Gabriel's Lot

In yesterday’s installment, I intended to tell you about all of the boxed pencils that Gabriel Galecia Goldsmith parted with:

The back story and the added discussion about Dunn Pen and Pencil, Inc. was more involved than I thought it was going to be when I sat down to write the article, so I decided to take a break and revisit the rest of them in a second installment. Each of these has significant “charm,” as Dr. Isaacson likes to say, starting with a brand near and dear to the good Doctor’s heart:

The lettering on the box lid is significantly worn, but I don’t care: “Sharp Point Pencil,” it reads, accompanied by a picture of a hand holding a pen.

The Sharp Point was the first pencil offered by the W.A. Sheaffer Pen Company, as detailed in Chapter One of my 2023 book, A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils. The Sharp Point was introduced in 1917 and the name was phased out in 1921. Due to mechanical problems with the pencil, Sheaffer offered to take back Sharp Point pencils in exchange for a free propel-repel-expel pencil in 1924, leaving precious few of these out there.

This example has what I call a “bowler clip” due to its shape, the second clip used on Sharp Point pencils introduced in 1918 and replaced by the familiar “Sheaffer’s” ball clip in 1919. Most with a bell cap have  Walter Sheaffer’s patent date of November 5, 1918 imprinted on them, as this one does:

As rare as Sharp Point pencils are, that wasn’t what had me jazzed about this example: after all, I have several examples with the combination of “bowler clips” and bell tops, as shown on page 9 of the book. I was grateful for the opportunity to catch up with Pat Mohan a bit:

Pat was a member of my “dream team” of advisers who helped me with the Sheaffer book; since I did not have a 14k Sharp Point, he was kind to contribute an image of his examples, which appear at the bottom of page 11. Early Sharp Point model designations were a two-letter code: A for silver plated, B for sterling, C for gold filled, and D for solid gold. The second letter denoted the pattern, with the letter A denoting a plain barrel. That makes this a model DA Sharp Point made in 1918 or early 1919, identical to Pat’s example as shown in the book.

Yeah, I always say I’m just as happy to have a picture as I am owning an example. Sometimes I lie a little.

The next example in this group is a very mint Moore hard rubber pencil:

This is a really pristine example of Moore’s 1925 patent pencils, and the price tag identifying it as Model 190, retailing for $1.50, sent me straight to the Pen Collectors of America’s online library:

The PCA has Moore’s 1925 catalog available, in which there is a page dedicated to the company’s hard rubber pencils.

On the left is model 190, with a price tag of $1.50 – just like my pencil – but notice that my example has groups of vertical lines (Eversharp referred to that pattern as “ribbon,” but Moore probably called it something else) while the catalog illustrates a wavy design Waterman called “rickrack” (again, Moore probably called it something else).  Judging from the catalog, Moore referred to any pencil lacking trim bands along these lines as a Model 190 “Varsity” (Model 290 in ringtop configuration), while everything else was the “Colonial” (not to be confused with Eversharp’s “Colonial” pattern which, of course, Moore called something else).

I’ll circle back to Moore soon - there’s a lot more to delve into on the subject.

Next is something I had to have, just because I’ve never seen a box for one:

I can’t rule out the possibility that maybe one flew right past my head at some point, because it is very difficult to read the printing with that blue background. It is a LeBoeuf “Unbreakable” ringtop pencil, and if you know what that box lid is supposed to say, you can find the words:

“Unbreakable” surrounded by “LeBoeuf Fountain Pen Company, Springfield Massachusetts.” On the end of the box is an interesting sticker marked “NY.” I don’t know if it means this was part of a lot destined for sale in New York, or if it was a model designation, or if it was something else:

I fibbed a bit earlier - there were two reasons I had to have it. While I do have another example (it was pictured here in “The Silent Cue” alongside a Keeran Pencil on August 9), if you look closely at the image of that one you’ll see the cracking that is fairly common on these.

Unbreakable, my butt. This new example, however, is clean. I’m not sure that string is a factory addition, but I see no harm in leaving it intact for now.

Sigh . . . this always happens. Yesterday I thought I would be doing a brief show and tell, introducing some neat new old stock pencils in their original boxes. Today, I thought I’d finish the job, but there’s one last one in this group to tell you about. It opens so many cans of worms that I’ll be back tomorrow to unpack all the information it provides.

