In Production

Happy Thanksgiving!

Since 2018, when our Google overlords wiped all the images from the first 700 or so articles of this blog, I've been reducing the articles I post here to print form. The articles in this latest series started in August, and it didn't take long to post enough material to fill up an eighth volume; I was catching up after a four-year absence, so these were mostly longer articles with more images than in previous volumes. I've started playing around with the cover design, and here's the rough concept I've sent off to the designers:

If the layout goes as planned, I'm hoping Volume 8 will be off to the publisher by mid-January or so, and the physical books should be available in time for the Baltimore Show in early March. As in past Volumes, I'll have a certain number printed for direct distribution here, and we'll set up a print-on-demand version at IngramSpark so that the book version is at least available in the future.

The ones I'll have printed will be through TPS (Total Printing Solutions), the folks who did the Eversharp book for me. They were great to work with, and they made a quality product with excellent paper, printed endsheets, and great attention to detail. 

As for the Ingram version . . . let's just say Ingram has found more ways to disappoint me than I ever knew existed. Bad customer service, inferior product. The only reason I use them is because they have a monopoly on the distribution market.

If you are thinking about getting the print version of Volume 8, I think you will be much happier with the version TPS will make for me. So I have an accurate head count, let me know you would like one if you haven't bought one from me before by emailing me at jveley@jonathanveley.com. I anticipate that the cover price will be around $80 or so, and I'll post an update to confirm the final price when I have the final page count and the TPS estimate.

Why buy the book if you can read these articles online, you might ask - 

1. Nothing on the Internet is forever. If for whatever reason the blog is no longer available online, this will be it.

2.  I'll be editing, refining, and updating these online articles in the course of preparing them for print. Several articles will include updates that won't be posted online and will only be included in the print version.

3.  The print volumes include a detailed cumulative index, so you can better navigate the 1,600 articles that have been published here since 2011.

4.  You'll be initiated into the "Order of the Leadheads," and the version I sell here will include a signed sticker for inside the front cover with your assigned number in the Order. Once you are in the Order, your number is yours for any of my future books -- a lot of Knights have gotten very attached to their numbers. 

5.  Print books are dying off as society increasingly looks for fast and free answers online. I, for one, will die on this hill -- in my opinion, if there is any group of people left who still support printed books, it is a community like ours that celebrates the art of writing. 

So, let me know if you want to reserve a copy of Volume 8 and please -- if you have comments, corrections, or additional information for any of the articles in this series, drop me a line.

Once this volume is done, I know I'll eventually get the itch, and I'll be back with more articles. In the meantime, enjoy your family, eat some turkey, and I'll see you again soon.

This Marvelous Human Endeavor

Nearly everything I acquire these days is brought to me by friends at pen shows or comes from someone who has stumbled across this blog and emailed me. When I am out on the prowl at antique shows and malls, I rarely find anything that interests me; it sometimes seems like we are reaching a singularity in which all the pens and pencils are already in the hands of collectors. 

Imagine my elation when Janet and I walked into an antique mall we had not visited for some time in September, and the first showcase inside the door looked like this:

I asked the person working the desk to let me have a look – might as well bring the whole box up to the counter, I told her, because this might take a while. Most of it wasn’t worth buying, but there were a few things that were reasonably priced. I still probably overpaid, but it’s hard to maintain interest in the thrill of the chase if you never catch anything.

The top one is another of those Hicks snail-patterned pencils; nothing to write home about, but it’s clean and people like these at pen shows. The next two items in this little haul are a pair of Tiffany ballpoints. They aren’t the prettiest – that’s Exhibit A for the premise that Tiffany-marked stuff is like Ohio State memorabilia (put that name on a dried out dog turd and they would sell like hotcakes). Still . . . the two patterns were nice to buy together, and they aren’t bad additions to the Tiffany section at the museum, which now also includes a Tiffany magic pencil that came from Rob Bader’s Victorian haul.

