A Few Heaths

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George W. Heath & Company is one for which I’ve got a real soft spot.  The Newark, New Jersey manufacturer made really nice stuff, not the least of which was Charles Keeran’s first Ever Sharp pencils, between 1913 and October, 1915.  Here are a few things that turned up while I was reorganizing the museum:

The magic pencil at the top is a fairly conventional piece, although that silverwork is outstanding.  The Heath hallmark - an H in a square with two tabs on either side, appears on the extender:

The mark does appear in American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953, but not as a federally registered mark; at the end of the book, I’ve included an appendix containing the pen-related sections of Trade-Marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades, published by the Jewelers’ Circular Publishing Company in 1896, 1904, 1915 and 1922.  Of the four editions, only the one published in 1922 is readily available (there’s a copy in the PCA’s library) – the others took quite a bit of digging to find.  Heath’s mark first appears in the 1904 edition (even though the firm had been established in 1892, the book's rudimentary 1896 edition didn't include it).  The address provided is Heath's earlier address in New York:

Heath apparently used the hallmark only on the company’s silver products.  It also appears on the cedar pencil holder at one end:

However, the two gold-filled magic pencils, are marked “G.W.H. CO.”:

All three of the magic pencils came from one source at the Chicago Show in May.  I was convinced that the silver one was also made by Heath, since that Jules Verneish profile was fairly unique to the maker.  However, the barrel was unmarked, and the extender is marked only with “Compliments of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company - 1909":

I was talking about this one to someone at the show -- probably David Nishimura, since he also appreciates Heath and he has a knack for pointing out little things that I’ve missed – and he pointed out the unusual location of the hallmark on this one:

On the nose cone.