Mighty Mites

Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry covers the Eversharp Bantam line of pencils on pages 294 to 296; it shows most of them, but it didn’t include everything.  I’ve got a few updates to report.

The first bit of news is that yes, there were Bantam desk pens and sets – the pens are danged near impossible to find, and the bases . . . unobtainium. I did manage to scrounge up a desk pen, as well as a stickered Bantam Doric, with that same faceted barrel.

In fact, the Bantam Doric is doubly stickered . . . one just adds a bit of NOS goodness, while the other contributes an official model number, and it was quite the designation for such a small pencil: Model Q29108DK:

On page 296 in Eversharp, I commented that examples of the Bantam in later plastics had either two bands or three bands, at least as far as the pencils go. I showed green Bantam pencils in two and three band configurations, a brown with three bands, and a grey one with two bands. Then this came along in an online auction:

The box may or may not be official Eversharp, since I haven’t seen this variation before and it has a jeweler’s sticker on the lid. Inside, however, was a set that I bought because I wanted to read the paperwork that came with it.

Bantam-specific paperwork for “The Big Little Pen” is tough to find, but other than the campy artwork and language, it doesn’t provide any information we didn’t already know.

The back side is devoted to an advertisement for Eversharp’s square leads; the patent dates in the bottom corner are for Robert Back’s square leads patent and a pencil patent by John Straka - not the removable nose pencil for which Straka is best remembered, but another patent. I’ll have to explore why that apparently unrelated patent is doing here some time.

The paperwork was a bit of a let down, but the set itself was not. Yes, Virginia, the brown later Bantam pencils also have either two or three bands.

No, Virginia, I could not find this next image, and it was quicker to just reshoot it. Yes Virginia, the gray Bantam pencils also have either two or three bands.

I haven’t seen any Bantam fountain pens with three bands on the cap, and I haven’t found a pen or a pencil with three bands in black.

Zen and the Art of Picking

After David Nishimura and I finished negotiating the purchase of a Victorian collection from Rob Bader in DC, Rob mentioned that he had a few other random pencils that had come from that same collection. Since we bought everything else, Rob said, take whatever you want out of them.

I wasn’t greedy, but I did grab a couple items that are perennial favorites to me, including these four:

First is that cute little Gordon, with its telephone dialer and hugely disproportionate “fanged” clip. Even if I had five identical ones at home I would have snagged this one – the color is amazing, the telephone dialer ones are a delight, and besides – it was “free” (ish, he tells himself, after the amount of money he spent on the Victorians).

The clip didn’t look nearly this nice when I rescued it, and there was a lot of work involved in getting it looking presentable. The effort was worth it, because this scratched one of those longtime itches I’d forgotten I had.

In “Like Playing the Lottery” (March 7, 2013: Volume 2, page 83), I mused whether a two-tone Gordon was correct. “It’s possible that Gordon decided to jazz things up a bit by making two-color pencils out of parts from each,” I wrote, “but if anyone’s got a red veined example with a bronze and cream cap and wants to swap parts, I’m all ears!”

Now I’m all ears for an all red veined example. And it continues . . . 

That was happy accident number one from Rob’s freebie pile. Here’s number two:

I like these later Moore “Mastercraft” pencils, and I figured since I probably already had one, I wouldn’t mind carrying this one around as an everyday doodler (and besides, I told myself, it’s “free”).

And then I checked my photo archive . . .

I couldn’t have called a better shot.

That blue “Hiriter” is another one I wouldn’t have thought twice about if there was more money to be paid. Hiriter was a David Kahn brand (Kahn is best known as maker of the Wearever), although I don’t know if the Hiriter was for Kahn’s own account or whether it was supplied to some retailer. It wasn’t a high quality affair, but still – I liked the clip and the color, and when I got it home:

Now I have one that has all of its parts.

As for the last one in this group, it is a Dur-O-Lite and one of the earliest ones, at that. The company was founded in 1926, and that square bolt securing the clip to the barrel was only used until 1928. It isn’t the earliest, but it’s pretty early – that longer nose was adopted in early 1927.

I was sure I had one, but I’m a sucker for these and if I run across one that needs a clip or a good nose, I figured it would be handy to have. Besides . . . its free . . . and yes, I did have one.

But the one I have didn’t have this written on the side, which I didn’t notice when I plucked it from the pile to bring home:

I’m confident that if I had actually spent additional money on these things, I would never have batted four for four!

When Good Luck is a Bad Thing

My “bank” of articles heading into the Ohio Show this weekend is pretty thin. I write these articles in advance and schedule them to publish automatically, but lately it seems like everything I touch has a great story that requires more time and research than I thought it would.

It’s October 25 right now, and as time runs short before the show, with friends from all over letting me know when they are arriving, I’m switching to simpler “one-off” show-and-tell articles that are worth telling, but without too much to tell. You’ll have something new to read each day, and I’ll be back with more in-depth stories after our community has adjourned and things quiet down for a long winters’ nap.

Here’s one I don’t have much more to say about than I did back in 2012, when I reported that Lee Anderson had shown it to me at the Chicago Show that year. I wrote that there was “zero chance I was going to talk him out of it.” See “Also Seen At Chicago” (May 27, 2012: Volume 1, page 218).