The next one, in floral-engraved sterling, has a hallmark near the nose - an F in a shield. That denotes Fairchild & Co., the last incarnation of the firm founded by Leroy Fairchild, as carried on by his son Harry from 1905 until 1927 (see “Three of a Kind . . . Maybe Four” on March 23, 2018: Volume 5, page 199). You don’t see those often, especially in the wild, and I didn’t have one like it. 

Next is something I don’t normally chase; it’s unmarked, but I just liked it. The three colored buttons on top indicate the lead colors in the three pencils nested inside.

That had me going back through the Victorian haul from Rob Bader looking for something I thought wound up in my pile, and it did. Rob’s is also unmarked, which is why it wound up in inventory rather than the museum . . . 

Two’s a coincidence and three’s a collection, as Janet always says. Dammit, there’s no point putting these back in inventory, because I know myself . . . when the next one comes along, I know I’ll bite and I’ll drive myself crazy trying to find these two again. They now reside in the “unmarked but worthy” wing at the museum, with a space next to them for the day I know will eventually come.

That blue plastic fountain pen with what looks like a modern plastic clip is much older and better than it looks: it’s a “Graphomatic,” made by the Sager Barrel O’ Ink guys. I have wanted an example of my own since Richard Binder allowed me to use an image of one in his collection in a piece I wrote about a Graphomatic double-ended pencil – see “A Name Closer to Right” (April 15, 2020: Volume 6, page 48).  

Then there’s that Eversharp lookalike at bottom - it’s actually a Shur-Rite, and even though it’s really clean, I’ve got a couple others just like it at home.

I had to have it anyway, even though it was a bit overpriced, because of what was on the top: “Awarded by L.C. Smith & Bros. Typw. Co.,” it reads.

With my little pile of goodies waiting in my bin at the checkout counter, Janet and I explored the rest of the mall and I found . . . absolutely nothing. The thrill of the chase was losing all of its thrill as we trudged along, and I began to have an existential moment wondering what the heck I’m doing. I’ve chased these things for more than twenty five years now, and I’ve got more of them than I’ll ever have time to write about, much less use – even if I wrote one word with each one for my next book.

Maybe that’s an exaggeration. I write a lot.

Whenever I have these thoughts, it makes me remember something I first heard in 1995 that has dogged me ever since. That was when I first watched what I consider to be the finest hour of television that ever aired: it was an episode of The X-Files titled “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” - season three, episode four for those of you who track that sort of thing.

Peter Boyle (best remembered as Ray Romano’s dad in Everybody Loves Raymond) guest starred as Clyde Bruckman, an insurance salesman with a unique but very limited gift: he knew how and when any particular person would die.

As Mulder and Scully investigated the murders of several fortune tellers, Mulder tried to tap Bruckman’s gifts by taking him to the scene of the latest crime. There, standing in the midst of the victim’s extensive collection of dolls, Mulder asks Bruckman if he had any insights into what motivated the killer. Bruckman’s response has haunted me.

“Why does anyone do the things they do?” Bruckman replies. “Why do I sell insurance? I wish I knew. Why did this woman collect dolls? What was it about her life? Was it one specific moment where she suddenly said, ‘I know... dolls.’ Or was it a whole series of things? Starting when her parents first met that somehow combined in such a way that in the end, she had no choice but to be a doll colle...” 

With that, Bruckman has a vision, and he trails off mid-sentence.

I reached the end of that aisle in the antique mall as I thought once again about Clyde Bruckman’s words, musing as I have done countless times why I was doing what I was doing. This time, the tumblers of the universe aligned at that precise moment; I rounded the corner, and I found something.

It wasn’t a pencil. It was my explanation.

There, laying in the center of an antique table, was a coffee table book titled The Baseball Companion. It was opened to display what was written inside the front cover: 

“Scott - 

“Since I can’t always be your ‘companion,’ maybe this book can substitute and remind you of the good times we had playing catch in the backyard . . . . . and how that helped you go on to be a champion with the A’s (and with everything else that you have accomplished)!

