Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Moore of an Imprint Than Expected

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This is another one that Jerome Lobner had listed online:


There were two things that attracted me about this one.  First is the color: while jade green pencils are common in Moore’s earlier bell-top incarnation (the Liddell 1925 patent models - see pages 100 and 101 in The Catalogue), once Moore went to a more conventional and streamlined shape, this color is practically nonexistent.  It’s the first post-1925 patent example I’ve found in what should be a common color.

The other thing that was unusual was the fact that it is a ringtop.  While Moore offered large and small pencils, even the small ones were normally fitted with clips.  Have a look at the streamlined pencils pictured on page 101 of The Catalogue:


However, when the pencil arrived, even with the naked eye I could see some roughness on the center band.  I was disappointed, and it was so uncharacteristic of Jerome to sell something with an undisclosed defect that I pulled out my loupe for a closer look to see what was going on.  No, it isn’t damage strictly speaking, and it provided me a bit of insight I would not otherwise have had:


The factory imprint was placed just a little too low, so that the bottoms of the lettering clip the metal trim.  I always assumed that imprints were heat-stamped, so that the lettering would be melted into the barrel rather than stamped in with enough force to break the plastic . . .

And certainly not with enough force to also stamp metal, or enough heat to melt it.

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