Rexpen Diplomat

Rexpen was a sub-brand of TOZ Penkala which was founded in 1936 in Zagreb. (TOZ stands for Tvornica olovaka Zagreb, or “Pen Factory Zagreb”) This brand was so popular in Croatia that, today, a fountain pen is usually called a “penkala” (in the same way that Americans and Canadians ask for a kleenex instead of a tissue, or to go make a xerox instead of a photocopy). SEE BELOW FOR A CORRECTION TO THIS STATEMENT

This pen was made in the 1980s and was likely given as a corporate gift (according to the knowledgable guy I bought it from in a pawn shop in Split).

See also this mechanical pencil from Croatia.

V2023024

UPDATE: It seems that some of the information I wrote above isn’t true. I received an email from a reader who gave me permission to copy-and-paste the correction information here:

As a native speaker of Serbo-Croatian, I’d like to offer a slight correction for your article. Namely, “TOZ Penkala” is translated as “TOZ Fountain Pens,” as “penkala” is the plural form of “penkalo,” the latter being a Serbo-Croatian word for “fountain pen.” It is not a brand-based term substitution like Kleenex or Band-aid, as you had indicated in your article, but the actual word for the object.

The term actually originated as a grammatical declination of the last name “Penkala,” as in “Slavoljub Eduard Penkala,” the inventor of the world’s first solid-ink fountain pen.