The Chilton Article I Meant to Write

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As I scoped around online, this poor neglected soul showed promise for the price:

There aren’t a lot of pencils that had both a ringtop and a clip, and this one wasn’t supposed to.  That clip is steel when the rest of the trim is gold filled, and on close examination you can see it’s faceted to fit the contour of a faceted barrel, not a round one like this:

I rolled the dice on this one hoping that I would be able to get the clip off cleanly, since the imprint on the cap showed promise if the barrel is undamaged: Chilton.

I thought it might be the perfect opportunity to do a “how to” video to post online, how to get a cantankerous stuck clip off of a hard rubber barrel.  Tell you what though... after filming for 15 minutes it was getting embarrassing, since none of the tricks I’d normally use worked.  I finally turned off the camera and resorted to the things experts specifically tell us not to do with hard rubber.  I’m not even going to tell you what worked, because I don’t want to hear a rousing chorus of “you aren’t doing it right.”

The results, though, are indistinguishable from what I would expect had I done things “according to Hoyle.”

What I knew of Chilton’s chronology is in The Leadhead’s Pencil Blog Volume 3, page 84.  Seth Sears Crocker ran the Crocker Pen Company until his death in 1920; sometime between then and 1923, his son Seth Chilton Crocker orchestrated the formation of the Chilton Pen Company in 1923.  DeWitt-LaFrance was reputedly one of Chilton’s investors.  The company was located in Boston until some time between 1929 and 1931, when the company relocated to Long Island City, New York.

Earlier Chiltons made in Boston had a flared cap, like the bottom example in this picture.  The other three show the later bulged caps signifying Long Island production.  The straight caps . . . I didn’t know how they fit in.  I’ve only found one other example, and it has a simple z-clip, suggesting these might have been lower-priced or student models rather than another piece in the chronological puzzle:

So the article I meant to write today was going to be about those caps, and when Chilton made them, since my last writeup on Chilton wasn’t very detailed.  Both Crocker and Chilton were prolific advertisers in newspapers, with nearly 1,500 hits when I did my newspaper search.  Ads show the company located at 70 Franklin Street, Boston beginning in March 1926 and continuing through 1927, and the company would do anything for publicity.

I mean. . . anything.

On April 26, 1927, the Pittsburgh Daily Post reprinted Chilton Pen Company’s proud announcement that it had received an autographed picture of Benito Mussolini as a thank you for the special pen the company made as a gift for the Italian dictator - with a gold band marked simply “M” and an extra heavy and extra large gold nib, since “he thrusts, jabs, cuts and slashes” when he writes.

Note that this pen shares the same clip as my jade example with a straight top; advertisements through the end of 1927 appear to show this configuration, although none of the pictures were clear enough to give me that eureka moment:

After December, 1927, there’s a noticeable lull in official company advertising, and what I found during the first three quarters of 1928 were generic store advertisements, sometimes using stock advertising.  When company ads return in October, 1928, Chiltons are shown sporting a new clip and the company has a new Boston address – 287 Columbus Avenue:

Heavy national advertising continues through June, 1929, followed by another lull.  When advertising resumes again in October 1929, the home of “Chilton Capacity Pens” is in Long Island City, New York:

I never really believed that there was a clean break from the flared caps to the bulbous ones the moment Chilton left Boston, although it is convenient shorthand to refer to “Boston” and “Long Island” Chiltons.  The advertisements appear to confirm that suspicion: this version of the advertisement shows a “Boston” cap pencil alongside the pen, at the Long Island address:

This might have continued well into Chilton’s new residency: this advertisement in the Philadelphia Inquirer from April, 1930 shows the company at 110 Third Street, Long Island City – and shows a regular flattop pen:

Bulbous caps appear to have been introduced in the third quarter of 1930, after Chilton had been in Long Island for a year.  This advertisement has typically lousy images, making it difficult to see the slight flare in the cap of the pens, but the text indicates the introduction of new colors, including black and gold, blue and gold, and “harlequin” - colors not found on “Boston cap” pencils.

After 1930, official company advertising largely comes to a halt.  Jewelers and liquidators sell out stock at discounts, and it isn’t until Chilton runs advertisements for it’s new “Lox Top” caps in 1933 – without artwork to show whether this is a different feature or just a bit of gimmickry – that we hear directly from the company in the press.  In mid-1934, advertisements include better-than average artwork illustrating the device:

The bulbous tops went the way of the dodo in 1935 with the introduction of the Wingflow, a middle joint pencil in a straight, streamlined shape.  By that time, Chilton wasn’t advertising at all, and the only mention I found of its introduction was in a generic stationer’s ad, without any artwork:

So, for purposes of today’s story . . . yes, it looks like my straight top Chiltons are the earliest models from 1926, replaced by 1927's flared “Boston” caps.  Boston caps, notwithstanding their nickname, appear to have remained in production long after the company relocated to Long Island City, New York, as late as mid-1930, when the bulbous “Long Island” caps were introduced to complement new colors being introduced.  Bulbous tops were discontinued when the Wingflow was introduced in 1935.

But I learned something else in the course of researching Chilton’s story – a long forgotten detail that changes the way we think about the Parker Vacumatic.  That story tomorrow. . .