Quill

£2.40

Quill Valentine’s Day Card with feather and text ‘Be my valentine and we’ll tickle each other happily ever after.

– Blank inside for your own message
– Printed in the UK on premium card stock
– Supplied with a white envelope

In stock

SKU: C0368 Category:

Description

Quill Valentine’s Day Card with feather or quill and text ‘Be my valentine and we’ll tickle each other happily ever after.

The word quill dates from about the year 1400 when it may have been in the form kil or quiele and referred to a hollow feather or a hollow read. The use of the word to do with pens dates from about the middle of the 16th century. By that time, writing was more general, and so quill came to mean a pen made from a goose quill. It is usually a primary feather that writers use because they are strong enough and big enough for the job.

Making a quill pen that works is an art. The writer cuts a slit from the tip down one side. The hollow inside of the shaft of the quill acts as a reservoir for the ink. The writer presses the quill on the paper and the ink travels up to the nib by capillary action.

The trick is to cut as fine a cut as possible and that does not widen when the writer presses it on the paper. Nor should the slit get wider because of continual wetting and drying with ink. A well-made quill doesn’t need sharpening very often. That way it can be used over and over again.

The word pen is interesting in itself because it refers to the female goose (a cob being the male goose). And the word penknife referred to a small knife for trimming the quill to make a nib to hold ink to use in a pen.

The word pinnacle may also be related to the word pen

SKU: C0368

Quill Valentine's Day Card with feather and text 'Be my valentine and we'll tickle each other happily ever after.
Quill
£2.40