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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Shangas, post: 97256, member: 360&quot;]The biggest reason I bought this box (apart from its overall condition and the price) is because of the presence of its original inkwell. </p><p><br /></p><p>Far, far, FAR too often, you buy these old boxes, and their inkwells are LONG GONE. </p><p><br /></p><p>The moment fountain pens showed up, boxes like these were like 1st generation laptop computers - you chucked them out and never used them again. But the inkwells were still important - so people saved the inkwells and threw the boxes in the bin. As a result, the inkwell and the key is often the first things to go missing.</p><p><br /></p><p>A missing key you can have re-cut. A missing inkwell? Good luck finding that. They&#039;re almost impossible to dig up. In over 20 years of dabbling in antiques, I&#039;ve only ever seen two for sale, and you can bet I snatched those up as fast as possible. I broke them apart, resealed the joints to stop them leaking...and I still have them. </p><p><br /></p><p>The pencil in this box is an untouched original. I&#039;m not sure how old it is. My guess is sometime from the 1890s-1900s. The ivory page-turner was something else that I added in. I also included the sterling silver dip pen shaft. It&#039;s made by the Sampson Mordan company, which was a silversmithing and writing-instrument manufactury based in London. From the 1820s or 1830s, until the Second World War, S. Mordan &amp; Co produced thousands...millions...of sterling silver (and I believe, gold) dip pens, pencils, combinations, of all sorts of styles and designs. </p><p><br /></p><p>The factory was heavily damaged in 1941. It was blown apart by the German Luftwaffe during the Blitz, and the Mordan Family just couldn&#039;t afford to rebuild after the war, so the company foundered thereafter.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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