In 1940, right on the heels of the introduction of the Parker 51, the Parker Pen Company brought out a fascinating little series of pens and pencils which collectors today call “Striped” or “Wartime” Duofolds. Parker referred to them simply as the “Duofold,” an inexplicable revival of a name which Parker had phased out of use with the introduction of the Vacumatic during the mid-1930s.
These Wartime Duofolds were unique in that each configuration was assigned its own model name: eight distinct models were cataloged by Parker in 1940, and another six models were introduced at some point before the Duofold line was again retired in 1948. With the fountain pens, different features such as the filling system and the presence or absence of a blue diamond on the clip assist with identification. With the pencils, all of them used the same mechanism and none of them had blue diamonds on their clips.
For primary reference sources, the Pen Collectors of America has preserved Parker’s 1940 and 1941 general catalogs. The PCA also includes a shorter, Duofold-specific catalog which provides the most detail about the line, which catalogs and illustrates eight Duofold models, each of which had a matching pencil.
From the top, these are:
1. Duofold Senior;
2. Duofold Senior Ingenue;
3. Duofold Major;
4. Duofold Debutante;
5. The Sacless Duofold or Duofold Junior (depending on which source your read)
6. Sacless Duofold Sub-Deb or Duofold Sub-Deb (same)
7. Sac Duofold Pencil; and
8. Sac Dufold Lady Pencil.
The Duofold was cataloged in three “Laidtone” colors: “blue pearl” (blue), “dusty red” (maroon), and “green and gold” (green). Black was cataloged only in the Sacless or Junior models and the Sac Duofold and Sac Duofold Lady. Finding every model and color is a challenge, and I’m not sure every model was actually produced in every color.
Senior and Senior Ingenue pens were the most expensive in the series, featuring blue diamonds on their clips, the same filling system used on the flagship Vacumatic line, and a tassie on the blind cap (in Vacumatic-speak, we’d call them “double jewel” pens). Here are the pencils I have found:
I’ve shown two examples of the blue Ingenue because they sport different clips.
At this point, a disclaimer: yes, Parker Duofold barrels have a production date code stamped on the lower part, but I’m not going to express any opinion as to when these variations might have been used. All of the magic differentiating Duofold models is on the caps, which are interchangeable, so there’s no way to know eighty years or more later whether any particular cap belongs with any particular barrel – in fact, I doubt Parker even cared that much.
In addition, the clips are easy to swap out. I think at this point, whatever date code is imprinted on a lower barrel is meaningless and cannot be relied on to express any opinions about what’s going on with the top ends. Maybe one clip was used in a specific year, maybe not . . . and maybe one of these clips has been transplanted from another model entirely, such as the Parker Challenger.
Next in the Duofold series are the Major and Debutante models, with their wide, geometric bands - the same band, you might notice, that was used on the later Parker Royal Challenger models (see “The Royal Challenge” on October 12, 2025). In the fountain pens, these were identical to the Senior and Ingenue models, except the blind cap did not have a tassie.
The Debutante, like the Ingenue, can be found with different clip variations.
By far the most numerous of these Wartime Duofolds are those with twin trim bands, and Parker’s own references aren’t consistent in naming them. The more detailed Duofold catalog refers to them as the “Sacless Duofold” and the “Sacless Duofold Sub-Deb.”
However, Parker’s general catalog for 1940 refers to these twin-band models as the “Duofold Junior” and the “Duofold Sub-Deb.“
The Junior and Sub-Deb lines models are the only ones in which I have found examples in all four colors:
Perhaps these are the most common Duofold models because the only difference between them and the significantly more expensive Major and Debutante was the simpler trim bands. The suggested retail price for the Junior was $4.74, a considerable savings over the $6.00 price for a Major or Debutante.
The last and most Spartan of the Duofold fountain pens were the “Sac Duofold” and “Sac Duofold Lady,” which had a thin, plain band and a button filler, just like the original Duofolds of the 1920s and early 1930s. The matching pencils were a little bit cheaper, but other than the trim they were identical to the Sacless models.
That covers everything that was documented in Parker’s Duofold-specific 1940 catalog. Parker’s general catalog for 1940 lists only the Junior and Sub-Deb (twin band) models, and Parker’s 1941 general catalog lists only the Junior (referred to by then as the “Sacless Duofold”), Duofold Sub-Deb, Sac Duofold (or “Visometer” Sac Duofold, for the visulated section) and Sac Duofold Lady.
Then we get into the other models, which require a bit of extrapolation to identify. Consider these, which are fairly plentiful: they have a medium-width band with the Vacumatic-style band (collectors call it the ///\\\/// band for the way it looks):
Sources agree (both Tony Fischier over at Parkerpens.net and Richard Binder’s thorough article on the pens over at Richardspens.com) that these are the later incarnation of the Senior, after the three-piece band was discontinued – but both sources only refer to the large-size fountain pens. If that’s true, I don’t know whether smaller pens and pencils were still called the Ingenue, or if they were all lumped together as the Senior, just offered in two sizes.
This next group has wide “stacked coin” bands, nicknamed because the bands look like . . . well, like a stack of coins.
These bands are the same width as the old Major. Richard Binder refers to a short pen with a black plastic blind cap as simply a Lady Duofold with a “milled jeweler’s band.” Tony Fishier refers to these as the “Man Duofold” in the larger size, but I have not been able to confirm that name.
Then we have these two models:
The upper example, with three thin bands, is something I’ve only found in blue and only in this larger size. Binder doesn’t show one in his article, and Fischier says it was also called the “Man” Duofold and included in the 1940 lineup – I’ve read and reread both of the 1940 catalogs, and I’m really not sure where he is getting either the name or the date.
The last variant to show you is that bottom one, with a “split arrow” Vacumatic clip and a narrower stacked coin band:
Collectors have nicknamed these the “Vacufold,” although some also cling to “Duovac” (because whether it’s a tomato or a tomato is important in some circles). The name comes from their interesting mixture of features: the clip and imprint are Vacumatic, while the material is Duofold. Fishier and Binder both show examples of the pens in red, so these may also be out there in green and in black, too.
As I mentioned earlier, Parker’s date-coded barrels are not reliable for concluding when any of these Duofold pencils were made, given the ease with which parts can be swapped. Exhibit A for this problem is evident when I compare barrel imprints on my the triple-banded “Duofold Man” (or whatever we call it) and my Vacufold. IF the Duofold “Man” was part of the 1940 lineup and IF it has all of its original parts, it should have a Parker Duofold imprint like the top example in this next image:
It doesn’t. It has the same Vacumatic imprint as the Vacufold, and everything I’ve read suggests the Vac imprints were exclusive to the Vacufold. The “Man” does have a 1940 date code, which is consistent with what Fishier wrote . . . for whatever that is worth.
For right now, I’m throwing all that I know about the Wartime Duofold out there in the hopes someone can help fill in some blanks about the six models not shown in Parker’s catalogs – in particular, I’m looking for sources detailing official model names, including whether any 1940-1941 names were changed later in the run, and I’d like confirmation that any examples in colors not shown in this article, whether pens or pencils, are known to exist.
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