Sheaffer Pen Company and Skrip Ink
The Sheaffer Pen Company was founded by Walter A. Sheaffer, who was born in
Ottumwa, Iowa on July 27, 1867. Walter, whose father was the owner of a small
town jewlery store, learned the value of good business sense early in life. At
11 years old, he started his working career as a printer's helper. By 1888, he
was managing the family jewlery store, married and starting a family.
Through hard work, a bit of luck and good business sense, Walter escalated the
family business into two jewlery stores, a piano and organ store and a series of
real estate holdings.
In 1908, while studying an advertisement for the Conklin crescent filling pen,
he envisioned a better method of filling a fountain pen. On August 25, 1908 he
was granted a patent for the first successful lever filling fountain pen, and
soon thereafter he founded the W.A. Sheaffer Pen Company. Over the next twelve
years the company grew so much that he had to change manufacturing locations
three times. In 1920, the W.A.Sheaffer Pen Company moved to the old Morrison
Plow Works in Fort Madison, Iowa. This facility was so large that initially
they were only using half of it. One thing that the new facility gave Walter
was room to set up his first "writing fluid" production area.
Sheaffer's first attempt at producing and marketing a "writing fluid" revolved
around a very alkaline Prussian Blue based formula. The vast majority of
competing inks at that time were of the acidic analine dye types. Sheaffer's
ink had beautiful color, was permanent on paper but, amazingly enough, easy to
get out of clothes. All testing showed the ink to be an excellent product and
superior to anything then on the market.
The only flaw in the situation was that all testing was done with clean, new
pens. It wasn't until after thousands of bottles of ink were shipped and sold
to the public that a problem arose. It was discovered that if the alkaline
Prussian Blue based ink was mixed in a pen with leftover acidic analine dye ink,
an insoluable precipitate was formed inside the pen. The net result was a very
plugged up pen and a very unhappy customer!
Sheaffer was obliged to buy back all remaining stocks of the ink and headed back
to the drawing board.
After about two years of work, a chemist named Casey devised the formula for
Skrip ink, and the company returned to the writing fluid business. Needless to
say, many retailers were less than happy to jump back into the selling of a
Sheaffer ink product after the not forgotten Prussian Blue incident. It took
some relentless and creative marketing on the part of Walter Sheaffer to reopen
the doors for the Skrip line of inks. Now, 74 years later, the Skrip ink brand is still on the market.
However, the well respected and time proven basic formula of Mr. Casey is no longer with us. All Sheaffer Skrip ink on the market today is of a new formula, in a new bottle and is made in Slovenia.
The original Skrip came in eleven colors. Blue, black, blue-black, green,
red,Peacock blue (turquoise), Burgundy, Lavender,Gray, Kings Gold and brown. Late
in 1997 they reintroduced three inks dropped from production, burgundy, lavender and gray, and introduced a totally new ink color - King's Gold.
In 2001, the giant BIC pen company bought Sheaffer. One of the changes that has
accompanied this buy-out is the complete elimination of the decades old US made
Skrip line of inks. The line of eleven inks has been replaced with eleven new
inks made in Slovania. The new color line includes, Black, Blau-Black, Blue,
Turquoise, Purple, Red, Kings Gold, Brown, Green, Orange and Pink. Many of the
colors are closely matched to the originals with the most noticable difference
being the Kings Gold, which is now a bright yellow.
In general, Skrip has had its fans and its flamers. Skrip is passed over by
some fountain pen users due to what they say is a "thinner" or "washed out" color
density, that is a characteristic of some of the line. Fans of the line say
that due to the less dense nature of the ink, it is the safest ink to use in a
valuable pen that could be stained by a more heavily saturated ink.
Please see the newest edition of my book for samples of both the old and new
colors.
For those of you wanting more detailed information on the Sheaffer Pen Co.,
please see back issues (volume 4, no.2 etc) of Pen World International magazine.
This great four part series was written by Mr. Robert Tefft. Pen World's
address is on the Snail Mail link page of this web site.
You can email me at:gclark@inksampler.com
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