Love,

Dad 

8/3/95

“P.S. Remember, God will be your “companion” always, and will keep you a champion -”

With that, just like Clyde Bruckman also did in 1995, “Dad” trails off . . . leaving me standing there thirty years later, in the middle of an antique mall trying to hold back the tears.

That’s it. That’s always been it.

Whether or not I have always known it, my fascination with writing tools and with writing about those tools has been a celebration of the miracle that is the act of writing itself. “Scott’s” father dragged a stick with a bit of ink in it across a piece of paper thirty years ago, and the shapes he made with that stick planted forceful and visceral emotions into my head that remain every bit as powerful today.

Writing is powerful. Whether it’s a pen, or a pencil, or an old typewriter, or a laptop – the tool doesn’t matter, but the raw and awe-inspiring capabilities these things have in the hands of the humans who wield them does. Sometimes that power is used for good, and sometimes it is used for evil. Nearly always, what is good or evil is mostly a matter of perspective.

We are born, we tamp down the earth beneath our feet as we walk around this little round rock for a while, and then we are gone. To paraphrase comedian Randy Feltface in “Randy Writes a Novel” (another hour well worth spending), life is just that insignificant hyphen in between birth and death. We leave no trace of what we thought, who we loved, or who we didn’t. For better or for worse, all of that ends when we do.

Unless we write.

I write books about pencils, tools that by themselves are of no real consequence. When I write an article, there’s something more to it than the pencil itself, and thanks to Scott’s father I can finally articulate why. Telling you these stories connects me with you – and your children, and your children’s children – in a way that nothing else in life can do. Every anecdote that is preserved passes on human thoughts and emotions from which future generations may benefit and learn in some small way. 

It doesn’t matter whether you agree with me or whether the words I write please you, anger you, enlighten you, or bewilder you. It is a marvelous human endeavor that I can press buttons on a machine and no matter the distance, no matter the decade – you feel something.

I didn’t buy that copy of The Baseball Companion, as much as I wanted to bring it home. To extrapolate on Clyde Bruckman, imagine all of the things that had to occur for that instant to happen, at exactly the right time. Whether by design or by an incredible series of coincidences, I was given this amazing gift and I do not believe that gift was only for me. I left that book right where it was in the hopes that others would see it and would be as moved as I was – surprised by the unexpected emotions welling up inside them as they experience an inexplicable and intimate connection with a person they have never met. Maybe that in turn would provide them with a greater appreciation for the connections they have with those in their own lives. 

Maybe they will go home, pick up the phone, and call their own fathers - or their children, or whoever else is important to them.

Maybe now that I’ve told you this story, you will, too. 

As Good As It Gets

I promised yesterday that I’d be back with more information about Parker’s Vest Pocket (or “golf”) pencils. Back I am . . . with a mic drop moment from the Ohio Pen Show.

I move a little slower than I used to these days, conserving my energy rather than running around like a madman – even though I still have a bottle of Jameson on me. Were it not for the kindness of friends, I would have missed what Mike Conway brought in the door that Thursday morning in Columbus; fortunately, Nik Pang was right there when it arrived, and he made a point to acquire it and bring it down to offer it to me.

The story, according to Mike, is that Ruth Reuter was a Parker employee, and “Parker Desk Set” suggests there’s a desk pen and base inside. The “BDS,” however, indicates this is better than that – much, much better, especially for us pencil guys. I’m assuming the letters BDS stand for “Bridge Desk Set.” Inside the cardboard sleeve is a box containing four other boxes, each branded for one of the four card suits.

And inside each of those boxes were four perfectly preserved little desk pencil bases for the four suits, accompanied by a Parker Vest Pocket pencil.