All Boxed In

I’ve never made it to the California Pen Show in Los Angeles; nor have I been to its predecessor, the LA Show. With all of the stuff I take to shows, the only feasible way to get there would be to drive and the commute from Ohio would be horrific.

Not to mention that the show is in February each year, when the weather there is beautiful as always and the weather here is . . . well, I often joke that I’m a lot busier writing wills for people in February because everybody thinks they are dying in February in Ohio. I’m afraid if I leave my beloved slushy mud bowl of a state in the winter, even for a weekend, I wouldn’t come back.

So I sat in grey, rainy Ohio last February, watching everybody post their pictures of all the fun they were having at the California Pen Show. Miro Tischler always does large photo dumps of his snapshots from every show, and I was enjoying seeing many of my friends in their short sleeves, with smiles on their faces, surrounded by piles of pens and pencils.

Scratch that. I was just torturing myself, as I instinctively zoomed in on Miro’s pictures to see what people had on their tables. This is stupid with two O’s, I told myself. The show is already over, I’m more than 2,000 miles away, and . . . what’s that? I think I hear sleet hitting the window . . . 

I was doing it anyway.

One of the images Miro posted showed a guy I didn’t know. That wasn’t too surprising: while I know most of the active participants in our hobby, there are people in our community who don’t cross the Mississippi.

I scanned the crowd to see who else I knew in the background, then instinctively I zoomed in for a closer look . . .

Wait what?? Is that a Dunn? In the box? With what looks like paperwork? Dunn pencils are scarcer than hen’s teeth, and my research had not turned up much: in “Dunn and Done” (October 24, 2016: Volume 4, page 226) I laid out most of what I knew: the Dunn Pen Company failed in 1924, and was replaced by Dunn Pen and Pencil, Inc., which only operated for two years and folded in 1926.

There were several Dunn articles included in Volume 4, but the discussion centered around similarities between Dunn pencils, Esterbrook repeating pencils, and the Wall-Stieh Company’s Selfeed. A little bit of paperwork included with an example in the box might well add something to the history of the Dunn Pencil!

The chase was on, so I posted a comment asking who the mystery man was in that picture, and Scott Jones identified him as Craig Roccanova, who now goes by Reese Roccanova. I sent a message to Reese, and we had a very pleasant conversation . . . unfortunately, he said, that pencil wasn’t his. The picture captured the edge of the display next to his.

And who was that? Gabriel Galecia Goldsmith, all-around good egg who has lent me things to photograph in the Sheaffer and Eversharp books. Gabriel confirmed he still had the Dunn – in addition to several other items he was thinking about offloading. He sent me a picture, the negotiations were brief, and I took them all:

That’s the image I took right after I unwrapped them all, still laying on the bubble wrap inside the box. There’s a lot of good stuff I’ll be writing about in upcoming articles, but for today I wanted to show you these – that Dunn was not the only box-and-papers pencil in the group:

I’ll start with the Dunn, since the Dunn is what started it all. Here it is alongside the other examples at the museum:

Perfection . . . almost. One of my examples has a price band identifying it as Model 300R, which adds some context to Gabriel’s example:

The box as it came to me includes a plain barrel ringtop – it would be reasonable to assume that would be a Model 100 for a plain barrel, Model 100R for the ringtop. The end of the box, however, is inconsistent with what is inside:

Model 100C and, in case you couldn’t figure out what the C stands for, it means “Clip.” No, I'm not disappointed, because I’ve never seen a Dunn-Pencil Box in any condition and finding a Dunn pencil in any condition is worth at least one whoop or holler. Besides, I had yet to unfold the paper inside:

Great artwork, but there are no revelations here that add to what we know – and yes, I already knew not to put “oil, water or anything in the barrel with the idea of cleaning it.” But wait . . . it says to see the other side for information about Dunn leads . . . 

There’s one of those pesky fountain pens, for those who like that sort of thing. Also, there is a detail worth noting in the lower left corner: two New York addresses, 71 Fifth Avenue and 170 Broadway – at the corner of Maiden Lane. It looks like the Fifth Avenue address was intended to be crossed off. 

