New York City
23 Maiden Lane 1887-1891
19 Maiden Lane 1901-1907
15-19 Maiden Lane 1908 -1915
10 Cortland St 1916
163 Front St 1920
3 Dey St 1924-1932
Aikin Lambert claimed to
have been in business since 1864. Throughout the 1800s they
produced a wide variety of mechanical pencils, jewelry and gold dip
pens. Their pencils were of the magic style, twist actions and many
were figural taking shapes such as bottles, bells and many others.
They also produced toothpicks, ear spoons and thimbles.
They sold wide selection of gold dip
pens nibs from small to huge and in every style that was in demand.
Many fountain pen companies purchased nibs from them to use in their
pens including Waterman and Wirt. In the late 1800s
they were the agent for Paul Wirt pens. They began selling their own
line of fountain pens in the 1890s. Most of their early pens
were plain or chased black hard rubber with very few red or
red/black mottled pens. They did make many overlay
eyedropper fill pens of high quality. The overlays usually aren’t marked on these
pens. They made a match-stick
filler and offered a slip on clip that could be used to fill the pen by
sliding it down and pushing the ball of the clip into the filling hole of
the barrel. They made a self filler around 1907 that was basically a bulb
filler. Waterman purchased the company at some point in the 1920s
and their pen line basically became a sub-brand of Waterman. In the
1920s their hard rubber pens were almost
identical to Waterman even having riveted clips. Their early celluloid
pens of the 1920s were still good quality pens but in the 1930s the
quality of the line kept going downhill. The plastic pens soon
began to be a very cheap line for Waterman to sell until they finally bled
the name dry. Some of their trademarks include Capitol, Mercantile,
Alco, Lady Dainty, Educator [not to be confused with the Security
Educator] and Beacon. The Beacon name is usually found on their
Stylographic pens. I have seen the name misspelled "Aiken" many times.
Waterman produced some pens that are marked as both an Aikin Lambert and a Waterman product. |
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