Fortunately, I had learned my lesson at DC about not bringing enough cash, so all I needed to know from Nik was how much of it he wanted. For me, this concluded years of searching: in “The Silent Underbidder” (August 11, 2012: Volume 1, page 300), I told the story of how Joe Nemecek won a set like this at the Triangle Pen Show auction that year. Here is Joe’s set, photographed during that auction:

No, I wasn’t really the underbidder – we agreed that Joe would chase the set, because he’s a bigger Parker fan than I am. If he won, and I told him to be sure that he did, I said I would purchase his less complete set to help him defray the cost. Joe did win, and I did buy Joe’s. At the time I thought to myself, how hard can it be to complete the set?

Hard. Damn hard. In fact, I was only able to find a club suit in the box, and it took a few months to find another black and two red pencils, which presented its own unexpected challenges – there’s a few different variations of these pencils, and it drove me nuts trying to find all four that were exactly the same (see “Where the Sun Don’t Shine” on April 15, 2013: Volume 2, page 137).

Joe’s set was reputedly from a Parker salesman, which is why it was outfitted with pencils in Madarin yellow, jade, marine green and black; I suspect Ruth also wanted a little more variety in her set, replacing two pencils with the Moderne Black-and-Pearl and the burgundy pearl ones. Still, since I’m a preservationist first and I like to keep things as they came to me, and I knew this find would be the cover shot for this volume of the book. I played around with a couple rough concepts, and proudly I posted what I came up with:

Ooohs and aaahs were what I expected. What I got, however, was “get that pearl and black pencil out of there!” from more than one person. Whew, I thought . . . at least I hadn’t massaged that image enough to see that one of them was burgundy pearl rather than black.

One of the naysayers was Larry Liebman: I explained to him how this was how the set came to me, but he was unpersuaded. “Yeah, but it really should have two red and two black,” he replied.

I asked Larry if he had actual documentation of that, and he sent me pictures of two advertisements, one of which was in the Saturday Evening Post on July 26, 1930. I renewed my online subscription so I could get access to their archived issues; there it was, right inside the front cover:

Elsewhere in this advertisement, those stubby little pencils are called “Midget Vest Parkers,” but here the set is advertised as including “Midget Pencils in black and lacquer red.”

The set was advertised for a whopping $24, and the illustration explains something else. All of the complete sets I have seen are missing a lid for the outer box, but when David Isaacson shared pictures of his set in our online discussion, it had something I had never noticed: card suit stickers on the bottom of the box. I turned mine over, and whaddaya know . . . 

There they are . . . or were, anyway, except for the intact spade. This didn’t make any sense to me until I saw that Saturday Evening Post advertisement: what I thought was the box base was actually the lid. 

Anybody have a spare box bottom? It would be nice, but I’m not the least bit disappointed. To my knowledge, this is the only set known that still has the outer cardboard sleeve.

Larry shared another advertisement with me that answered another question I raised yesterday - my concern was that the more streamlined Moderne Black-and-Pearl pencil that came with my set may have been made later.

Here’s that other advertisement: it isn’t dated, nor does it say in what magazine it was published, but it also describes the bridge set as “new,” so it is reasonable to think it was also published in mid-1930:

The text doesn’t say that the pencils are red and black, and the black and white rudimentary drawing shows all four suits in black . . . but I agree that it’s reasonable to think the white pencils shown are the red ones (even though there’s a black one with the heart and a white one with the club – sigh . . . so it goes with advertising art). However, like the other ad, this appears to show the more squared off tops. 

But did you notice the interchangeable ringtop for the desk pencil at the top of the advertisement?

It looks like the streamlined and squared off caps were in production at the same time, depending on a customer’s choice. Although I can’t rule out that eventually Parker gravitated towards the more streamlined caps, this provides the proof that if our friend Ruth Reuter wanted a different pencil in her set when she pulled it from the assembly line, a shorter more streamlined Moderne Black-and-Pearl was right there for the swapping at the time.

