We’re only just setting up the PigPog Museum of Creativity, but content will be along soon. We’ve been getting our hands on an assortment of old creativity-related things, which we’ll be photographing and trying out (well, either that, of I’ve just got really addicted to buying old pens on eBay, and this is my excuse - either’s good).

Exhibits

(Click the pics to see bigger versions - see the links below to view the actual museum exhibits.)

• Burnham B48 in Black: From a car boot sale find to… What? No idea yet, the story has just begun - you can follow along and see how my fixing attempts go.
• Soho Cadet 120 Film Camera: From the days when switching on meant pulling the bellows out - a camera from the 1930s.
• Pelikan Go! Fountain Pen: A relatively recent fountain pen - Pelikan’s 80s or 90s attempt at capturing the funky youth fountain pen market. The Go! isn’t available any more, so maybe the market never existed.
• 1953 Coronation Pencil: Made at the Pencil Works in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire to commemorate the coronation.
• Sheaffer Touchdown and Snorkel Fountain Pens: The snorkel is the most complex filling mechanism in any fountain pen. Also, the red Saratoga was my first ever attempt at repairing a fountain pen - did I do well?

Coming Soon

Some of the things we have waiting to be catalogued and entered into the PigPog Museum…

• Parker 45: We have several of them, one in the original box. This is a bit of a borderline case - it’s only just gone out of production, and may yet come back, so the current model is perhaps a review, whilst the older ones are definitely museum exhibits.
• Parker 17: I picked one up at a surprisingly low price on eBay, and it’s a wonderful pen - writes really nicely. Not very suitable for my use, as the line is a bit broad, but a nice-looking and reliable pen.
• Parker 51… …pencil: if I ever manage to get a fountain pen version, it’ll go here, but they are far too expensive. If anyone has one they want to donate to the museum, we’d be glad to take it Until then, we have a pencil.
• Parker Arrow: looks much like the modern Vector, but the arrow clip is way more solid, and the whole thing has a kind of 80s retro vibe.
• Parker Slimfold: We have two of these, and they both work well.
• Square Eversharp Pencil: We’ve not even been able to find out what this actually is, but we’ll make a page for it anyway, and maybe someone can help us identify it further. It’s made by Eversharp, and it’s a square cross-section. Looks like it was probably blue, but the paint has mostly worn off.
• “Unique” Pencil: A nice little mechanical pencil - we think Unique was a fairly small British pen maker, but the name makes it difficult to find anything about them. Searching for “unique pencil” finds lots of things, but few of them are pencils made by Unique.
• Mechanorma Graphoplex: A technical pen, similar to a Rotring Rapidograph, but looks more like a Dyson vacuum cleaner. This is another I’ve not been able to find anything much out about, but we’ll put something together about it and see if anyone can help. Only question is - do we ink it and try it out, so we can tell you what it’s like to use, or keep it in the pristine uninked state it seems to be in now?
• Sheaffer Tip-Dip Touchdown in blue. Probably a Cadet, but doesn’t quite match up to the specs I’ve seen for it.
• Lots of Platignum pens.
• ‘Senator’ shorthand pen.
• FujiFilm MX-1200 - our first digital camera.
• Imperial 200 Typewriter - a wordprocessor from the days when backspace meant opening the Tip-Ex bottle.

Other Museums Online

• The Internet Craftsmanship Museum: Examples of great craftsmanship from all around the world.
• Canon Camera Museum: Canon’s own museum for their cameras.
• Leadholder.com: The Drafting Pencil Museum. Far too fascinating if you’re a bit of a pencil geek.