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Profile: The Eversharp Skyline Family

(This page revised October 20, 2022)

Reference Info Index | Glossopedia  ]


Eversharp Advertisement, 1945
This 1945 Eversharp adver­tise­ment appeared in Life Mag­a­zine and fea­tured pens priced from $75.00 to $5.00. The Sky­line shown was priced at $9.75.
Railroad train painting

The Best in Streamlined Industrial Design: In the summer of 1940, the Eversharp company introduced a new fountain pen called the Skyline. Strikingly modern in appearance, the Skyline was designed by the noted industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss (U.S. Patent No D132,663 for the body and No D132,664 for the clip), who also streamlined the steam locomotives of the New York Central Railroad’s famed 20th Century Limited. You do not need a very sharp eye to detect a strong resemblance between the locomotive shown above (painting.for a 1999 U.S. postage stamp) and the Skylines in this article.

The pen shown below is a Dubonnet Red Skyline with a gold-filled cap (Presentation Pen, Model 61). This cap has grooves running around it. The Presentation Pen also appeared in a much less common variety, with widely spaced lines running the length of the cap. (See the color table at the end of this article.)

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Note
Note
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Despite its futuristic looks, the Skyline was internally a relatively ordinary pen, although it had a breather tube that supposedly “flightproofed” the pen for the “Air Age.” Because of the breather tube, however, the pen’s instruction sheet called for five cycles of the lever to obtain a complete filling. The best feature of the Skyline was the justly renowned Eversharp nib; the company offered Skylines with everything from manifold accounting nibs as rigid as nails to italics with wonderful flex, and collectors today greatly prize Skylines for their writing qualities.

Many pens, the Skyline among them, were offered in a variety of sizes to suit the user’s hand, or sometimes to suit the user’s desired level of status. The Skyline came in three sizes, the Demi (about 4" long), the Standard (about 5" long), and the Executive (about 5" long). Sizes varied somewhat; my two Standards are actually 5" and 5" long. Today, the Executive is the least common Skyline and is generally much higher in price than the other two models. The Skyline was discontinued in about 1948 in favor of the Symphony, a new model introduced in that year.


A Note on Nomenclature

The name Skyliner is sometimes thought to have been applied originally to this model line as a whole and later superseded by Skyline. It has also been used by some authorities to mean only pens with striped caps and barrels in red, black, or brown (but not the Modern Stripe colors). Both of these usages are problematical, the former because the Skyliner name (applied for and registered in 1945) was registered after the Skyline name (first use 1940, applied 1942, registered 1943), and the latter because some advertisements from as late as 1947 refer to various versions of the pen as Skyliners, including one with a solid color on both cap and barrel and another with a striated celluloid cap and a solid-color barrel.


At the beginning of the 1940s, plastics technology underwent a revolution as polystyrene plastics replaced celluloid. Polystyrenes did not need to be machined and finished by hand; they could be molded with excellent quality and uniformity. But Eversharp’s use of those early polystyrenes for the Skyline, advanced though it was, proves to have been disastrous for the pens’ longevity. Eversharp’s early polystyrene is notorious for shrinkage, discoloration, and deterioration; it is not uncommon today to find that a Skyline’s inner cap, molded integrally with the cap derby, has partially crumbled away. (Not all inner caps do this; some of the plastic ones have held up well, and early Skylines had inner caps made of hard rubber and screwed into their derbies.)

Another common problem with Skylines is illustrated by the posted pen above; observe that the cap covers about of the lever. Because the edge of the cap bears on the lever, it frequently wore away the gold surface, and many Skylines show severe brassing in that area — especially on the high spot near the pivot.

Gallery

Fountain penThe Skyline was sold in myriad variations, perhaps not as many as those of the Parker “51”, but certainly enough to give the “51” a good run for its money; and as with the “51”, most Skylines were made with plastic barrels. There were Skylines with plastic caps in plain or striped colors, with autograph bands, narrow bands, or no bands, and Skylines with stainless steel, sterling silver, gold-filled, vermeil, or solid gold caps. There were also Skylines that were entirely gold filled, vermeil, or solid gold. As the years passed, the more interesting plastics (made of celluloid) disappeared; eventually all plastic parts were polystyrene. A gold derby, as shown here (on a Presentation Pen, Model D-61), was a common trim enhancement on a plastic or gold-capped pen. The picture above and the ones below illustrate only a small sampling of the many Skylin variants.

