A Box, a Display, and a Clue

This article has been included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 7, now available here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy the article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

When this showed up in an online auction, I had to have it even though the pencil wasn’t American, wasn’t marked, and had nothing to do with the box:

It was the box that really interested me, because Hutcheon Brothers paraphernalia is really hard to come by:

Hutcheon’s products tend to slip under the radar, because the company’s logo is hard to read when it is found stamped on a pencil barrel.  It appears on the middle of the box between “Pens” and “Pencils” in distinctive, rounded letters:

Rarity aside, I wanted this example because I had the perfect place for it.  A few years ago, a glass counter display found its way to me with great acid-etched lettering for Hutcheon “Finerpointe” pencils:

Complete with a pointer, doing it’s thing:

Joe Nemecek has a boxed Hutcheon Finerpointe, complete with paperwork, sporting that same artwork:

While Joe’s box is a perfect match, I’m not going to quibble . . . the one I found adds a nice touch to my Hutcheon display of Finerpointes, Finepointers (yes, they changed the name from one to the other at some point), “Hutch Clutch” pencils, stockbroker pencils and other miscellaneous Hutcheon-marked stuff:

But . . . that’s not quite the end of today’s story.  Some time ago I picked up something that I didn’t know quite what to think about.  

No, it isn’t about the Ex-Lax advertisement.  At first, I thought this might be a Diamond Point or Eclipse, because it certainly shares similar lines.  Here it is alongside a “Marxton” (the Eclipse subbrand which borrowed its name from Marx Finstone):

Imprinted on the clip is “Winchester,” with the initials HB above it:

I’ve found Winchester-marked pencils before, but nothing that looks like this one.  The others are later - 1940s or so:

I’ve never heard the Winchester brand name used by Hutcheon Brothers, but that was the only possibility I could conjure up for that “HB.”  Note how those letters are rounded off, kind of like the lettering on my Hutcheon box?  

That same font was used on later examples of the company’s pens, too.  Here’s the imprint from a later Hutcheon fountain pen sold by Peyton Street Pens:

I think that’s our answer.