In my previous article, I discussed the copy of Dunn letterhead in the Pen Collectors of America’s library:

This announcement is undated, and in my previous article I corrected the “ca. 1920" notation added at the top, since Dunn Pen and Pencil, Inc. was not created until 1924. While it is possible Dunn had both the Fifth Avenue and Broadway offices at the time the document in the PCA library was printed, it doesn’t make much sense to have two offices three miles apart in Manhattan. I suspect that the Broadway office at the corner of Maiden Lane might have been opened later, and then the Fifth Avenue office was closed – all between 1924 and 1926.

One source indicates that Dunn was located at the Broadway address only in 1925, suggesting that the old Dunn Pen Company was located uptown, then soon after the 1924 reorganization the company moved.

That little extra bit of context may have been all that I needed to feel like I got my money’s worth, but there were several other boxed items that came in Gabriel’s lot. I’ll tell you about those tomorrow . . . 

The Tier Straddler

Some collectors like to refer to pen and pencil manufacturers as “first tier,” “second tier,” or “third tier.” Among American manufacturers, some people reserve the first tier label to the “Big Four” of American manufacturers: Parker, Sheaffer, Eversharp, and Waterman. Sometimes, other prominent manufacturers such as Conklin worm their way into that category.

Second tier is generally regarded as referring to high quality, often regional manufacturers. LeBoeuf, Carter, and that sort of thing.

Third tier is a polite way of saying “crap.” “No name” is synonymous, as in no name of significance.

It is an imperfect system. “First tier” manufacturers sometimes made crap, some “third tier” stuff is pretty nice, and some of the one-hit wonders in the writing instrument world defy classification. Tell me, for example, into what tier the General Manufacturing Company’s “Kaligraf” lever filler pencils fit? If your answer is anything other than first tier, why would a $10 Parker Parkette rank more highly?

I digress. I think the whole tier system dates from the early days of the hobby, when the annointed would tell the unwashed that if it isn’t a Waterman overlay, it’s crap (rolling the R like Mike Myers would).

Perhaps that’s the long way around the barn for me to tell you that some Diamond Point pencils are better than others, although the brand doesn’t get as much respect . . . until a few years ago, I think it would have fallen into the third tier. I had a few new additions that warrant showing you how they fit into the taxonomy:

Starting from the top, I’m loving that green and blue marble. It’s a color combination not often found in writing instruments, and this one fits in well with two others in the collection:

The rounded caps are disconcerting; with a flared bell cap, these would be more recognizable. 

The example at far right, with triple bands, appears to be in the same series as the green one from that first image; there are also double banded ones in some striking celluloids, both streamlined perilously close to the shape of a Sheaffer Balance and more stubby and rounded:

Here are other triple and double banded examples along those lines:

I believe the examples in this next image are a bit later; they follow the same form and materials as the previous group, with only a different clip:

The clip was designed and patented by Harry Esterow, who designed several pen and pencil clips, including the famous “PATO” clips (that’s actually PAT’D, as in patented – online sellers frequently misread them). His application for this variation was filed on December 30, 1930 and was granted Design Patent 83,673 on March 17, 1931.

Unfortunately, as Diamond Point switched to jobbed Esterow clips, the company’s tenuous claim to second tier status weakened. The third example in the first image fits in with later Diamond Point pencils – interesting to look at, but not the best quality. 

Note the great plastics and geometric center bands:

Clips on these are all marked “PATD” in tiny letters at the top, and these are also Esterow clips. I didn’t find these exact variations in his patents, but Design Patent 103,813, filed January 21, 1937 and granted on March 30, 1937, is close enough that Esterow could legitimately cry foul if he didn’t supply them:

Our last new addition to the Diamond Point family fits neatly – sort of – into a series I’ve collected since almost the beginning. Here it is at top with similarly feathered birds:

The “fitting neatly” part is the bottom four examples, but since I scrounged up each of the four colors, I found the two examples in slightly different sizes and with slightly different banding. Note that the “PATD” has been dropped from the clips; maybe Esterow’s design patent expired, or maybe he never managed to secure one for this variation:

If you can’t make it good, make it pretty, I suppose. Tiers schmears, these are great to look at.

If these are third tier, I don’t wanna be first.

The Long-Awaited Excuse

When I saw Hirsch Davis at the DC Supershow earlier this month, there was no trite “hello, how are ya” or other idle chit-chat. “Was that you?” was all that he said.

