Rare Raymond Loewy Eversharp Fountain Pen & Self-Propelling Pencil Set, Forest Green, USA c. 1950
- Brand: Eversharp
- Designer: Raymond Loewy
- Set: Fountain pen and self-propelling pencil
- Country of manufacture: USA
- Production period: Circa 1950
- Style: Mid-Century / Streamline Moderne
- Body colour: Forest Green
- Caps: Brushed steel
- Trim: Pink-gold accents
- Fountain pen filling system: Lever filler
- Fountain pen nib: Solid 14K gold
- Nib: EVERSHARP 14K MADE IN USA
- Nib point: Medium
- Nib character: Flexible
- Fountain pen length: 14 cm / 5½"
- Condition: Excellent New Old Stock
Includes original Eversharp presentation box, papers, label and stickers
Offered for your consideration is this beautiful and unusually well-preserved matching Eversharp fountain pen and self-propelling pencil set from circa 1950, designed by Raymond Loewy—one of the most influential industrial designers of the twentieth century.
Loewy has variously been described as “The Man Who Shaped America,” “The Father of Streamlining” and one of the founding figures of modern industrial design. His extraordinary body of work ranged from the Shell and TWA identities to the Greyhound Scenicruiser, Coca-Cola vending machines, the Lucky Strike package, Coldspot refrigerators, the Studebaker Champion and Avanti, and the celebrated Air Force One presidential livery. He was equally influential in transportation design, contributing to such landmark American locomotives as the Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 and S1.
This remarkable matching set embodies the principles that made Loewy’s work so influential: smooth aerodynamic form, visual simplicity and an insistence that even everyday functional objects could also be beautiful.
The streamlined, almost bullet-like profiles of both instruments are unmistakably Mid-Century... and unmistakably Loewy. Their cool brushed-steel caps are accented by warm pink-gold detailing and contrast beautifully with the elegant Forest Green bodies. The repetition of the same design language across fountain pen and pencil gives the pair an especially satisfying visual unity.
There is also a tactile quality to the design. The metal caps feel pleasantly cool when first taken into the hand, adding a subtle sensory dimension to objects conceived not merely to be looked at, but to be held and used.
The result is a complete writing ensemble in which styling and function are inseparable—precisely the philosophy that characterized Raymond Loewy’s finest industrial designs.
The fountain pen features its original solid 14K gold Medium nib signed:
EVERSHARP 14K MADE IN USA The nib has a pleasantly flexible character, responding naturally to variations in writing pressure and permitting expressive variation in line width.
Together with the pen’s comfortable proportions and balanced form, it provides the pleasurable writing experience expected from one of Eversharp’s high-quality post-war fountain pens.
The fountain pen employs a lever-filling mechanism, drawing bottled ink into an internal reservoir by means of the lever mounted in the barrel.
Completing the ensemble is its original matching Eversharp self-propelling pencil, conceived in precisely the same streamlined Forest Green, steel and pink-gold design as the fountain pen.
The survival of the matching fountain pen and self-propelling pencil together with their original presentation box, papers, label and stickers gives the present set considerably greater collector interest and completeness than either instrument would possess individually.
This Raymond Loewy-designed Eversharp writing set remains in Excellent New Old Stock vintage condition.
The Forest Green bodies and contrasting brushed-steel caps are beautifully preserved, and the original trim and brand markings remain crisp and attractive. There are no cracks or other significant damage. Both the fountain pen and the self-propelling pencil have been tested and are functioning properly.
Especially desirable is the unusually complete survival of the set with its original Eversharp presentation box, papers, label and stickers—ephemera that is so frequently lost over the decades and adds substantially to the collector appeal of the ensemble.
Wahl-Eversharp—later known simply as Eversharp—was one of the leading American manufacturers of fine writing instruments during the first half of the twentieth century.
The company’s writing-instrument history began with the extraordinarily successful Eversharp mechanical pencil, invented by Charles Keeran and brought into large-scale production by Wahl during the 1910s.
In 1917 Wahl acquired the Boston Fountain Pen Company, giving it an established fountain-pen manufacturing operation and laying the foundations for decades of increasingly ambitious writing-instrument design.
During the following years, Wahl-Eversharp became particularly noted for combining mechanical quality with adventurous styling.
Its celebrated models included the Personal Point pens of the 1920s, the magnificent Doric and Coronet designs of the Art Deco period and, during the 1940s, the futuristic Skyline—another writing instrument closely associated with Raymond Loewy’s streamlined design philosophy.
The company’s willingness to enlist one of the world’s foremost industrial designers distinguished Eversharp from many of its competitors. Rather than treating the fountain pen simply as a container for ink and a nib, Eversharp recognized that a writing instrument could also be an important object of contemporary design.
That philosophy is beautifully expressed in the present circa-1950 matching writing set. Its streamlined Raymond Loewy design, coordinated Forest Green bodies, contrasting steel and pink-gold details, flexible 14K gold fountain-pen nib and exceptionally complete survival with original presentation box, papers, label and stickers combine to make it an especially attractive survivor from the golden age of American Mid-Century industrial design.
