This one’s a mystery…

I bought this pen based on some bad photos and a hunch that it was something interesting. Turns out that what I bought was a mystery.

As can be seen there, the “Heimdal” #2 nib has seen MUCH better days, although it’ll be good practice to straighten it up. It appears that the top gold band is missing the portion where it meets the grip/section, probably the result of an ancient repair. There are no imprints anywhere to be found.

The question is: what is this pen? Who made it, where was it made, and when?

The options

My initial thinking was that this is a Parker #12, produced from about 1896 to about 1907. This guess was based on the photos below from this page at parkersheaffer.com.

However, after asking for help from the kind people at the fountainpennetwork.com some doubt was introduced. There’s a number of things that don’t look quite right to match the Parker. For example, the pattern on the gold bands and the shape of the ebonite ends, for example.

This raised the possibility that it might be a Paul Hirt pen like the one shown below. However, I think that we decided on that thread that my pen was still a little too different, especially when you look at the grip/section when the pen is disassembled. The gold bands are also a little too narrow on mine, although the pattern on them is similar to the Hirt pen.

Some more digging turned up a similar-looking Waterman #624 displayed on this page at the Fountain Pen Hospital. That one is shown in the photo below. There are too many differences between that pen and mine for it to be a suspect.

And finally, another similar-looking pen made by Aikin Lambert in 1912 is shown in Jonathan Steinberg’s book “Fountain Pens”. This one has similar gold bands and cap, but the tapering on the mother of pearl is different.

According to this page, Aikin Lambert started in 1864 in New York and became a supplier for Waterman’s and Wirt, eventually becoming part of Waterman’s in 1911. The photo below is from their Instagram account which is causing me to lean more and more towards thinking that what I have is an Aikin Lambert.

Now I have to decide whether to try to bring it back to original condition or to just fix up the Heimdal nib and take it for a test drive.