It's well known that, during the last century, the third decade represented one of the best periods for the Italian production of celluloid pens.

In this regard, there were several companies, such as Omas, Tabo, Minerva, Contessa (all them based in Bologna), Aurora, Radius, Astura, Prismatica (based in Turin) Ancora, Tibaldi and Columbus, which had produced high quality and wonderful fountain pens.

On the one hand there are some Italian pen brands which are well known by collectors; on the other, there are some pen companies which still remain less known, although the quality of their writing instruments was very high and despite the fact that they produced fancy pens.

Unfortunately, it's not simple to write about the history of these minor pen companies because their products are hard to find and also for the reason that there is little information published in the most important pen books about them.

Here, I am writing about the history of a less known Italian pen company which produced gorgeous and very well made pens, particularly from 1930 to 1940.

The Omega FP Co.

Figure 1

Unfortunately, there is very little information available concerning the Omega FP company. In 1919 the Verga brothers, Eugenio and Alfredo, founded the Columbus pen company in Milan which is still one of the most important pen makers. Successively, in 1930, Mr. Alfredo Verga founded in Milan another pen company which was named "Omega", like the greek letter ().For the first models they adopted the button-filler ink filling technique, and they had both the section and blind cap made of ebonite. A roller clip was adopted very early on by the company. In particular, on the barrel of the first models appeared to be engraved: "Omega fountain pen co." (written in english), although the "Supernova" name was nor engraved here.

Figure 2

After some years, the company started the production of the "Supernova" models and most of them were engraved: "Omega Supernova Marca Depositata AVM". For information: A) "Omega" was the name company, B) "Supernova" was the model name, C) "Marca Depositata" is similar to "Trade Mark", and D) AVM stands for Alfredo Verga Milano. In particular, "AVM" appears to be engraved within the greek letter (Figure 2 and 3b).

Figure 3b

For the Supernova, the Omega Co. adopted both the button-filler and the lever-filler ink filling techniques. Figures 1, 2, 3a, and 4 show you some models.

Figure 3a

On the basis of my research, Omega's nibs were made both of steel and 10Kt/14Kt solid gold. All Omega's pen had an original Omega nib, and most probably the company did not adopted "warranted" nibs.

Their nibs were also numbered. Of particular interest is the fact that the company used also nibs made of "10 Kt" solid gold, at least I found one, very flexible, installed on a safety overlay model (Figure 5a and b). Omega safety pens were very well made and were probably of German origin. The date of production appears to be engraved on the clip, which is "1937" in this case (Figure 5a).

Figure 5a

Figure 5b

At present, I have no further information about this lesser known Italian pen company. However, it seems that their pens were of high quality like those which were madeby the most famous and prestigious Italian brands.