SALE 12 John Holland Fountain Pen ‘20s Era Die Cuts – Rare

Collectibles : Writing Instruments : Fountain Pens : John Holland : Ephemera

 

First of all, these are NOT printed ads for John Holland fountain pens cut out of old magazines, which are fairly common. Rather, they are the ORIGINAL 80-year-old hot type print shop blocks or die cuts from which such ads were produced. As such, they are among the rarest John Holland ephemera.

In the 1920s, advertisements in daily newspapers and magazines were set in type by hand with the use of die cuts supplied by advertisers. Die cuts are blocks of wood topped with a thin sheet of electroplated metal with the illustrated image of the advertised product slightly raised in negative display. These illustrations appear backwards if you look at them. When fitted into a blocked page layout, the ad was rolled through a press and printed.

Ten of these images are of Holland’s Jewel pens from the mid-‘20s. Two extra-rare cuts display the company’s economy models, one of the Royal fountain pen line, and the other of the Victor, their stylus pen brand.

I am selling these for my husband Bill Holland who has been a collector of John Holland pens for 25 years and who wrote the definitive history of the John Holland Fountain Pen Company for Pen World Magazine. He says only rarely has he seen other such block die cuts of Holland pens, and then only as single examples. He acquired them in 1991 from a veteran collector in Ohio, the state where Holland pens were manufactured.

Item ID: RL 34308