usual. These looked like ordinary nibs but were considerably heavier. The extra material increased costs, so a cheaper way of achieving similar writing characteristics was developed. The nib slit was shortened considerably, reducing the effective length of the tines. The shorter tines spread much less under pressure, making the nib stiffer. Because the original breather hole remained in place, a second hole had to be added closer to the tip. Other nibs had a shortened slit and just one breather hole, positioned noticeably farther forward.

Visconti began making celluloid pens in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some early celluloid ranges were also available with gold-plated nibs. In the early 1990s, Visconti introduced the Ragtime series, whose design recalled the first decade of the twentieth century. The Classic series followed the same concept, evoking the flat-top models of the early 1920s. Both pens in the Classic series were gold-plated and fitted with glass nibs.

Some Japanese glass nib pens currently in production:

Tamas Szucs / 2024.03.