I knew exactly what he meant. “Was that you that cost me a couple hundred dollars?” I replied.

Both of us had been hoping that our respective answers were yes, and both of us were looking forward to the moment when we could shake hands and laugh about it. It is, after all, a small world . . . but before I tell you the full story, I’ll back up and tell you about the couple of years that led up to this article. 

The COVID Pandemic completely destroyed our perception of time, as month after month every day was exactly the same as the one that preceded it, with no end in sight and little hope that things would ever return to normal. To this day, I don’t believe I’m alone in saying when something happened more than a year or so ago, the best I can do is narrow when it happened to either before or after the Pandemic. We all had our own ways of coping, and mine was to resuscitate this blog - it kept me occupied, I hope it kept you entertained, and it gave me a feeling of being connected.

In June 2020, I posted “Three Missing Years” (June 15, 2020: Volume 6, page 187), a deep dive in which I pieced together the fascinating history of the Crocker Pen Company. The thumbnail sketch of that history is that Crocker, headed by Seth Sears Crocker, flourished in the teens until its treasurer embezzled a significant amount of money from the company in 1921, causing the company to fold in 1922. In 1923, Crocker was revived by a colorful huckster named George Kalil Zain, who ran advertising contests - Zain first offered Crocker pens as prizes for contestants, but by 1924 Zain was president of the Crocker Pen Company, and Crocker pens were advertised as “Zain-Crocker” pens fitted with an unusual clip marketed as the “Kant-Luz-It” clip. The clip was offered both as a built-in clip and a slip-on accommodation version.

In that 2020 article, I included a picture of Joe Nemecek’s Crocker pencil with a Kant-Luz-It clip, which remains one of the stars in his collection:

In 1926, as Zain was planning to move Crocker into the Kant-Luz-It factory in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, a massive fire destroyed the Kant-Luz-It factory. Zain went back to running advertising contests, Seth Sears Crocker died in 1927, and his son Seth Chilton Crocker set up the Chilton Pen Company in 1926.

Of course, it’s more complicated than that. Suffice to say that by the time I finished the article, my interest in the brand had increased, and my friends knew it. That is why Pearce Jarvis approached me at the 2021 Supershow with a Crocker pen he thought I’d like:

Even though it isn’t a pencil, Pearce knew I would probably want this Crocker lever filler for the clip – and he was right. It is the accommodation clip version of the Kant-Luz-It clip complete with its April 12, 1921 patent date.

It was a lot of money to pay for something that has only a tangential connection to the subject of this blog, so I dutifully photographed it and filed it away alongside my Crocker ringtop pencil. And I waited for an opportunity to include it in an article at my pencil blog.

Another year, another pen show . . . it was another DC Show, the 2024 edition, at which I was browsing Nikola Pang’s wares. I was hunting down a few last items to photograph for Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry, and Nik had a great Coronet pen and pencil set I wanted to include in the book. As I agonized over spending the very reasonable price, I noticed something else on Nik’s table:

I ended up buying both the Coronet set and this Crocker Ink Tite pen – the Coronet set is pictured at the bottom of page 245 in the Eversharp book. As for the Crocker, again I dutifully shot some pictures of it for the day when I would have some plausible reason to include it at the blog:

Including its well-preserved instruction sheet:

Another year, yet another DC Show: this time in 2023, and – go figure – at Hirsch Davis’ table, where Hirsch offered this one to me:

At least half of this one is a pencil . . . the Zain imprint on the clip dates this combination fountain pen and pencil to between 1924 and 1926:

And on the barrel, an imprint reading “Crocker Pen-Pencil / Boston, Mass.”

After three DC Shows I had accumulated three Crocker finds, all waiting for the day . . . and I knew that day came when this pencil showed up in an online auction in June:

The pencil is nondescript, supplied by jobbers to many pen companies marked with their names – Keene, for example. It is very clean, but what attracted me to it was the imprint:

Zain-Crocker. This one I had to have – both for what it was, and for the opportunity it provided to show you all of the other things in this article. I was afraid to put it in my watchlist, because I feared I might forget to bid. I was afraid to bid too little, because I feared I would be outbid when I was otherwise occupied and lose.

