The Joke Was On Me

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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I had thought about coming up with a cute prank article for today, but nothing really seems funny.  I’ll just share a small prank I inadvertently played on myself.

At the Baltimore show this year, my good friend Tom Heath had a cigar box full of stuff on his table, but it wasn’t the kind of stuff you buy “by the pound,” as Rob Bader says.  It was some really good stuff.  One of the things in there really enamored me:

The first thing to notice about this magic pencil is how big it is - a hair over three inches closed, and about five inches when opened.  But then there’s the shape and design of it, with two plain sides, two with high relief detailing and a graceful, almost Coke-bottle profile.

Neither of which was as important to me as this:

There’s a manufacturers’ hallmark on the extender you won’t find very often, of an F within a skeleton key.  I had already done some research and concluded this was a Leroy W. Fairchild hallmark, and I was thinking if I ever sat down to start writing blog entries again, it would be nice to find a complete, intact example.  The only other example I had been able to turn up was missing the pencil mechanism, which I’d photographed five years ago:

But when I sat down to write this one up, I could not lay my hands on my notes.  I couldn’t find the pictures in my archive of pictures that hadn’t made it to the blog yet.  And . . . worst of all . . . I couldn’t find where I knew this mark was for L.W. Fairchild.

I checked American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953, and the mark wasn’t listed either in the Federal trademarks or in the excerpts I reproduced from Trade-Marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades, a Jewelers’ Circular publication that reported many unfiled trademarks used on writing instruments.  Then I remembered: it wasn’t contained in the pens and pencils section of Trade-Marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades, but in the listings for general sterling silver marks.  Retracing my steps, I found it:

So, my research all in order again, I went to post this article.  Just for a nice finishing touch, I checked the Fairchild section here at the blog, because I knew I had recently summarized the Fairchild history as written up by David Nishimura for The Pennant, and I thought it made sense to include that, too. I clicked on the tab for Fairchild at the blog, there it was:

The reason I couldn’t find all that research I had just redone was because I’d already posted an article about it.

So today, you got a couple of neat pictures of a really nice pencil, together with a story I’ve already told you.  Joke was on me.

I was determined to give you a little more, so here’s a couple new details.  The above image from Trade-marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades was taken from the 1922 edition, long after the original Fairchild firm was gone.  I worked my way backwards and checked the 1915 and 1904 editions, and they show exactly the same thing for this mark, complete with the “out of business” notation – not surprising since Fairchild-Johnson (a partnership between Leroy’s son Harry Johnson and Ephraim S. Johnson’s son) had succeeded him by 1904.

As for the first edition of Trade-Marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades, published in 1896 . . . I have never seen a physical or complete electronic copy.  When I was writing the book, the only copy I was able to locate was cataloged in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  I emailed them,  and they were kind enough to copy and email to me the relevant pages for inclusion in the book.

I wonder if anyone out there in the peanut gallery will be visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum anytime soon . . .