The Shot I Couldn't Wait To Take

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When “the lights came one” recently and a couple friends provided me the valuable suggestions I needed to take better pictures, I could hardly wait to get behind the camera and take some good pictures.  There was one, in particular, that I wanted to take:

I’ve had this pencil for a couple of years now, marked “Doran Deliance / Prov. R.I. Pat Pend / Sterling Silver,” and I’ve tried to photograph it a dozen times or so.  I had no trouble with the full length shots, including this one showing the sterling example missing its clip as well as a gold filled version:

But something about the faintness of that imprint and the curvature of the barrel had detailed shots of the imprint out of my grasp.

The fact that I finally got a decent picture of the imprint on a Doran Deliance may be the biggest news I have for you about these right now, since I haven’t been able to learn anything about these yet . . . which is why this story is running on a lazy Sunday.  The only tangible lead was for a hit in my patent book for James A. Doran and Joseph D. Doran of Providence, Rhode Island, who applied for a patent for a screw drive pencil on October 19, 1921.  The patent was issued as number 1,521,802 on January 6, 1925:

However, I find no record of the Doran boys, a Doran company that had anything to do with writing instruments or anything called the “Deliance.”