Sunday, April 22, 2018

The L Pen Co.

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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This is kind of an odd duck which turned up in one of Jerome Lobner’s auctions:


The flared top is a little bit different, with that sorta worn trim ring at the top, but the rest of it is fairly typical of a 1920s flattop.

Except for the imprint stamped on the clip, which is also a little bit out of the ordinary:


“L Pen Co.”   I’ve been idly poking around for months trying to figure out what’s behind that name, but so far I’m drawing a blank.  The best I have been able to come up with is a conversation I had with Diamond Point maven Marc Shiman, who suggests that the look of this one screams that it was made by Diamond Point.

When Diamond Point got into the pencil business, though, its earliest offerings were the all-metal “Auto-Sharp” (see https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/03/whew.html).   I wondered whether the L might have stood for Louis Morrison, made by Diamond Point?

Scanning down through the Ls on my blog, there’s the Liberty, which also looks an awful lot like a Diamond Point (and was also from New York). 

With luck, someone out there has an advertisement or other piece of ephemera which might shed some more light on this one.

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