The Pelikan Pen Company
The roots of Pelikan can be dated to 1832, when Carl Hornemann started producing paints. In 1871 he sold his business to Gunther Wagner. Wagner used his own family crest, a Pelican feeding four chicks, as the company logo. The Pelikan factory produced a huge number of stationary products. They started studying fountain pens in 1925 and were determined to improve on the pens in the market which relied on filling the barrel with an eyedropper or using a bladder. By 1929 Pelikan had developed and introduced the world’s first piston-filling pen!
The Pelikan 100 sold well, despite the Great Depression. Other models followed, all using the same differential piston filling mechanism. Export models, and models produced in Pelikan factories located outside of Germany, produced an array of colors and styles not sold in Germany, many of which are very rare today.
Among the rarer Pelikans are pens marked “Emege.” These were pens made for export to Portugal. The name of the Portuguese licensee was Monteiro Guimaraes. His initials are “M” (eme) and “G” (ge). He was tired of fixing pens under warrantee which were not bought from him, so he had “Emege” imprinted on all the pens he imported so he could differentiate between those he sold and those he didn’t. Among the pens he imported into Portugal was the “Magnum,” the only oversize 100N known to have been made.
Pelikan continues to manufacture a variety of regular and limited edition writing instruments, which are still thought of as among the highest quality available in the market.
