It sounds like a murder mystery title but this is a mystery of another kind.
Here is a Bakelite desk accessory that would have been sold at any stationery store across America in the 1930s. It looks like a traditional inkwell, pen holder, and rocker blotter set up, but for one difference, the inkwell is a nonworking replica, a fake, a phony. Why would a company produce such a thing? What use is a non-inkwell? What were they thinking? These are a few of the questions I, as a reseller of old things, ask when procuring and researching products. Finding the answers is fun and an educational part of the job.
For this item the period tells a lot. The 1930s Depression-era thriftiness could be one reason to not have an inkwell; just give customers the look without the additional cost. Perhaps with new plastic materials and great strides in manufacturing, the designers were showing off molding capabilities and using the inkwell motif as a point of pride.
But maybe the producers of this item were feeling the anxiety of change and thought they would include a familiar inkwell even though it wasn’t real or needed. I believe this is the underlying reason. The world was changing quickly at this time and the fountain pen was the new tech of the time. The pen rest and blotter elements were still needed, but the inkwell was obsolete. The dip pen was out of fashion and vanishing for good, but most people adapt and adopt slowly so retaining this familiar, central element made people feel secure. It’s like when we all started using cell phones but kept our landlines for another decade, eventually only for receiving marketers' calls.
This simple object shows a historic change in the way we interacted with each other. No longer were people tied to their desks to write a letter, to communicate—they could be on the go. I find the study of material culture fascinating. It helps us understand how people relate to their things. By examining how objects are made, used, and discarded, researchers—such as archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians—can piece together the stories of ancient civilizations and modern societies alike.
