Sage Design

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At the Triangle Show, Rob Bader had two of these in his box o’ surprises:

Both were equipped with what appeared to be a white lead, leading me to think this might have been for marking clothing alterations.  I took both of them and gave one to Joe.  In addition to the tight, rear-drive design, this one had a nice imprint I thought would be fun to track down:

“Peggy Sage.”  It didn’t take long to figure out what this one was all about.  Peggy Sage was and is a cosmetics company.  According to the company’s website, the firm was founded in 1925 in the US and was bought out by an English concern in 1950; since then, the brand name has been sold to various firms, being revived most recently in 2000 by “the Collomb family.”

The company’s website still offers pencils with a white “lead” like this, and the accompanying description explains what it was used for: “The lip shaper lip lead pencil is used to draw a transparent, mat line around the lips before applying lipstick to prevent it from smudging even if the lips are damaged.”

Ok, that’s a little gross, and I might have to retrofit this one with a stick of lead in the appropriate size and discard the partially used lip goo.  Even though this is a cosmetic applicator rather than a writing pencil, though, it still fits well into my collection.  Did you notice that celluloid?  The first thing I thought when I saw it was Eversharp, because it does have a cousin in the Bantam world:

An exact mirror image, if you look closely.  Burgundy with grey pearl streaks on the Peggy Sage, and grey pearl with burgundy streaks on the bantam.