Although I’m ultra-cautious when I’m making changes to things when they have been undisturbed for so long, I agree that it’s acceptable to swap out the two pencils in Ruth’s set with the black and red pencils from “When Good Luck Is a Bad Thing” on October 31:

But I still keep the pencils that came with this set right alongside them.

And I’m still looking for the bottom of that outer box.

Accessions and Deaccessions

My reputation as a Parker hater isn’t really accurate, even though I’ve poked the wounded bear a few times here by suggesting Parker made some regrettable lower-quality things for other companies. Maybe this article will redeem me – I have several items in the Parker wing of the museum that I haven’t written about, many of which are truly one of a kind.

A few years ago, Larry Liebman told me he would like to rehome some Parker prototype pencils, and he thought the museum might be a good place for them to enjoy their retirement.

At top is a “Reporter,” a weird Parker subbrand that I haven’t thought about much since the first volume here at the blog; I haven’t seen one for years, so there hasn’t been an occasion to circle back around to them.

These are rarely found in working order, since the material had a tendency to shrink and freeze the mechanism in place. This one works, and the overall shape and proportions are slightly different from what I’ve seen before. Usually these are marked “Reporter” on the clip, but that blue one at bottom is marked “Parco.”

In “Harder Than It Had To Be” (April 10, 2012: Volume 1, page 169), I had concluded that these were a Canadian product, thanks to George Kovalenko’s contribution of an advertisement by Eaton’s, a Canadian retailer. I no longer believe these were exclusively for the Canadian market, though – a current search of newspapers turns up more American advertisements than Canadian, beginning in fall, 1930. This one (abridged here) was in the Great Falls (Montana) Leader on September 12, 1930:

These may have worked as well when they were new as they do today – Reporter Pencils were being blown out at clearance prices by mid-1930, and the last advertisement I found was published in December, 1931.  

That second example, in coral, sports an ill-fitting washer clip sandwiched between the top and bottom sections. 

Years ago I saw another example just like this, including the ill-fitting clip – I believe Joe Nemecek had it. It seems like too much of a coincidence that the only two of these I’ve seen have that same poorly fitted clip, and besides: even if the clip isn’t right, the rest of the pencil is so weird that if it was supposed to have something else, I have no idea what that might be.

The two ringtop pencils are fairly straightforward, except for the banding.

These are typically one solid color, sometimes tipped at the ends with black. The black used on these, however, is not that same material – on closer examination, it has shrunk a bit.

Speaking of weird gold-capped Duofolds, Eric Magnuson brought this one by for a photo session a few years ago: 

This one looks almost like a reproduction: those green veins are something very atypical for Parker, and it isn’t hard to make these Duofold barrels out of modern materials since there’s nothing more to them than threading opposite ends of a straight tube. Eric’s example is the real deal, though, fully marked with a Duofold imprint.

Larry’s red vest pocket pencil (some call them “golf pencils,” but we’ll get to that tomorrow) is unusual because of that added black band. Also . . . now that I think of it, when I find these in red they have a longer, less streamlined top than these. More on that tomorrow, too . . .

The rest of Larry’s deaccessions in this batch were in Parker’s “Pearl and Ebony” (as described in Parker’s 1928 and 1929 catalogs), renamed “Moderne Black-and-Pearl” in Parker’s 1930 catalog; none of these, however, were in any of Parker’s catalogs.

That weird vest pocket-ish pencil isn’t anything found in regular production. As mentioned earlier, vest pocket pencils had long tapered or short streamlined tops, but nothing so rounded as to be perilously close to Walter Sheaffer’s design patent for the Balance line’s golf pencil.

On these, my working theory has always been that the example at top is earlier, and the more streamlined, shorter caps are later – but I don’t think that’s right. More on that tomorrow.

Next are a couple shop pieces, showing how Parker’s design department was playing around with different designs:

The one with a “tip” is a dummy – there’s nothing there to write with.