First, a Dubonnet Red Demi with a honey-colored striated celluloid cap (Skyline Pen, Model 76). Henry Dreyfuss was granted U.S. Patent No 2,319,802 for the striated material. The lighter portions of this cap are transparent, with the color on an inner layer.

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Next, a Dubonnet Red Demi in colors similar to the one above (Skyline Pen, Model 76). The darker striations on the cap are red. This red/green striated color combination was used with several different barrel colors.

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This is a Jet Black Solid Color Skyline (Skyline Pen, Model D-77).

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Here is a Modern Stripe Brown Skyline with a gold-filled derby.

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This Modern Stripe Gray Skyline, like all its Modern Stripe siblings, was made of celluloid.

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The largest Skyline was the Executive.

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The most luxurious Skyline, the Command Performance model, was of solid gold. In its first year of production, it was catalogued as the “Gift of a Lifetime,” becoming the Command Performance later. Similar gold-filed pens were offered with lateral grooves, Eversharp‘s “Dart” chasing pattern, and possibly others, at a correspondingly lower price.

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But How Does It Write?

As could be expected, the Skyline was an excellent writer’s pen. Since its Tempoint days, Eversharp had been renowned for its nibs, and when these nibs were coupled with the company’s recently developed “Magic Feed” (U.S. Patent No 2,255,093, by George E. Ziegler), writing was an almost effortless pleasure. During its lifetime, the lever-filling Skyline appeared with three different lever arrangements; the technicalities of these systems are described in How to Restore the Eversharp Skyline. Shown here are the last and best of the lever systems, a unitized assembly (U.S. Patent No 2,325,069, by Fred P. Moore) that Eversharp later branded “Flip-Fill,” and a Magic Feed with a full-length breather tube:

Filler assembly
Eversharp Magic Feed

Family Connections

No manufacturer is going to make it on a single model. When Eversharp introduced the Skyline, it positioned the new model at the top of its lineup — but that doesn't mean it immediately discontinued existing models or didn't introduce any other new models. The solid plastic cap that appeared on some Skyline models was inexpensive to make and, if the complicated wrapover clip (U.S. Patent No 2,274,393, by Frank C. Alexander) was eliminated, quick and easy to assemble. Eversharp appears to have capitalized on this fact by designing a much simpler clip. The resulting pen, shaped like a Skyline, fitted with a small nib and made from the same parts as the lowest, bandless, Skyline model (except for the derby and clip), was the Streamliner. The pen was offered in two versions; Models 98 and 99 had smooth caps and included Eversharp’s Double-Checked warranty, while Models 98L and 99L had laterally grooved caps and did not carry the same guarantee. The Streamliner was offered in standard and demi sizes, probably in all six of the Skyline’s solid barrel colors. Shown here are Streamliner Models 98 (Demi size) in Silver Gray and 99L (standard size) in Navy Blue:

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As illustrated above, the Streamliner’s derby was a complete hemisphere, without the groove that was necessary to accommodate the wrapped-over end of the Skyline’s clip.

The Skyline carried Eversharp’s Double-Checked warranty, of course, but gone was the Double-Checked Gold Seal that had been inlaid into the cap since the 1920s. Instead, the Double-Checked logo was imprinted on the pen’s clip. The last Gold Seal pen to be marketed before the advent of the Skyline was the Victory, shown below and priced at $5.00. This pen’s barrel is gold-stamped KAMM’S; it was one of a lot that was apparently destined for the S. Kamm & Sons department store in New York City.

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Evidence is sketchy at best, but I think it likely that the model shown below, a bottom-line model, possibly even a school pen, whose model name appears to be lost, stayed in production at least into the first year or two after America entered World War II. It is modern in style, and similar enough to the Skyline that it might have been the pen that inspired Henry Dreyfuss to go one better.

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Wahl Who?

On occasion, you might stumble across a Skyline like the one below, whose clip is imprinted WAHL in plain block letters, instead of the usual stylized EVERSHARP imprint. It is thought that the company produced a short run of pens like this every few years to maintain its trademark rights to the Wahl name. These pens are quite uncommon, and they usually do not come cheaply.

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Flatter Me, Flatter Me!

