Featured Sterling Stamp Roller Something

Not exactly sure what this item is. Measures 3 inches wide. Has a half round pink-ish cotton-ish fabric-ish bottom. Whatcha think?

 

Ink blotter

 

Faster than me as usual.

 

Woodside sterling co.

 

Would have been part of a desk set.

Debora

 

Why does ink need blotting?

 

The old kind

 

Until the introduction and roll-out of the BIC ballpoint pen in the 1950s and 1960s, everyone used fountain pens which began to be mass-produced in the 1880s. They required both filling and blotting. And before that, people used dip pens which, by definition didn't require filling, but also required blotting.

Debora

 

Unless someone younger borrowed Vitry's user ID, he's been around long enough to know that.

 

Apologies. I if I mis-understood his comment.

Debora

 

I get your point...but considering he didn't know what the thing was....it stands to reason...he was unaware of what it was used for, also...!

just sayin....

 

Vitry is 57, so I think he was born when ballpoint pens were already used at schools.
I learned to write with an old-fashioned pen, and a desk with an in-built inkwell. Later I got a fountain pen and ballpoint set.

 

I had and used a desk blotter and fountain pens.

 

Those early ballpoints could leak like a sieve as well.

 

Just for clarification for Vitry, ink dried slowly so to avoid smudging one would either have to let it sit before handling it or sprinkle the page with a fine sand. Around mid 1800's blotting paper was invented but many still used sand especially in England and Europe long after that. That one may have never been used or the blotting paper replaced which had to be done from time to time.

 

Fountain pen collector & user of many years here.

Yes, we still use rocker blotters. Yes you can still buy the paper.

I've got a lifetime's supply of the stuff in my closet. Enough to paper my entire bedroom wall, and the ceiling to boot.

What you've got there is a very handsome silver model. People pay a lot of money of those things. Most people just have the simple wooden or brass ones, but they were made of all kinds of things.

I have a Montblanc rocker blotter on my desk.

 

LOL, thanks for all the fun comments

 

LOL, I was trying to keep that a secret!