Monday, June 27, 2011

Macniven and Cameron Waverley Pen

As I explore the exotic world of dip pens, each day I discover something amazing. One such gem of a pen is the Waverley from Macniven and Cameron.





As part of an assorted set of nibs that I got on Ebay, this nib has a very unique design. The plume of the nib is bent in an interesting manner, perhaps to hold that extra bit of ink, and also a very smooth point that prevents paper from catching the nib.

Dipping it into a bottle of dense black Pebeos Incre De Chine, which also happens to have a nice sheen, the pen produces very thin strokes smoothly. There isn't a great amount of flex, though I could get a good bit of variation in width. The pen is very feathery and felt like I was drawing with a metal brush, having a nice bit of springy-ness.



An interesting story related to this specific nib is that, Sir Walter scott, used this pen for a series of novels, known as the Waverley novels. They were named after this pen, since he used them to write the stories!


I was so attracted to this Waverley, I went ahead scouted for more and got lucky. I found an awesome seller in France who sold them by the gross, in its original tin box ! How much better can that get?!


The slight upturned point that resulted in a smoother pen tip, has resulted in the name Waverley being associated with any nib that is of such design. There are fountain pen nibs that have the same design and are known as Waverly pens!

For me though, I would like to stick with these lovelies!

2 comments:

Jerónimo Sújar said...

Hello, my name is Jerome and I am a draftsman, could you give me the address or link where you found these feathers in France, please? Thank you.

Ganapathy Subramaniam said...

Hi Jerome, I got this via eBay.
The seller is http://myworld.ebay.fr/p35vanille/

Try searching ebay. Hope you can get them. Good luck!