That brown marbled plastic is one of the more unusual and uncataloged Parker colors, perhaps used for test marketing, and this remains the only example I have seen in Parker Vest Pocket configuration. When I ran the article all those years ago, the only pictures I had of it were the terrible shots I captured at the show.

Times change, and Lee isn’t as active in the hobby as he was. A few months ago Lee emailed to ask if I wanted to bring this one home. Of course I do, I said, so here it resides these days.

I also ran across another Parker Vest Pocket pencil, although I don’t remember where, how, or when.

There isn’t anything new to report about this, other than a little bit of paper stuck to the side of the barrel.

Model 500, it was. $2.50, it cost. And it joined an example in black that I already had in the collection – in black, this was Model 510.

The only difference between them is the top rings. 

One of these days I will take a moderately deep dive into Parker’s ringtop rings. Maybe I’ll conclude one of these is a replacement from something else, or that different shapes were used in different years.

More on Racing Stripes

As detailed on October 28, it was Ephraim S. Johnson and not Alonzo Cross who was awarded the design patent for “racing stripes” on writing instruments, but those rights were likely shared with Cross (and with those whom Cross supplied, such as Bates & Bacon) while the patent was active. 

After Johnson’s patent expired, though, A.T. Cross would take Johnson’s idea to an entirely new level. In this group of Cross “Alwrite” pencils, note the bottom one:

That striped green one came from Jeffrey Krasner, who sold me a box full o’ stuff at the Boston Show in 2022. All of these are marked Cross with “Alwrite” in script below:

“Alwrite” was a Cross trademark, applied for by Walter R. Boss, its president, on January 13, 1919. Boss claimed that the company began using the mark on December 5, 1918, and the mark was awarded registration number 129,664.

Those large plastic models, with their two-piece tips, were also rebadged and supplied to LeBoeuf and Grieshaber, and I haven’t had the heart to scavenge a tip to complete that jade example. The real focus for today’s purposes are the twin sets of twin stripes on the bottom one: those aren’t painted, but are separate pieces of black plastic sandwiched in place.

Next is this one, which slipped through the cracks. It was hiding in a pile of junk that sold for peanuts in an online auction:

The Cross Century is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to miss what’s special here, although I’m surprised nobody else noticed the telltale racing stripes. This isn’t a Cross Century - the name was adopted in commemoration of A.T. Cross’s 100th anniversary in 1946. For the Century, clips are more streamlined, and when you see a ball clip, that’s a dead giveaway that we are looking at a pre-Century streamlined Cross pencil. In fact, this one has one foot in the past and one foot in what’s to come: it’s somewhat obscured by the engine turned pattern, but it has the Alwrite name mid-barrel.

As you can see, it is missing the typical conical black plastic piece on the top. No worries, I thought – but in hindsight I should have worried a little bit, because it was tougher to replace than I expected. I had thought all I needed to do was salvage a black plastic top from those common, chrome Century ballpoints and pencils. Not so:

The tops on Modern Cross Century pens and pencils are press fit, while these pre-Century pencils have end pieces that are threaded. I went through my stash and found a couple other ball clip Cross pencils

Since I found two and one is a duplicate, I wasn’t too concerned repurposing the top piece from one of them.

And, once the transplant was completed, I had what I considered to be the finished shot for this article - a happy family of Cross racing stripes on parade.

Alas . . . the family was about to get happier. 

This one also appeared in an online auction, with badly deteriorated paint and like the other one, missing its top piece. I was hesitant to steal the one from my other plain, ball clip Cross - so I experimented a bit with the press-fit top that I had removed from a modern Century. After I turned down the diameter a bit, I was able to get it to thread into the top end; while the attachment is different, the more modern Century top piece is otherwise a perfect fit.

Then there was the paint, which was badly chipped in several spots showing ugly brass underneath. I used masking tap, a bottle of Testor’s black model paint and a set of tiny paint brushes to bring it back to life.

In 1996, Cross did do a 150th Anniversary pen in this same configuration, complete with ball clip, and there was also a matching pencil (although the pencils I’ve seen were in gold fill rather than chromed). There are differences, though, and this one is the real deal. The 150th Anniversary pens and pencils used .9mm leads, while this one takes 1.1mm. In addition, the Anniversary edition was not marked with the pre-Century AXT imprint – as in A.T. “Cross.”

More on Ephraim Johnson

As mentioned yesterday, Ephraim Johnson is best known for his “Pearl Patent” of December 5, 1871, which protected the manner in which he affixed slabs of mother of pearl to his pencil barrels. Now we know from yesterday’s article that he was the originator of the enameled “racing stripes” for which the A.T. Cross Company became so well known in later year.

Another design feature for which Ephraim Johnson is well known is the way he inlaid metal and mother of pearl into hard rubber and celluloid barrels; two examples of this technique were in that collection of Victorian pens and pencils David Nishimura and I purchased from Rob Bader:

Magic pencils with this treatment are without exception marked for E.S. Johnson.

The sliding dip pen, however, is marked for A.W. Faber.

