From the Chicago World's Fair

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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In recent online auctions, one seller was disposing of quite a few mint, boxed examples of mechanical pencils distributed as souvenirs of the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.  I pounced on the first lot, which included a leather souvenir pencil pouch:

Later he sent more lots of these to auction, which I missed – fortunately, my friend Eric Magnuson didn’t, and he was able to add a fourth example:

Under the clips of two of them are commemorative labels for the fair:

Those goofy tops with holes in them contain stanhopes: holes through which you can view tiny pictures mounted inside.  These feature three different scenes showing different buildings from the fairgrounds:

The caps are a little distracting, and since there’s no name on the clips these might be easy to miss.  They are “Straka” Eversharps, named for inventor John Straka (Volume 2, pages 109-115); normally, this is how they are found:

In addition to the over-the-top cool Stanhopes and connections to the Century of Progress, the colors used in this series are fascinating.  The burgundy is Eversharp’s “Tunis Pearl” found on the Equipoised line:

while the green moire was also used on other Eversharp Chicago World’s Fair souvenirs:

That electric green was found on another Straka Eversharp marked “Monitor,” featured here at the blog very early on (Volume 1, page 33):

Then there's this example, in the “Borneo Pearl” celluloid used on Eversharp’s line of Equipoised purse pencils (see Volume 3, page 243):