"Just" a Few Fairchilds

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I fear that I might be getting jaded.  In my pursuit for the super early, super weird and super . . .super Victorian pencils, I often find myself disappointed when I pick one up to find that it’s “only” a Fairchild.   Sure, Leroy W. Fairchild was one of the most prolific manufacturers of the Nineteenth Century, but they were popular because they were beautiful and well made, like these examples, all of which were lounging around in a drawer and weren’t given their day in the sun until I was reorganizing the whole museum a few weeks ago:

The one with the lizard motif is particularly nice.  Leroy Fairchild took out design patents on several of his figural designs, including design patent 11,415 on September 16, 1879:

And this one, design patent 11,433, the very next week, on September 23, 1879:

Neither is identical to what’s crawling around this one, but I guess a lizard is a lizard . . . is a lizard.