I sorted out the relationships between all of the Fabers in a series of articles beginning with “Faber in America” (January 5, 2015: Volume 4, page 69). Both A.W. Faber and Eberhard Faber descended from Kaspar Faber, who started making pencil in Stein, Germany in 1761. Kaspar was succeeded by his son, Anton Wilhelm Faber, which is where “A.W. Faber” came from. Anton Wilhelm in turn handed the business off to his son Georg Leonhard Faber; two of Georg’s sons, Lothar and Johann, then took over the firm; Georg’s third son, Eberhard, emigrated to the United States. 

Initially, Eberhard’s mission was to run an American branch of the A.W. Faber, but as the years passed the American and German firms diverged. This dip pen was likely made during the turbulent times when the unruly Americans were asserting their independence and A.W. Faber was evolving from the remote home office into a competitor. 

None of these examples with Johnson’s inlay work are stamped with a patent date, although I was certain at some point I had seen a design or utility patent by Ephraim S. Johnson for it. As I browsed through American writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910, I found several other Johnson patents, including Design Patent 5,377, issued on November 21, 1871.

This one caught my eye because it reminded me of something else that came out of Bader’s Victorian collection.

This dip pen and pencil set did not initially make the cut for entry into the museum, and I had to fish it back out of the cases of inventory I’m taking to the Ohio Show later this week. Johnson’s patent protects “dots or studs of gold, silver, or pearl, arranged in an ornamental manner,” and this isn’t quite that - instead, star-shaped cuts are arranged in that same pattern, and at the ends there’s a maker’s name. Yep: A.W. Faber.

As much as I would like to attribute this one to E.S. Johnson, I don’t think so in this case. Samson Mordan in England liked to do very similar patterns, long before E.S. Johnson received his 1871 patent, and this set has more of a continental vibe than anything Johnson would have made. In addition, the opposite side of the pen and pencil is another, less prominent stamp that suggests this was not made in the United States. “Depose,” it reads.

The word “depose” in jewelers’ circles means “registered” in French – not necessarily registered in France, although that would be a reasonable conclusion. Made in Germany for export to France would also make sense. 

Still, this set fits in so nicely, both in this article and in the Faber (Eberhard and A.W.) wing at the museum. Even though I generally try to limit my collection to American items, I think this set is going to hang around here for awhile alongside its American cousins. 

Racing Stripes: The Origin Story

Many years ago, I wrote a series of articles exploring A.T. Cross after I photographed the late Jim Rouse’s collection at the 2012 Baltimore Show. The title of the article that included these was “A.T. Cross: Racing Stripes” (May 6, 2012: Volume 1, page 192).

Black enameled stripes on a metal pencil are usually a clear indication that Cross was the manufacturer. This example recently turned up in an online auction:

Yes, it is marked AXT as so many of the pencils along these lines are . . . but what caught my eye is what is stamped on the extender of this magic pencil.

“Design Pat. Ented. Mar. 25, 73.” I haven’t seen this on any other Cross pencil, and those of use who like Cross have long puzzled over whether there was ever any design patent, trademark, or other intellectual property claim protecting the “racing stripe” look, since that is such an easily recognizable feature of Cross pencils.

I pulled out American Writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910 – I was sure I would have remembered seeing this one, as I went through them one by one in the course of writing the book, but maybe I forgot . . . no, there are no design patents listed in there for March 25, 1873. That left no alternative but the old fashioned way, thumbing through patents issued on that date one by one until it turned up.

No wonder I missed design patent number 6,523 - it was filed only in a design patent category for “paper products.” I also wouldn’t have found it by searching Alonzo T. Cross by name: it was issued to Ephraim S. Johnson, perhaps best known for his “Pearl Patent” of December 5, 1871. The “Pearl Patent” was for a method of attaching distinctive pearl-slab barrels like the one at bottom in this group of E.S. Johnson pencils. 

Design patents protect the appearance rather than the function of an item, so Johnson’s patent 6,523 would have protected the black banding on this pencil too, even though these are hard rubber bands rather than painted. However, there’s no reference to Johnson’s 1873 racing stripes patent on this one - just the usual “Pearl Patent.” Perhaps he had yet to apply for his design patent for racing stripes.

The New York writing instrument manufacturers had a gentlemen’s agreement to share patents and pay each other royalties rather than litigate disputes over who invented what. As I was preparing to write this article, this next one appeared in an online auction – if my antennae hadn’t been up thinking about these at the time, I might have dismissed it as a common Cross magic pencil:

This one sure looks like a Cross, and comparing the front end to the first picture in this article, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that Cross made it . . . but not for its own account.

“Bates & B.,” as in Bates & Bacon (see “B Who?” on October 19, 2012: Volume 1, page 383), the Attleboro, Massachusetts jeweler responsible for a disastrous 1898 fire that originated – of all things – when lacquer caught fire in their factory. Bates & Bacon rebuilt after the fire, but the company was sold in 1901 to the Philadelphia Watch Case Company. 

Ephraim Johnson may have come up with the idea and held the design patent for the racing stripe idea, but it was Cross that would pick it up and run with it so successfully for decades after Johnson’s patent expired.