Shapely and bronzed, this steel nib manufactured by I.D.Belcher & Co. of Birmingham is the kind of nib that Bob Cratchit might have used if he’d still been working for Scrooge in the late Victorian era.
It’s scratchy enough to offer a hint of feedback from the surface of the paper and to give a sharp etched-looking line but even with that sharp point it flows well. It might help that I was using the smoother flowing Noodler’s Ink instead of the Winsor & Newton Indian Ink that I used in previous tests. It occurred to me that the vintage nibs that I’ve been using probably weren’t designed for use with viscous Indian ink.
Outside the Box
The eagle-eyed amongst you might spot a small creature – a booklouse I guess – trundling along and heading down into the spiral binding of my sketchbook when I’m drawing the fourth or fifth nib outside the box. I’d spotted this little creature crawling amongst the nibs in the bottom of the box when I emptied out the contents. There’s a small ecosystem in there!
Drawing Close
My thanks as always to the people who made the music track available on YouTube. If it wasn’t for CouldB Entertainment making the track Drawing Close available, you’d have to listen to my scratchy pen and, if you drew close enough, the patter of the tiny feet of the booklouse.
Proscoptera – the booklice and barklice – have been around since the Permian period when the early dinosaurs first appeared in the fossil record.
Link; CouldB Entertainment