The Chicago Victorians

I found a few great Victorian pieces to add to the museum at the Chicago show this year. I know a few of these came from Mike Greaney, and it was great to catch up with him since I last saw him:

That top one is a convertible pencil - you can either keep it in the holder on a chain, or withdraw it:

The neat ribbed top had me thinking Edward Todd before I pulled out my loupe - but the Edward Todds I have along these lines are telescoping pencils that extend by friction as they are withdrawn:

The patent on the Edward Todd pieces is August 9, 1892; I wrote about these in “The Hicks Variation” (August 24, 2017: Volume 5, page 96).

The more I thought about that, the more I thought that wasn’t right. It wasn’t – I had the wrong Todd.

This one is marked Mabie, Todd & Co., and the patent date imprinted is March 10, 1891 – that’s number 447,879, issued to John C.W. Jeffreys and George Dickman of London, England and assigned to George W. Mabie. That patent got past me when I wrote American Writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910; it wasn’t filed in any of the usual patent categories for pens and pencils, but in Class 63, “Jewelry,” subclass 22, “Bar: Devices comprising means to be passed through a buttonhole to secure the chain to the clothing.”  See “Another Forgotten Corner at the Patent Office” (December 7, 2015: Volume 4, page 25).

Once I had the right maker in mind, it was easy finding that example I wrote about ten years ago, and another one with that same neat ribbed top.

This next one, if I remember right, came from Pete Kirby. It has a patent date I remembered:

I remembered having another one along these lines, too. Fortunately it was with a different pattern, and they do look very nice together:

And, I remembered the trick about these from the last time I wrote about them, in “Three Interesting Hicks Patents” (September 22, 2016: Volume 4, page 181). There’s something on the other end of that pencil, I thought . . . 

Well, there should be, anyway. The one I had in my collection is intact, with a nice John Holland No. 6 dip pen nib. The pencil part of the new addition works just fine, but the band that secured a dip pen nib has gone missing.

The next Victorian that came home from Chicago with me was this hard rubber example:

It is also a Hicks, but there isn’t a patent associated with this one.

What makes this one unusual is its large pencil mechanism, operated by a simple slider. By this time, in the 1870s or 1880s, the slider function was usually reserved for dip pen nibs, with pencils advanced by some sort of spiral or twist mechanism.

The fourth pencil in this group is another Mabie Todd, and with that fat front end where the nose come out I knew exactly what it is:

The barrel imprint reads “Pat. Mar. 16, ‘75 / Mabie, Todd & Co. / 1664":

These have come up a couple times here over the years, in “Mabie’s Other Patent” (June 14, 2021: Volume 7, page 194) and “Something I Never Knew Was There” (November 30, 2016: Volume 4, page 276). The reference is to George Mabie’s patent number 160,924:

The nose pulls out of the barrel and reverses for the dip pen nib.

Usually these are much bigger than this example, which fits well with the ones that were pictured in David Moak’s book, Mabie in America. It’s in better shape than my other hard rubber example – and it’s in a different pattern, too.

The last of my Chicago finds will have to wait until tomorrow. As I poked around for more information about it, an amazing story emerged . . . and when I’m finished telling it, you are going to think I did this on purpose.

The "Striped" or "Wartime" Duofold

In 1940, right on the heels of the introduction of the Parker 51, the Parker Pen Company brought out a fascinating little series of pens and pencils which collectors today call “Striped” or “Wartime” Duofolds. Parker referred to them simply as the “Duofold,” an inexplicable revival of a name which Parker had phased out of use with the introduction of the Vacumatic during the mid-1930s. 

These Wartime Duofolds were unique in that each configuration was assigned its own model name: eight distinct models were cataloged by Parker in 1940, and another six models were introduced at some point before the Duofold line was again retired in 1948. With the fountain pens, different features such as the filling system and the presence or absence of a blue diamond on the clip assist with identification. With the pencils, all of them used the same mechanism and none of them had blue diamonds on their clips. 

For primary reference sources, the Pen Collectors of America has preserved Parker’s 1940 and 1941 general catalogs. The PCA also includes a shorter, Duofold-specific catalog which provides the most detail about the line, which catalogs and illustrates eight Duofold models, each of which had a matching pencil.

