A 1935 Vacumatic with Duofold cap? An email...

This arrived today...

Dear David,

I have a small vacumatic composed of an early vac barrel (slender junior w/ longitudinal windows) and a black streamlined lady duofold ring-top cap. I bought this pen a few years ago both because of its strangeness and because it is actually quite lovely (and was cheap). I have always wondered if it could be an original Parker creation instead of an interesting frankenpen. I know that Parker sometimes assembled vacs by mixing parts from old and new stock, but doing so across models seems on the face of it unlikely. I'd appreciate any thoughts you have about this pen, if you have the time (if you don't, I won't bug you for a reply!)... snip (followed by measurements etc)




Ahhh, the unanswerable challenge...

Go prove a pen company couldn't have done something at some time for some reason :)

The simple answer is that the pen indeed is a mix, though one possibly NOT involving a Duofold, proper, cap.

The philosphical/contextual issues offer the greater challenge.

It is known that Parker (and others) manufactured items unknown to any catalogue today in our possession. It is known that Parker- if we can believe those date code markings- issued some pens, perhaps consuming leftover parts or marking replacement barrels at time of use- at dates far later than catalogues lead us to believe. A Mandarin Duofold Sr. with 1941 barrel stamp comes to mind, dating some 10 years after final catalogue appearance.

The earliest Vacumatic family pen- Golden Arrow- had Vacumatic style parts. No Duofold-like parts even on the earliest releases, though no doubt odd parts could have been used on 1932 prototypes. It is asking perhaps too much to assume that a 1935 Vac with a fairly generic double-band economy-line cap (which was used from late 1933 through at least 1938) would have required a cap from an entirely different line.

As you suggest, first Generation Vacs (lockdown) pens had fairly generic threads. Offhand, I'd guess that one could fit caps to your pen barrel from Vacumatic economy line Slender Junior (your pen), high line Slender (triple band), Toothbrush Duofold Slender, Slender models of all three lines of Challenger, Slender Parkette Deluxe, Duofold Juniorette (what you suspected here), and... a number of so-called Parker "Thrift" model, that last group often somewhat poorly characterized. Thus, absent a cap, many donors are available.

We do not assume a mixed pen represents an original product, though one of course can counter, "hey, you never know". But, even IF we never know, even an item that could have been originally mixed, has little cachet for that, if any of us can mix the same thing ourselves with little difficulty.

Finally, I'm not certain (but don't rule out) that your donor cap is Duofold Juniorette. I'd have to pull my catalogues, but suspect that the Juniorette caps had three bands. Your cap might be from a lower line pen catalogued in 1929 as a "Raven Black and Gold" pen, often now called THE Raven by collectors.

That aside, you have some useful parts there. 1935 Junior barrels with longitudinal clarity are hard to find clean.