Whitman Style King and Style Ace Desk Sets

A desk set comprised a pen and a desk base with a socket into which the pen was inserted for dipping or parking. Considered separately from the pen, the base was often called a fountain inkwell or fountain inkstand, or sometimes a reservoir base. With these desk sets one still had to dip the pen, but less than one would dip true dip pens. And, depending on usage style, one might not have to dip one’s pen at all. Pick up the pen, write the note, then park the pen again. The pen was always ready to write and held more ink than an ordinary dip pen.  This setup avoided excess ink, dust, and other kinds of crude on the nib.

For a comprehensive article on “One-Dip Desks Set” visit this link for Richard Binder Fountain Pens: One-Dip Desk Sets • RichardsPens.com

The D. C. Alvin Company, Inc., of Boston, Massachusetts manufactured one of these desk sets. From the article:

“We have been unable to learn much about the company beyond its founding in 1949 with brothers Alvin and Barry Steinberg as president and secretary, respectively. The company ceased operation in 1983 but was not registered as inactive until 2019. Around 1960, as shown by a flyer that it mailed to the U.S. Coast Guard office in Long Beach, California (damaged by fire in a railway mail car), D. C. Alvin was wholesaling the Whitman Style King and Style Ace desk sets. The inkwell on page 2 of the flyer is a Style King, but it is also unmistakably a Carter’s New Stylewriter. The only difference between the two appears to be that the pasteboard bottom cover on the Style King had D. C. Alvin’s own information printed on it instead of Carter’s name and model identification.

The Style King wholesaled for 94¢ and included an elliptical two-ounce bottle of Carter’s ink, the same bottle that had been sold with the New Stylewriter, for use as its reservoir.

Wholesaling for $1.04, the Style Ace, shown below in the image from page 3 of the D. C. Alvin flyer, was a step up from the Style King. The base featured a self-contained reservoir of some type, giving it a lower profile that lent it a more modern appearance than the Style King at a wholesale price only 10¢ higher.”