Translation of Chinese pen
June 3, 2014 7:35 PM
I recently got an old fountain pen marked in Chinese. Please help translate the pen. Links to photos and more information below the fold.
This was bought at a pen collectors show recently. The seller had no knowledge about it, except that it had been in their own collection for about a decade. So it's at least a decade old, and is probably older than that. The pen is more interesting to me for being unusual rather than old or precious. In fact it seems neither old nor precious.
I assume the two main characters and logo are the company marks. At the very least, knowing the name of the pen manufacturer will help me learn more about the pen's background.
The barrel has two lines of text. The upper line is a logo glyph flanked by two characters. The lower line is a row of eight more hanzi characters.
The nib is marked with the same two characters flanking the logo on the barrel, and four more characters below it.
The clip has the same two characters that are above the logo on the nib.
And finally, here is the pen, next to a German pen for scale.
This was bought at a pen collectors show recently. The seller had no knowledge about it, except that it had been in their own collection for about a decade. So it's at least a decade old, and is probably older than that. The pen is more interesting to me for being unusual rather than old or precious. In fact it seems neither old nor precious.
I assume the two main characters and logo are the company marks. At the very least, knowing the name of the pen manufacturer will help me learn more about the pen's background.
The barrel has two lines of text. The upper line is a logo glyph flanked by two characters. The lower line is a row of eight more hanzi characters.
The nib is marked with the same two characters flanking the logo on the barrel, and four more characters below it.
The clip has the same two characters that are above the logo on the nib.
And finally, here is the pen, next to a German pen for scale.
"Jinxing" (金星) is the name of the manufacturer. I guess a literal translation for the name of the company could also be "Golden Star".
The nib says "50% pure gold" (五成赤金).
The barrel says "Produced by the Shanghai Jinxing Pen Factory" (上海金星笔厂出品).
According to this site, the company "was started in Shanghai in 1932 by three Korean brothers, Kim Seong-keon, Seong-mun, and Seong-bin. They gradually sold the firm to Chinese interests and it became a fully Chinese-owned company."
posted by icemill at 7:59 PM on June 3, 2014
The nib says "50% pure gold" (五成赤金).
The barrel says "Produced by the Shanghai Jinxing Pen Factory" (上海金星笔厂出品).
According to this site, the company "was started in Shanghai in 1932 by three Korean brothers, Kim Seong-keon, Seong-mun, and Seong-bin. They gradually sold the firm to Chinese interests and it became a fully Chinese-owned company."
posted by icemill at 7:59 PM on June 3, 2014
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posted by LobsterMitten at 7:57 PM on June 3, 2014