At bottom is a “pregnant” Duofold, to borrow the term from the collector’s nickname for earlier Parker fountain pens with bulbous barrels. It is unusual not only for its girth but also because there are no black ends; the 1928 and 1929 catalogs showing the Pearl and Ebony flattop Duofold pencils only show those with black ends.

And speaking of black . . .

These also came from Larry, but at some other time. They are along the lines of the pastel Duofolds shown in Parker’s 1929 and 1930 catalogs – I owed it to you to show you a spread of these to explain yesterday’s reference to George Parker and the Easter Bunny.

What makes these two unusual is the trim: the deluxe trim, with that wider center band, was first cataloged in the green pearl Duofolds in 1932. This is “reverse trim,” meaning it is the opposite color from what one would expect to see – these typically had gold filled trim. As for the other, that extra-wide gold filled band is to my knowledge uncataloged. I don’t have any evidence to tell me whether this is factory or a jeweler’s modification.

I mentioned my photo shoot with Eric Magnuson earlier, and Eric had a couple other things to share. First is this streamlined Duofold pencil:

It is close to, but not quite the same as, the color of my gray Parker Zaner Bloser pencil:

Like his yellow pencil with green veins, this one is also fully marked with a Duofold imprint:

Eric also brought his examples of those weird “Parco” pencils – not along the Reporter lines as shown earlier, but those with black plastic caps. We got our respective collections together for a group shot:

Finally, Eric brought his weird Challenger/Duofold hybrid in mandarin yellow, shown here alongside my larger (and a little messed up) example and at bottom, a “normal” Mandarin Duofold:

Those top two are ordinary nose drive pencils, while the bottom one has a typical rear-drive Duofold mechanism.

Both of these Challenger/Duofold hybrids have Duofold imprints:

While my larger example doesn’t have any markings on the cap, Eric has two of the smaller ones – both have advertising imprints, suggesting these mules were put together from leftover parts and sold however they could be sold.

My last news on the weird Parker front – for now – is this one, courtesy of Fred Copsey-Pearce:

Parker fans will immediately recognize this one as one of Parker’s special-order pencils for the Zaner-Bloser Company of Columbus, Ohio, with Zaner-Bloser’s typical contoured grip. As with other pencils made by Parker for Zaner-Bloser, it is imprinted on the cap; however, it lacks the “Made by Parker Pen Company” part you’ll usually see:

The last time I saw a Parker Zaner-Bloser pencil in lapis was when a pen and pencil set turned up in the Chicago Pen Show auction a few years ago. It sold for more than you’d pay for a used Volkswagon, more than I could afford – I approached the buyer after the auction to see if he’d sell the pencil, but he wanted to keep the set together. I can’t say I blame him.

Fred’s example is missing the top piece and the clip, and I’m still waiting for the right parts to make that happen; the diameter of the opening at the top is larger than any normal Duofold, and someone crudely wedged a now-fossilized eraser in its place after it went missing.

Fred says that he ran across this one in an online auction, and everybody missed it – myself included. But wait . . . there’s more. Fred says it was part of a lot that included some other odd things . . . 

These are dummy pens rather than functioning models, so I’m saying the following with caution: look at that cap . . .

If these were finished, production pens, I’d say that top is a dead giveaway that these were made by the Pick Pen Company in Cincinnati – that might make sense that another Ohio company wanted to make pens for a Columbus firm. It might also explain – if these were made by Pick – why the typical Parker Pen Co. mention is absent on the cap of the lapis pencil, and also why a normal Duofold end plug isn’t the right size.

But these are conceptual dummies, not finished products, so it’s just as likely that whoever made this just didn’t finish the lathe work on the cap. Besides, there are some similarities between these and Larry’s pencil barrels.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to know . . . when the artifacts themselves are the only available evidence, the information vacuum leaves a few holes in the story.