Fountain pens got their colour in 1924 — and the material is no longer made in Japan
Until the early 1920s, fountain pen barrels were almost all black: hard rubber could be made in only a narrow range of colours. Then jade green appeared. The material behind it, celluloid, had started out as a substitute for billiard balls.
Looking for something to replace ivory
The trail leads back to Alexander Parkes in England. He patented "Parkesine" in 1862 and took a bronze medal at the London International Exhibition the same year, but the cost of making it in quantity never worked out and his company collapsed in 1868.
John Wesley Hyatt, who carried the idea on in the United States, was after a replacement for the ivory then used for billiard balls. In 1870 he and his brother Isaiah patented a material of nitrocellulose mixed with camphor, and in 1872 Isaiah supplied the name celluloid. The camphor is a plasticiser: it is what makes hard nitrocellulose supple.
1924, when colour reached the barrel
Writing instruments came half a century later. In 1924 Sheaffer put pyroxylin made by DuPont — partially nitrated cellulose — into its fountain pens under the name Radite. They are considered the first mass-produced plastic pens, the jade green model sold so well that by 1925 Sheaffer is said to have held about a quarter of the market. Parker's "Permanite" and other house names for much the same material date from these years too.
A year before it can be cut
It is demanding to work with. Stipula in Italy, which still makes celluloid pens, says the material takes up to twelve months to settle: you are waiting for the camphor inside to leave, and skipping that step means the barrel shrinks later. Cut, rested, cut again — it will not go down a fully automatic line. Above 150°C it also ignites by itself, which is why the plastics that came later displaced it.
Production in Japan ended in 1996
Japan was a major producer for a long time. In 1919 eight companies merged to form Dainippon Celluloid. In 1934 that company spun off its photographic film division as Fuji Photo Film, today's Fujifilm. Celluloid itself was consolidated into a single domestic producer, Daicel, in 1974, and in 1996 production moved to Shanghai, ending manufacture in Japan.
Eleven of them in the records
Of the 3,871 entries in PencilDB with a recorded barrel material, only eleven say celluloid. Most are Wancher's Dream Pen Celluloid, and some of those records read "acetyl cellulose celluloid" — cellulose acetate rather than nitrocellulose, the same name over a different material.
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