Wooden box set, "the Pearl of Inks" contains a 30 ml bottle of purple ink, a wooden fountain pen and 5 writing tips of various thicknesses.
The goose feather pen was known to the Romans, however they preferred sharpened reeds, which were imposed only from the 5th century AD on. This writing tool would dominate the Middle Ages and Classical period. It eventually disappeared towards the end of the 19th century.
The metal fountain pen appeared in antiquity - with pens in copper from Egypt, pens in bronze from Rome, pens of gold and silver during the Middle Ages -- all in the attempt to compensate for the defaults of the goose feather whose point quickly degraded with repeated use. However, the metal fountain pen's lack of suppleness and tendency to corrode from exposure to ink meant that it was unable to unseat the traditional "goose plume", and it now remains an object used by artists and for it's particular curiosities. Only with the appearance of new types of steel which provided the needed resistance combined with suppleness were fountain pens able to conquer the world. These first steel blends were produced in Birmingham, England around 1820, and from 1835 on, English metal fountain pens were exported throughout the world to replace "goose plumes" and sharpened reeds. In 1827, Petrache Poenaru patented the "endless portable pen", which was self-alimented with ink -- a precusor to the pens we use today. In 1960, the ball-point pen and the felt-tip pen dethroned the fountain pen, which is only used now in calligraphy, drawing and stenography.
