Lovely Lady’s Inkwell

Before my friend V moved to Casa Dorinda she sent me a picture of an inkwell that’s been in her family since 1896. She wondered about it for years, and wanted to know the value. Before I get to the money part…WHAT is an inkwell?

In the old days people in business had large desks. Efficiency became an important part of the desk top, not the ‘desktop.’ My spellcheck insists I need to spell desk top as one word! Today people of the Computer age believe no desk top existed before the desktop….but it DID. That desk top included physical implements, a beautiful set that helped you handwrite your documents.

Important Tools Included An Inkwell

Those tools ranged in number from eleven to thirty. An inkwell sometimes held up to three or more colors of ink; RED to mark importance, and of course black, and more.

A blotter, heavy porous papers, covered a three foot surface of the desk. Those needed an anchor at both ends, generally decorative bronze or brass, called ‘blotter ends.’

The desk top also needed a loose paper rack for stationary, a pen tray because pens leaked if not put in a tray, a rocker blotter. See, once you wrote—‘composed’—something on paper, you MUST use a blotter to soak up the extra ink. Other implements included a utility box for paper clips, a calendar frame, a notepad holder, and a letter opener.

In the past a business deal necessitated handwriting. When I see how folks today run their office from their cellphone, I remember that a real desk with implements seemed highly important. The desk set became a central feature of any businessperson’s desk, and, moreover, comprised all the elements above.

NO ONE writing business in the dates earlier than the 1910s, especially during 1890–1905, did so without such “showy” sets.

Part of a Set

A LONE inkwell DID not exist. In fact, we see a monogram on the top of V’s inkwell, par for the course, because these desk sets were gifts in the BEST families. “AHE” it says. This inkwell went with a set for a female ancestor of V’s evident by the delicate blown glass base with tiny air bubble designs.

The inkwell is English, but blown in the Italian manner. Those little air bubbles originated with the Italian glass blowers of Murano in the 16th century. English glass blowers learned from them, or, in many cases Italian glass blowers came to the Continent.

A desk set, all about handwritten letters, was de rigor, especially before the typewriter came on the scene in the 1910s.

Valuation of V’s Inkwell in Context

I focus now on the period of her inkwell 1890-1905, and evaluate other inkwells of the period to see where V’s fits. A complete top of the line Tiffany desk set, with eleven to thirty elements, today in bronze are worth $3,000-30,000.

In 1919 one could have purchased for one’s wife, who only wrote letters to family, a lovely Lalique inkwell in black deco inspired glass. Those today are worth $3,000.

Earlier than the Deco inkwell, an American Brilliant cut glass inkwell, with a sterling cap, also monogrammed, today is worth $600.

People with forward design taste in 1910 purchased a Tiffany or Steuben Favrile glass inkwell, which might have been blown in colored glass. Today those are extremely valuable to inkwell collectors (YES THEY EXIST) at $2,000 and up.

Tiffany, because they loved exotic patterns in bronze, might have sold you in 1903 a ZODIAC pattern motif on your inkwell.

If you were interested in Phrenology, the study of the shape of the head to tell a malcontent’s pathology, you might have bought a milk glass head shaped inkwell, on which a forehead snapped open, and those today sell for $2,000 and up.

I put the value of V’s lovely little lady’s inkwell at $600.