It has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Imitation is one thing, however, and copying is another thing entirely. In postwar Japan, pen makers looking for completely new styles didn’t have to look much farther than the nearest American soldier. When American troops arrived in Japan as part of the Allied Occupation Force, many of them brought along the latest American pens, one of which was the Eversharp Skyline. At least two Japanese companies, Platinum (shown below, upper) and Morison (below, lower), liked what they saw enough to copy it. The Platinum version was made in the latter 1940s, when the restriction on gold was stil in effect, and the Morison was made in the 1950s, after the restriction was lifted.

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Italy, too, produced at least one Skyline copy. Zenith pens were produced by Giuseppe Morandino, a wholesaler of pens and stationery supplies, using parts jobbed from manufacturers such as Montegrappa and Pagliero. The Zenith pen below, made probably in the 1950s, is of relatively poor quality, as can be seen from the lack of concentricity between the cap overlay and the rest of the pen. The barrel is extended where it is necked down to fit the section and has no taper for most of its length, causing it to post rather longer than an authentic Skyline or either of the Japanese copies.

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A Pen of Many Colors

Because Eversharp plastics discolored so readily, it is difficult to find a true representative sample of their original appearance. For example, the blue shown in the following color table is very dark, but I have also seen several slightly different shades, including a Skyline in a color near to Royal Blue. Was there one blue, or were there two or more? The Modern Stripe colors (called “moiré” by many modern collectors) appeared early in the Skyline’s career; they were celluloid, not polystyrene, and they have held their color much better than the polystyrenes. (Ironically, the Modern Stripe models, made of an older and less fashionable plastic, were considered economy models; the desirable Executive was never made in any of these colors.) The names of the solid colors are taken from 1945 adver­tise­ments.

The right column in the table illustrates some (but not all) Skyline cap variations. These caps appeared only with solid-colored barrels; i.e., the Modern Stripe colors had matching caps.


Skyline Body/Barrel Colors Skyline Cap Patterns
Color Name Cap Color Description

Modern Stripe Blue Modern Stripe Blue Amber/Blue Striated Celluloid Amber/Blue Striated Celluloid
Modern Stripe Green Modern Stripe Green Amber/Green Striated Celluloid Amber/Green Striated Celluloid
Modern Stripe Red Modern Stripe Red Green/Black Striated Celluloid Green/Black Striated Celluloid
Modern Stripe Brown Modern Stripe Brown Green/Blue Striated Celluloid Green/Blue Striated Celluloid
Modern Stripe Gray Modern Stripe Gray Green/Red Striated Celluloid Green/Red Striated Celluloid
Jet Black Jet Black Silver Gray Plain Plastic (All six solid
colors, Silver Gray shown)
Navy Blue Navy Blue Grooved Plastic (Marine Green shown) Grooved Plastic (All six solid
colors, Marine Green shown)
Marine Green Marine Green Grooved Gold Fill Grooved Gold Fill (Lateral,
very common)
Dubonnet Red Dubonnet Red Grooved Gold Fill (Longitudinal) Grooved Gold Fill (Longitudinal, uncommon)
Army Brown Army Brown “Dart” Pattern Gold Fill “Dart” Pattern Gold Fill (rare!)
Silver Gray Silver Gray Stainless Steel Stainless Steel (more uncommon)
Grooved Sterling Silver Grooved Sterling Silver (rare!)



Notes:
  1. Earliest known Skyline advertisement, The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, CA, August 18, 1940, page 4; illustrating three FP/MP sets and prices from $5.00 to $19.75).  Return

  2. Parenthesized model names and numbers are taken from the Eversharp, Inc. Service Manual, 1947. (Discontinued models and colors are not included in the manual.)  Return

  3. Army Brown was the color of the World War II U.S. Army officers’ dress uniform blouse (jacket). Contrast this color with the Army Brown that appeared on the contemporaneous Fifth Avenue; the latter was the color of the uniform trousers worn with the brown blouse. These trousers were commonly called “Pinks” because of the very slight pinkish cast to their color.  Return

  4. This pattern, while similar to the Dart pattern used on the Wahl All-Metal Pen, is not identical thereto. In the latter pattern, longitudinal plain panels divide the rows of chevrons into individual panels.  Return

  5. There also exist a few Skylines with this pattern on both the cap and the barrel. These pens command quite high prices.  Return


The information in this article is as accurate as possible, but you should not take it as absolutely authoritative or complete. If you have additions or corrections to this page, please consider sharing them with us to improve the accuracy of our information. My thanks to Matthew Greenberger, who provided photographs of a cap with the Dart pattern, and Matt McColm, who identified the Victory and found an advertisement listing the school pen.

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