This is as much of a news item as that of an old granny getting married at the age of 90 to the younger generations. People are so used to the idea of buying new pens at the drop of a pendulum for the slightest of problems in the running of a pen and its ink. The pens of the modern times are so cheap and so functional that people rarely think twice before they purchase new ones. This was not the case a few decades back. A fountain pen of the superior orders was the asset that most people ran after and people saved their extra money for months on end before they dared to think about the purchase of a new pen or some such thing.

The general problem that a fountain pen was regarding three issues. The first was the clogging of dry ink in the fine tube of the pen if it was not used for a long time. The second problem was to the regard of the breakage of the nib and the last was regarding the breakage of some external part of the pen’s body. The market was abundant in the supply of pen repairers and a lot of people sought their services. Spare parts were available and people never gave up on a pen unless it was acknowledged as absolutely useless. Pens were handed from generation to generation in some families. There were costly silver and golden pens coming from the desk of rich consumers and aristocrats. A pen repair was a big thing and such professionals were much in demand.

People looked at the school as a respectable occupation as not every layman could claim a mastery over the art. The fountain pen has three basic parts- the nib, the holder and the barrel. If there was a fourth portion that people attached a lot of importance to that was the cap. The cap was also the site of much repair as the pin mechanism in it was prone to frequent damage. The designers took abject care in the direction of manufacturing pens for whom spare parts would be available in the market, of though most production houses offered to repair their goods people preferred to go to nearby stalls and have their pens repaired and serviced. Such vintage recollection can be frustrating to the health of people who admire the good old way of living and feel that the modern world is a boring place to live in.