General
During 1955, just less than three years before Thomas De La Rue Ltd and Onoto gave the pen manufacturing game away, Onoto released a final series of its writing instruments, being fairly classic in its external design and purposely designed as piston fillers.
Features
Onoto’s, at that time, positioned these fountain pens as follows, priced at the same level were the K3 and K4, with the K4 being called a “conventional” pen. The most expensive was the K2 as reviewed here, about 10-12% dearer. This was justified due to the cost of providing its gold nib with some “extra iridium”. The K1 was only about 5-7% more expensive. Buying our K2 fountain pen on Ebay proved to be an interesting experience, a really good condition as far as body and trim goes…the nib however was another thing altogether….it had no tipping left on it and had been ground to a left oblique italic/stub profile. There was no tipping but there was a small amount of surface left where the tipping pellet had once been attached. John Sorowka in Oxford made it usable by improving the flow and tidying up the front edge. Now we have a Broad left oblique cursive italic K2, not a profile that was available in the range when the pen was new. It seems no one has any spare nibs for the K series, so that was the best, one could do at that moment…
Comments
Over the years the K1-K4 series proved to be very good pens. Unfortunately for Onoto it was too little, and too late as they say in Yorkshire. Very well made pen and recommended for any collection.
Ink used: Parker Quink Blue, France/UK
