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An extremely rare and aesthetically superior tapered barrel fountain pen, black hard rubber with gold-filled overlay and screw-on cap, highly-repoussé floral pattern, with vest pocket clip and chain affixed to cap, barrel imprinted "HOUSTON PEN CO. / SIOUX CITY, IOWA". 157mm (not including cap ring). No. 2 Houston & Co. heart-vent nib, quite springy and flexible. Excellent condition, cartouche beautifully engraved "R.B." in elegant Old English script with small lightning bolts in place of periods. One of the finest tapered eyedroppers ever made, this design is the only known example.

The Houston Pen Co. was founded in Tracy, Minnesota by William A. Houston in or around 1908. The company moved to Sioux City, Iowa around 1912, and continued to produce pens there until Mr. Houston relocated to Los Angeles in 1926.  Little else is known about Mr. Houston and his company, except that the overlay pens that he produced are both very rare and of exceptional design quality. The Houston Pen Co.'s overlays are particularly prized by collectors of early American eyedroppers, and the present example is almost certainly the best design that the company produced.  The highly-raised floral overlay is equal in quality to the best creations of Parker and Waterman, and the tapered design gives the pen a wonderfully streamlined and dynamic profile. No other examples of this pen are recorded.

Provenance: Formerly in the Richard H. "Dick" Johnson Collection. Mr. Johnson was one of the first and best collectors of fine vintage pens, and he had a huge influence on the hobby in its incipient days. His breadth and depth of knowledge are legendary in vintage fountain pen circles. Mr. Johnson avidly collected Houston pens, and this is said to have been his best one.

Taper cap enthusiasts are encouraged to see Glen B. Bowen's fascinating cover feature, "The Elegant Taper Cap," in the Spring 2018 edition of The Pennant magazine (Vol. XXXVI, No. 1, pp. 28-31). In the article Mr. Bowen describes the proliferation of taper cap pens that followed Waterman's 1897 "Taper Holder" fountain pen, an innovation that provided "better balance for the writer, leading to less hand fatigue". The article illustrates a number of the rarest examples, although the present lot, being the only known example, is not pictured.