From the top, these are:

1. Duofold Senior;

2. Duofold Senior Ingenue;

3. Duofold Major;

4. Duofold Debutante;

5. The Sacless Duofold or Duofold Junior (depending on which source your read)

6. Sacless Duofold Sub-Deb or Duofold Sub-Deb (same)

7. Sac Duofold Pencil; and

8. Sac Dufold Lady Pencil.

The Duofold was cataloged in three “Laidtone” colors: “blue pearl” (blue), “dusty red” (maroon), and “green and gold” (green). Black was cataloged only in the Sacless or Junior models and the Sac Duofold and Sac Duofold Lady. Finding every model and color is a challenge, and I’m not sure every model was actually produced in every color. 

Senior and Senior Ingenue pens were the most expensive in the series, featuring blue diamonds on their clips, the same filling system used on the flagship Vacumatic line, and a tassie on the blind cap (in Vacumatic-speak, we’d call them “double jewel” pens). Here are the pencils I have found:

I’ve shown two examples of the blue Ingenue because they sport different clips.

At this point, a disclaimer: yes, Parker Duofold barrels have a production date code stamped on the lower part, but I’m not going to express any opinion as to when these variations might have been used. All of the magic differentiating Duofold models is on the caps, which are interchangeable, so there’s no way to know eighty years or more later whether any particular cap belongs with any particular barrel – in fact, I doubt Parker even cared that much. 

In addition, the clips are easy to swap out. I think at this point, whatever date code is imprinted on a lower barrel is meaningless and cannot be relied on to express any opinions about what’s going on with the top ends. Maybe one clip was used in a specific year, maybe not . . . and maybe one of these clips has been transplanted from another model entirely, such as the Parker Challenger. 

Next in the Duofold series are the Major and Debutante models, with their wide, geometric bands - the same band, you might notice, that was used on the later Parker Royal Challenger models (see “The Royal Challenge” on October 12, 2025). In the fountain pens, these were identical to the Senior and Ingenue models, except the blind cap did not have a tassie.

The Debutante, like the Ingenue, can be found with different clip variations.

By far the most numerous of these Wartime Duofolds are those with twin trim bands, and Parker’s own references aren’t consistent in naming them. The more detailed Duofold catalog refers to them as the “Sacless Duofold” and the “Sacless Duofold Sub-Deb.”

However, Parker’s general catalog for 1940 refers to these twin-band models as the “Duofold Junior” and the “Duofold Sub-Deb.“

The Junior and Sub-Deb lines models are the only ones in which I have found examples in all four colors:

Perhaps these are the most common Duofold models because the only difference between them and the significantly more expensive Major and Debutante was the simpler trim bands. The suggested retail price for the Junior was $4.74, a considerable savings over the $6.00 price for a Major or Debutante.

The last and most Spartan of the Duofold fountain pens were the “Sac Duofold” and “Sac Duofold Lady,” which had a thin, plain band and a button filler, just like the original Duofolds of the 1920s and early 1930s. The matching pencils were a little bit cheaper, but other than the trim they were identical to the Sacless models.

That covers everything that was documented in Parker’s Duofold-specific 1940 catalog. Parker’s general catalog for 1940 lists only the Junior and Sub-Deb (twin band) models, and Parker’s 1941 general catalog lists only the Junior (referred to by then as the “Sacless Duofold”), Duofold Sub-Deb, Sac Duofold (or “Visometer” Sac Duofold, for the visulated section) and Sac Duofold Lady.

Then we get into the other models, which require a bit of extrapolation to identify. Consider these, which are fairly plentiful: they have a medium-width band with the Vacumatic-style band (collectors call it the ///\\\/// band for the way it looks):

Sources agree (both Tony Fischier over at Parkerpens.net and Richard Binder’s thorough article on the pens over at Richardspens.com) that these are the later incarnation of the Senior, after the three-piece band was discontinued – but both sources only refer to the large-size fountain pens. If that’s true, I don’t know whether smaller pens and pencils were still called the Ingenue, or if they were all lumped together as the Senior, just offered in two sizes.

This next group has wide “stacked coin” bands, nicknamed because the bands look like . . . well, like a stack of coins.

These bands are the same width as the old Major. Richard Binder refers to a short pen with a black plastic blind cap as simply a Lady Duofold with a “milled jeweler’s band.” Tony Fishier refers to these as the “Man Duofold” in the larger size, but I have not been able to confirm that name.

Then we have these two models:

The upper example, with three thin bands, is something I’ve only found in blue and only in this larger size. Binder doesn’t show one in his article, and Fischier says it was also called the “Man” Duofold and included in the 1940 lineup – I’ve read and reread both of the 1940 catalogs, and I’m really not sure where he is getting either the name or the date. 

