Another vintage drafting set that I had never seen before the big supply cabinet clean up at the Art Center: a 4-pen set of Standardgraph Stano-Mat technical pens (well actually one of the pens is obviously missing given the empty slot in the pen tray). This is the first example of a pen brand that I have come across that uses color coding for the entire body of each pen (cap and barrel sport matching colors). The orange Stano-pen is the smallest with a 1.0 mm (3 1/2) nib. The beige Stano-pen features a 1.2 mm (4) nib. The gray Stano-pen is the largest with 2.0 mm (6) nib. The bright orange pen case would be a nice match to a Rhodia pad. From the pen markings and date printed in its instructions sheet, this set was manufactured in Germany around 1977.
In addition to the most overt color coding of its pen sizes, these technical pens feature humidor caps (light blue hygroscopic pads that are meant to be pre-moistened and prevent ink from drying in the pen tips) and hollow barrels with a hexagonal pen point key on the end (similar to the Staedtler Mars Matic pen barrels). The underside of the removable orange pen stand is stuffed with dense hygroscopic white material presumably also meant to be pre-moistened and keep the uncapped pen points from drying during long drafting sessions.Given the little information available online for this set, you can view its well-illustrated instructions sheet front and back in my Flickr photostream.
The pen tray also features a couple of empty slots covered with stickers of the compass and template adaptors that oddly enough were not customarily included as part of the starting drafting gear of most technical pen sets. Can't imagine the reason for that other than some marketing ploy or a scheme to drive revenue with the sale of additional accessories sold separately. If anybody knows the actual reason or have other plausible theories to offer for this technical pen marketing quirk, please leave a comment explaining it.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment