In today's edition: Very Small Pens!
Back in the 19-teens and twenties there was this whole fad of making fountain pens as small as possible. These three minis are about 3 inches/7.5 cm long when capped, 4 inches/10.5 cm when posted.
14k gold nibs!
To give a sense of size, here they are next to my PenBBS 308 "Smog":
These are not actually the smallest pens I've seen. There's a few that are under 2 inches, which is ridiculous.
What's also ridiculous is that two of these are lever fillers. Like, they have an entire lever/pressure bar/ink sac system squeezed into those tiny barrels. The gold one, on the other hand, is filled via eyedropper - or more accurately, a blunt syringe.
I have no idea why these were a thing. But they're fun to collect, and the gold one makes for a cool necklace pendant.