The last variant to show you is that bottom one, with a “split arrow” Vacumatic clip and a narrower stacked coin band:

Collectors have nicknamed these the “Vacufold,” although some also cling to “Duovac” (because whether it’s a tomato or a tomato is important in some circles). The name comes from their interesting mixture of features: the clip and imprint are Vacumatic, while the material is Duofold. Fishier and Binder both show examples of the pens in red, so these may also be out there in green and in black, too. 

As I mentioned earlier, Parker’s date-coded barrels are not reliable for concluding when any of these Duofold pencils were made, given the ease with which parts can be swapped. Exhibit A for this problem is evident when I compare barrel imprints on my the triple-banded “Duofold Man” (or whatever we call it) and my Vacufold. IF the Duofold “Man” was part of the 1940 lineup and IF it has all of its original parts, it should have a Parker Duofold imprint like the top example in this next image:

It doesn’t. It has the same Vacumatic imprint as the Vacufold, and everything I’ve read suggests the Vac imprints were exclusive to the Vacufold. The “Man” does have a 1940 date code, which is consistent with what Fishier wrote . . . for whatever that is worth.

For right now, I’m throwing all that I know about the Wartime Duofold out there in the hopes someone can help fill in some blanks about the six models not shown in Parker’s catalogs – in particular, I’m looking for sources detailing official model names, including whether any 1940-1941 names were changed later in the run, and I’d like confirmation that any examples in colors not shown in this article, whether pens or pencils, are known to exist.

The Second, Third, and Other Shoes Drop

My only complaint about the DC Supershow, held every August, is that so many of my friends are there that it is a challenge finding more than a few minutes to talk with each of them. Things only slow down to a reasonable pace on Sunday, by which time everyone is so thoroughly exhausted and “peopled” out that we are collectively ready to return to our normal, quirky lives.

I don’t even bother to set up on Thursday, so I can see everyone and share things we brought to show each other; I’ll typically have a backpack containing only a case of things I brought to show people and a bottle of Jameson’s. Both are typically empty by the time festivities end on that first day.

As I wandered about the room, my old friend R. George Adams flagged me down. R. George, you may recall, found that weird Stylofede pencil for me (see “The Pencil and the Tramp” on August 5, 2025), and he’s got a great eye for the unusual and the weird. 

This time, R. George wanted to offer me some wonderful pieces out of his collection of Carter’s pens and pencils. Two of his fountain pens enamored me; usually, I’m too cheap to spend big money on fountain pens, particularly in the first few minutes after I arrive at a show, but I was unable to resist these.

At the time, I assumed one of these was a duplicate of the DeLaCo example from yesterday’s article because I couldn’t remember what the imprint read. I didn’t mind adding a complete and intact example, even if it proved to be a duplicate, but I was pleasantly surprised when I got home:

Yesterday’s DeLaCo pen is now in the company of identical pens marked Superite (DeWitt-LaFrance’s later flagship brand) and Laughlin, of Detroit, Michigan. As for the nibs, the Superite has one of those “S” marked nibs I was telling you about yesterday, and the Laughlin has a number 5 size Snapfil nib.

That Snapfil is an unusual nib, typically found on the General Manufacturing and Houston Pen Company’s Snapfil lines of fountain pens (General Manufacturing also produced those grail “Kaligraf” pencils). By the time these were made, around 1920, Laughlin was sourcing pens rather than making them; I don’t know whether the company sourced nibs and pens separately and put them together or whether this is a random replacement.

R.George had a few pencils to show me, too. They are the four examples in the middle of this next image:

Before I get to R. George’s pencils, a word about that black hard rubber example at top. It is one of the earliest of the Carter-branded pencils, a rebadged version of the hard rubber Superite pencils. The Carter Ink Company purchased DeWitt-LaFrance in 1925, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility that Carter’s was sourcing pens and pencils from DeWitt-LaFrance before the sale.

This one came to me from an online auction that closed shortly after I got home from the DC show – it’s a duplicate that’s both an upgrade in one respect and a downgrade in another:

My other black hard rubber example has badly discolored hard rubber and corroded trim . . . but it has a price sticker. Both of my black hard rubber examples have groups of lines on the barrel. DeWitt-LaFrance made identical pencils for the Rexall Drug Stores under the “Signet” line; Signet pencils had gold filled trim, and the black hard rubber ones came either with or without those groups of lines. See “Chasing and Fixing Signets” (July 8, 2021: Volume 7, page 246).

