I decided to launch this site about Wearever fountain pens to promote interest in a pen company that is very underappreciated in the world of fountain pen collectors. I think the first thing that needs to be said about Wearever fountain pens is that  they are not high quality pens. But, they were never intended to be so I will not try to build any illusions about them here. However, Wearever was a very prolific manufacturer of pens and they actually were pioneers in many phases of pen manufacturing and design.

The founder of Wearever Pens, David Kahn, was a Jewish immigrant who came to this America in the 1800s. By trade, he was a engraver.  Today, we would simply call him a jewelry designer / maker. As such, he often received orders for ornate pencil cases.  Either he enjoyed this particular work or he simply realized it's potential to increase his sales & eventually  decided to make and sell his own pencils. Pencils naturally led him to pens.

The first known use of the name Wearever was around 1918 on black hard rubber fountain pens. These, of course, were not anything special and were not of a very high quality. Why? Because, in those days, fountain pen manufacturing was a very competitive field. Everyone wanted to be the biggest & the best.  They wanted to create the fanciest & the prettiest. While all this was going on, David Kahn, being the business man he was, quietly found that there was great opportunity for someone to sell pens at the low end of the pricing scale.

During the 1920s, Wearever produced flattop pens with gold plated nibs that sold for a fraction of the price that Parker and the other "big" companies were selling their pens for.  Most Wearever pens were sold through catalogues and to dime stores like Woolworths.  Kahn knew that what he needed to do was keep his costs down and sell pens that looked like the best sellers of the day yet sold for about 1/4 of the price of those "big" name pens.  To keep prices to a minimum the pens were seldom individually priced or boxes. Instead, pens were sold on cardboard displays or in bulk boxes.  Quality did improve as the years went by, but it was never a goal to make a great pen.

The true name of the company was David Kahn Inc.. Wearever Pens was simply one of his most famous lines. In the 1920s, Kahn decided to sell a slightly better grade of pen and named it the Pioneer. Although similar in appearance and quality, these pens were offered with a  choice of gold plated or 14K solid gold nibs. The celluloid caps and barrels improved in quality throughout the 1920s.   During this time, you'll notice a better grade of rods & tubes being used.  The earlier pens had a porous finish & were more prone to warping.  Some of these 1920s pen, both Pioneer & Wearever, had great colors - particularly the flattop celluloid pens .  The trim was still gold washed or plated but the pens were starting to look good, In fact, the Pioneer pens with gold nibs could actually (well, SOMETIMES) write as good as some of the more expensive pens they were trying to look like.

Kahn's low costs fountain pens and the profit that could be made selling them was starting to be noticed by other companies. Soon he began taking orders from catalogue companies and chain stores to make pens that would be sold under their own "brand" names.  Because the pens that he manufactured during this time had no barrel ore nib imprints, this was very easy for him to do.  All another company had to do was to meet Kahn's minimum order requirement & he would mark the clips with any name they wanted to sell the pens under.  With very little time or effort (i.e. extra expense), he had a product ready for them to sell. The companies that ordered these pens ranged from dime stores to other fountain pen companies.  

It was during the late 1920s that David Kahn heard about the new injection molding machines being developed in Germany.  He not only traveled to Germany to investigate this new process but he also purchased the machines & brought them back to the US with him.  Wearever Pen became one of the first or quite possibly THE first US pen company to produce an injection molded pen. This was (you guessed it) a cost cutting move but it was also a major step in pen design. Previously pens were made from rods or tubes, but now new colors and shapes could be produced quickly and at a lower cost.

An injection molding machine could produce a cap and a barrel in a few seconds. Before this a lathe operator had to spend a few minutes making these each of these parts. In no time at all, Wearever was making pens and parts for other pen companies.   The smaller pen companies that were unwilling or unable to buy injection molding equipment soon found that the buying public wanted streamlined pens which were very difficult to produce from rods & tubes.  This was the end of the celluloid rod era which lasted from 1924 to around 1930. [This does not mean the end of celluloid pens.  Many pens were still made of celluloid strips wound in a spiral and bonded into tubes.  But, that's ANOTHER story]. 

The 1930s were a time of huge production at Wearever.  The use of 14K gold nibs became more common place during this time and Wearever pens reached a new level of quality.  The trim was still low quality but they were solid pens that were suited for everyday use.  Although they were now offering gold nibs, Wearever was one of the only companies to offer a choice of nib. The buyer could usually get the same model pen with a gold plated nib - of course, at a lower price.  This made a big difference to the buying public.

In the late 1930s, Wearever also developed a very interesting fountain pen nib. It was a gold nib but it was held in a steel shroud or frame. This nib would justify advertising the pen as having a gold nib but at the same time would use the smallest amount of gold possible.  Gold was a huge expense to pen companies. Labor was not.  Making a 2 part nib involving extra labor was still cheaper than using more gold.

It was also during the 1930s that David Kahn wondered if "America's Sweetheart", child star Shirley Temple might possibly be able to help him sell pens the way she helped Ideal Toy Co. sell dolls.  Soon, Shirley signed a contract that would give her a royalty from every pen sold with her name on it. These pens and pencils were short colorful pens with steel nibs and "Shirley Temple" marked on the clip and barrel. They were sold through Woolworths and the other outlets that handled Wearever pens.  By all accounts, they sold and sold well, although accurate counts are impossible to find today.

The 1940s brought some of the best Wearever pens.   Pens like the Zenith and the Pacemaker were often individually boxed and priced - something Wearever had avoided for decades. These pens were offered with a good full size 14K gold nib and were solid pens. The trim was upgraded from a gold wash to gold plate. A button filler was also added to the line.  These were probably the highest quality collectable pens they ever made.

The introduction, in 1945, of the ballpoint  pen by Reynolds did not go unnoticed by Wearever.  They went after the ballpoint market with the same strategy these used with fountain pens - sell for less. The original ballpoint pens marketed by Reynolds and later Sheaffer and Eversharp retailed between $12.50 and $15.00. That was a small fortune in 1945.  Early ballpoints were not dependable and the public initially rejected them due to their "problems".  

Even so, the pen companies knew that the future of the industry was in ballpoint pens -  if they could ever get them to work right - and, quite simply, Wearever put more effort into developing their ballpoint line than the other "big" companies did.  Within a year Wearever came out with a ballpoint pen that they could sell for $3.00!  Again, Wearever pioneered machinery to make ballpoints just as they had pioneered injection molding for fountain pens. The quality of their ballpoint pens improved greatly in just the first few years. Throughout the process, they continually developed cost cutting procedures AND perfected their product at the same time.

The fountain pen industry was severely affected by the introduction of dependable ballpoints in the 1950s. The fountain pen companies that were still in business turned to selling cheaper pens. This "flawed theory" that selling cheaper pens would be the way to survive is was actually killed most of the fountain pen companies. Parker and Sheaffer took over the selling of high quality pens, Wearever had the low cost pen market and it seems like the other surviving pen companies just faded away.

The Wearever company was handed down from David Kahn to his sons and eventually to his grandson. Production was moved from the North Bergen, New Jersey plant to Deer Lake, Pennsylvania in 1964.  Dixon Pencil Co. purchased the Deer Lake plant in 1987 and continued the production of mechanical pencils there until the year 2000 when they moved production to Mexico.