That left only one option: go big or going home. I placed a stupid money bid, doing complicated math in my head to determine the exact amount. If someone bid a dollar less, I would be only slightly happier bringing it home than I would regret spending so much money. If someone bid a dollar more, I would be only slightly happier I didn’t spend that much money than I would regret not bringing it home. 

No, I’m not going to tell you what that number was.

The evening this auction closed, Janet and I were having dinner out at Ted’s Montana Grille. I knew the auction was closing that night, and my distraction was palpable, so I confessed what was happening. At the time, with only minutes remaining, my minimum bid was the only one.

“Looks like you might get it cheap,” Janet said. 

I wasn’t that confident, and sure enough – in the last few seconds another bidder bid heavily, but it wasn’t enough. “I’m sure I know who bid against me,” I told her.

I did. And should I ever part with it, I know where it will go.

For a dollar more than what I paid.

Slanty, Frank!

Those who know me know that I love a good whisky, I love tipping a glass with friends old and new, and I’m not one who’s much for pomp and circumstance. That results in my awkward relationship with whisky connoisseurs: I’m happiest when I am enjoying good company and good drinks. However, I enjoy both a little less when I am tipping a few with someone who thinks I’m obsessing less than I should over the subtle nuances of what I am drinking.

A few years ago I was taught proper Scottish manners, which requires proper pronunciation of “Sláinte” whilst hoisting a glass.  “Schlon-jay,” is the closest I can come to describing how the anointed will say it with their pinkies extended. 

“Slanty,” I’ll often respond in my finest Appalachian drawl. That’s a test: those who are offended will likely walk away to seek out more genteel alcoholics. Laugh along with me and we’ll while away a few pleasant hours.

I’m convinced that in another age, Frank Furedy and I would have wiled away many such hours. In addition to all of his other exploits, he drove a car like a bat out of hell: newspaper reports of turbulent life and career are punctuated by at least three reports of fines for reckless driving – one of which reported that he failed to appear in court. Furedy likely would have appreciated a “slanty” toast in commemoration of his “slanty” Colorgraph pencils. 

Those angled tops were a unique design feature for which Furedy secured Design Patent 82,821 as discussed in yesterday’s article (posted here). As we left things, Colorgraph pencils were not advertised after 1930, when Furedy filed his last patent application for an improved version of the pencil. At the time, he was being prosecuted for securities violations connected with his sale of stock in his U.S. Colorgraph Corporation without a license.

As the Colorgraph faded into obscurity, Furedy was not quite done in the writing instrument business – although he apparently kept a much lower profile with his next endeavor. He surfaces in 1932 with a patent application for a “self inking fountain pen” that manufactures ink from a concentrated dye cartridge located in the feed, underneath the nib: just add water, and the pen was designed to write for months. Furedy’s application was filed on April 14, 1932 and was issued on September 27, 1932 as number 1,880,128.

Although this patent was originally issued only in Furedy’s name, his patent was reissued on December 20, 1932 (RE 18,702), and when it was reissued it includes a notation that it had been assigned to the Inkpak Manufacturing Company.

Ahhhh... that makes sense.

I’ve seen Inkpak pens, and they have slanted caps reminiscent of Furedy’s Colorgraph pencils. When I stumbled across the Furedy connection, I went shopping for Inkpak pens, and I found two to include in this article for discussion:

Well, one and a half examples, anyway. The combination pen and pencil may or may not be a legitimate Inkpak Manufacturing Company product; even though the cap ring is imprinted “Inkpak Kromium,” the nib, feed, and barrel lack all of the Inkpak’s special features. It was still worth buying just for the cap, to show there were nickel-silver and gold filled trim models, both of which shared a familiar profile:

Slanty, Frank . . . downright slanty. The more intact version has an unrelated Eversharp nib in it – a definite improvement over the Inkpak’s original “Kromite” steel nib, underneath which is Furedy’s patented inkmaking device:

The cap on the butt of the barrel unscrews, revealing a chamber containing spare ink cartridges and a note:

I’m not sure to what extent Frank Furedy was involved with the Inkpak Manufacturing Company, outside of his patent and perhaps contributing whatever design patent rights he could claim for slanty tops. Once again, Frank Furedy’s personal issues may have cut short his business venture. On March 25, 1932, the Norristown Pennsylvania Reporter published news that Furedy’s wife Rosalie, who had married him in 1927, had filed for divorce, claiming unspecified “indignities.”