All but one of these Carter’s pencils have nickel trim rather than gold-filled, but the existence of that red hard rubber Carter with gold filled trim suggests that there’s no reason all of these others might also come with that trim . . . and the Signet line was also offered in mottled hard rubber, too. 

The first of the four Carter’s pencils that came from R. George is that great pink and white oversized pencil; these were student or utility models, I believe, and to my knowledge there were no comparable fountain pens. With an exposed eraser, I’ve only found these in black or red hard rubber, and the crown tops found on these student models are unique to this series.

I wrote about that blue one during the first year of the blog – see “If Only All ‘Student Pencils’ Were This Nice!” (March 30, 2012: Volume 1, page 159). While larger, these are also lighter since it’s a thinner plastic barrel rather than the more hefty Coralite or hard rubber.

The second R. George Special was that Pearltex pencil in blue . . . or blueish, anyway. Pearltex shades vary from one pencil to the next and no, that’s not discoloration, which comes from exposure to rubber ink sacs, ink, or a combination of the two, something that typically doesn’t plague pencils. When I bought it, I had checked my notes, and I thought this one would fit nicely into my collection, which included what I thought was a short grey and the short and long models in blue. However, when I got them all together under the strong lights in my photo setup, it isn’t so clear.

My “gray” ringtop looks more pink, and the “blue” ringtop looks more gray. Colors on the Pearltex series are so often a matter of degree, though, and in this case I’m just content that R. George’s addition is clearly different from what was already represented in this series. 

The third R. George Memorial Carter is in lapis Coraltex – it’s very close to a model I recently wrote about in “Duly Twisted” (October 2, 2025). In that earlier article, I noted that I already had three Lapis Carter pencils, but this one is a variation I didn’t have:

Carter pencils with a single band at the top are earlier; Carter’s fountain pens are shown with a single wide cap band in newspaper advertisements from 1926 through mid-1928, while advertisements beginning in late 1928 illustrate double cap bands like these. While these advertisements do not show the matching pencils, I don’t believe it is a stretch to say that the banding on the pencils matched fountain pens made at the same time.

The two white Pearltex examples at the bottom are a story all their own: the oversized model was the fourth R. George Special from the DC Show, and Terry Mawhorter had the ringtop. I was happy and a little irritated at the same time to find these, because I had to reshoot a picture that was a real pain in the neck to stage. Here’s the original image, taken to commemorate the addition of a ringtop identical to the one I got from Terry:

This shows Carter models in white Pearltex, which evolved on a slightly different track from the same pencils in other colors. The top three examples are not a match for any other Carter’s pens or pencils of the era.

I had planned an article months ago about why  streamlined ringtops in white Pearltex have a single trim bands at the top, while all the other colors have twin bands.

Later versions in white Pearltex match the same models in other colors . . . mostly. The last of the full-length Carter pencils blended elements from the flattop series with the cheaper Carter products made in the 1930s.

Carter eventually abandoned the distinctive LaFrance clip; these later models sport very unusual colors, but I haven't found one in white Pearltex.

Later Carter ringtops are unmarked and were not made in as wide a range of colors, but the distinctive Pearltex and trim are unmistakable. Note the shorter caps on the grey models – this is too small a sampling to draw any conclusions, other than that there were two different cap lengths.

During those sad last days of Carter’s writing instrument production, not even the side clip models were marked with the Carter’s name.

In fact, it wasn’t until 2018 that I was able to confirm that these were made by the company, established by indirect means in “Settles the Issue in My Mind” (February 25, 2018: Volume 5, page 164) and from scant newspaper advertisements in  “Chapter and Verse” (October 9, 2018: Volume 5, page 263). Formal confirmation arrived after I acquired a 1931 (or so) Carter catalog from Rob Bader (see “The Inconvenient Question” on June 12, 2021: Volume 7, page 190).

As Carter’s Ink Company prepared to throw in the towel with the production of writing instruments some time in the early 1930s, there were some final modifications – or debasements, depending on how you view it – to the designs, including the addition of a standard black and pearl to the lineup and the deletion of the domed tops.

I haven’t yet found a flat top Carter pencil like this in any Pearltex color. If I do, however, I’ll be reshooting that white Pearltex spread yet again.