A Name That's Closer to Right

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Solomon Sager was an interesting character in writing instruments - his “Barrel of Ink” vacuum filled pens, made by Grieshaber, were accompanied by matching pencils.  Unfortunately, the pencils also carried the “Barrel of Ink” trademark – still cool, but as I suggested in The Catalogue, it might have been nice if he had a different trademark for the pencils, like “Bucket of Lead” or something:

Into the 1940s, though, Sager started a different company: the Graphomatic Corporation, through which he produced the Graphomatic Inkmaker pen:

The “Colonel De Luxe” pens were distinctly styled, with a ribbed band around the cap as well as the edge of the section:

The pens have “Graphomatic” stamped on the nibs:

What a pity – “Graphomatic” seems so much more appropriate for a line of pencils than a bunch of pens, I thought . . . and then, one of those pig-in-a-poke online auctions brought me a box full of pencils, including this one.  It wasn’t my target (I’ll write about that one later), and when I bid I had no idea what it was:

It is a Graphomatic:

With that cap, it looks almost like a combination pencil and fountain pen . . . but it isn’t . . .

Was it intended to be a combo, or was it always a double ended pencil?  I’m inclined to think it was built this way.  Sager had a flair for the weird, and the red stripe on that barrel in combination with the red pencil “section” point toward a very traditional red/black double-ender.  Perhaps an optimistic double ender, which presumed that you’d be leaving the cap on with the red lead stowed away more often than not when working on the books!

That means the Sager selection at the museum is up to four examples in two generations: 

The older Grieshaber-made “Barrel of Ink” pencils, and the newer style (and more appropriately named) Graphomatic.