The following advertisement, from the New York Daily News on December 4, 1932, advertises both the Inkpak pen and its accompanying “Leadpak” pencil. I hope at some point a pencil marked “Leadpak” will surface, but it is possible if not probable that they were unmarked:

The Inkpak was advertised in its flattop form between 1932 until 1934, almost exclusively in New York, and I did find a snippet view of a writeup in Geyers’ Stationer in 1933, which identified Furedy as the president of Inkpak Manufacturing Company. I did not find a trademark registration for “Inkpak” in the course of writing American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953, either just as a word or in connection with the logo seen on these clips:

However, the word “Kromite” - the name Inkpak used on the steel nibs found on many of its pens – does turn up in the trademark records.  Unfortunately the Patent Office has lost the trademark registration certificate, and all that remains is this notice in the Official Gazette, stating that the rights to the name were assigned by the Inkpak Manufacturing Company, Inc. of New York to the Inkpak Pen Company, Inc., also of New York. The applicant claimed that the mark had been in use since September 1, 1932:

I found some curious references suggesting that by 1936, pens marked “Remington” were fitted with Inkpak Kromite nibs. That detail, for our purposes, is best put off for another day. According to Richard Binder’s Pen Glossopedia, the Inkpak Pen Company was formally dissolved “by proclamation” on Dec. 15, 1938, by which time the company had abandoned all of the features that made the Inkpak different in favor of plain lever fillers with ordinary feeds.

But there is one other detail about the Inkpak that was rattling around in my brain . . . I remember seeing another Inkpak pen that wasn’t like these . . . years ago . . . 

I’m better known for my work in mechanical pencils, but there have been times such as these when I can’t resist picking up a fountain pen when it registers high readings on my weird-o-meter. When I do, and it isn’t something that fits into my pencil collection, they end up in a drawer full of things that are cool enough that I have to have them, but not cool enough to archive and organize as well as my pencils:

There it is, where it has been in storage for ten years or more: I remember buying it for a buck or two at the Don Scott Antique Show, just because I couldn’t figure it out:

Now I understand that hole in the feed was for Furedy’s patented ink cartridges, and that empty compartment under the blind cap held the spares. The “Pat. Pend.” reference confuses me: what connected Furedy to the Inkpak in the first place was the assignment of his filed patent in 1932; this example is obviously later than the larger flat (slanty) top pens, so there must have been some other patent – perhaps for an improved version of the pen – that was never granted.

As the Inkpak pen fizzled away into history, Furedy’s career in writing instruments came to an end. In 1937, Furedy filed a patent application for a “spout unit for containers,” which was granted and assigned to the American Flange and Spout Company, and the 1937 Directory of New York State Manufacturers identifies Furedy as President of a “Twin-Glo Lamp Co., Inc.” Lamps would become Furedy’s next big thing: beginning in 1940, Furedy patented numerous improvements to “therapeutic lamps,” and by 1946 he had moved to Chicago, where he became president of the Sun-Craft Company. I don’t know whether he joined Sun-Craft or founded it:

Furedy apparently remained with Sun-Craft for the rest of his career, although his inventive spirit could not be contained to the field of therapeutic lamps. The Chicago Tribune published an advertisement for “Quartz Bowl” smoking pipes on June 10, 1947. The manufacturer of the pipes was identified as the “Quartz Industries division of Sun Craft, Inc.” and it includes a statement from our man Frank Furedy:

“I designed this pipe for my own smoking pleasure,” Furedy is quoted as saying, “but my friends persuaded me to make several for them. Now I want to pass these pipes on to the many men who will appreciate an entirely new kind of smoking experience.”

Furedy may have “designed” the pipe, but from what I can tell he did not receive a patent for whatever new kind of smoking experience he had created. One source indicates that Frank Furedy was born on May 23, 1892 and died in Chicago in April, 1964, although I haven’t found his obituary – it as if he simply drifted off into history. Neither did I find any pictures of our man, but I like to think that the artwork in that Quartz Bowl advertisement might be him:

That looks about right – relaxed, unflappable, and persevering, despite all the troubles swirling around him . . . and smiling like he’s still got something up his sleeve.

Stay slanty, my friend.