Well Worth a Hop Across the Pond

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 6, now on sale at The Legendary Lead Company.  I have just a few hard copies left of the first printing, available here, and an ebook version in pdf format is available for download here.

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Way back in 2013, I pined for a pencil I thought I would never be able to afford:

It was made by the George W. Heath Co., using the same snake pattern the company also used to fashion overlays for Parker’s fabled snake pens in the 1910s.  It was shown to me for photographing, but the seller wasn’t ready to part with it -- short of paying him the equivalent of what it would take to buy a good used car, of course.

(The article was posted on August 21, 2013; these days, it only exists in book form, in Volume 2 of The Leadhead’s Pencil Blog, pages 223-224.)

In late 2018, I received a long-distance call from England – the famed KB Collection, perhaps the finest collection ever assembled of figural Victorian pencils, was going up for auction at Wooley & Wallis Auctions in Salisbury, England, and the call was to ask if I wanted a catalog and to invite me to attend.

Sure, I said.  In the back of my mind, I thought that would be a nice book for my shelf and probably nothing more.  Joe Nemecek is the real figural collector between the two of us (he had also received an invite), and I didn’t see how it would make sense to travel across the Atlantic to look at things that probably wouldn’t interest me.

The catalog arrived, and suddenly I saw that it would make sense.  There it was, Lot 232 . . . another example of a Heath snake pencil.  It wasn’t described very well in the catalog, as merely an “unmarked American pencil.”

If ever I had a chance to own one of these, this would be it.  The pencil wasn’t identified as a Heath, and as opposed to venerated British brands, the dismissive description of it as just a meager offering from a former colony and the correspondingly low auction estimate meant there was a possibility I might actually be able to get it.

But only if I was there.  You have to be extremely careful spending large amounts of money on Victorians, since it's impossible to evaluate the condition of one of these from a picture. A thorough inspection of everything you plan to bid upon is an absolute must.

I talked to Janet, who usually says she doesn’t want to go on a vacation if there’s pencils involved.  Five days, I said.  One to get there, two for preview day and auction day (with evenings free to do as we want), a full day to enjoy the town of Salisbury, and one to get home.  If I didn’t get the pencil, at least I’d get to see the greatest collection of these pencils before it was dispersed to the four winds and we’d get a nice trip out of the deal.

Our journey was probably our best vacation ever, not even taking the auction into account.  We toured Salisbury Cathedral, saw the Magna Carta, made ourselves at home several times at The Haunches of Venison (a pub founded in 1385).  We spent some great time with Jim Marshall and his wife, including a lovely dinner.  We came, we toured, we shopped and we had a great time.

And on top of that, there was the auction experience of a lifetime.  Woolley & Wallis set me up at a table with a nice cup of tea for the preview, allowing me to view and handle pencil after pencil for about three hours.  I was even able to repair a couple pencils which had become damaged by careless buyers during the preview, which endeared me greatly to the staff.

Auction day was fascinating.  There were only about ten people present in the house, with the auctioneer placing advance bids and accepting online ones during the course of the auction.

When lot number 232 came up, my heart was beating in my throat.  No, it wouldn’t make or break our mini-vacation, but I had a budget.  My competition was bidding online, so I had the advantage – the snake was perfect and I knew it, but from afar, with just one picture and a catalog description to go on, anyone else wouldn’t know what they were risking.

I won, for what I considered an insanely reasonable price -- so reasonable that I decided to save the rest of my budget and try to get the Tiffany Metropolitan Life pencil that was later in the auction . . . alas, I was vastly outgunned on that one, so other than a couple end of auction odds and ends, the Heath was my real score for the day.

And I was absolutely elated.

News spread of my acquisition when I returned to the States, and I received a surprising message from my friend Pearce Jarvis: he had the matching dip pen, if I was interested.

He told me the price, and I gulped a little bit.  It was a lot of money for something I don’t collect.  However, by the time we got together at the DC Show, I had come to terms with the fact that I couldn’t pass the opportunity.  They had to be together, I said to myself, and besides – the total for both was less than my budget for just the pencil.

So here they are, as they rest comfortably in the Heath section of the museum:

The Heath mark - an H within brackets, appears prominently on both pieces:

The pencil, just like the Parker snake pens, has a snake with green eyes – I don’t know whether they are glass or emeralds.  For whatever reason, on the dip pen Heath dispensed with the inset eyes:

I’ve never traveled so far, and been so happy, for the purchase of a pencil!