General
Harry Burnham established the Burnham pen company in England, around 1920. Burnham produced a large number of fountain pens aimed at the mass market. It sadly, finally closed some 40 years later in the 1960s. The nib unit of the B48 pen is made of stainless steel and is gold plated. It is the original Burnham gold plated type, identified here as No. B45. However, it’s seems unlikely that a small manufacturer like Burnham would make their own nibs.
Features
This Burnham B48, is one of the most popular pens from the Burnham collection produced in the mid-late 1940s. It is finished in a mottled warm brown, silver and black with gold filled single ring trim. The colours are still vibrant and the pen is in overall good condition considering its age, with only minor wear marks. At 130 mm when capped and 157 mm when posted it is a good size pen, very well balanced and certainly a comfortable writer. When fountain pens with interchangeable nibs appeared, the B48 soon adopted this feature using a screw-in M7.2 imperial equivalent, which should in theory be compatible with Osmiroid and those earlier made by Esterbrook.
Comment
The pen fills well and writes with a smooth but firm line. Its nib is marked as Broad with Iridium point, but in today’s nomenclature it is more like approx. 0.70 mm popular standard of the usual medium size.
Ink used: Parker Quink Blue, France/UK
