All Boxed In

I’ve never made it to the California Pen Show in Los Angeles; nor have I been to its predecessor, the LA Show. With all of the stuff I take to shows, the only feasible way to get there would be to drive and the commute from Ohio would be horrific.

Not to mention that the show is in February each year, when the weather there is beautiful as always and the weather here is . . . well, I often joke that I’m a lot busier writing wills for people in February because everybody thinks they are dying in February in Ohio. I’m afraid if I leave my beloved slushy mud bowl of a state in the winter, even for a weekend, I wouldn’t come back.

So I sat in grey, rainy Ohio last February, watching everybody post their pictures of all the fun they were having at the California Pen Show. Miro Tischler always does large photo dumps of his snapshots from every show, and I was enjoying seeing many of my friends in their short sleeves, with smiles on their faces, surrounded by piles of pens and pencils.

Scratch that. I was just torturing myself, as I instinctively zoomed in on Miro’s pictures to see what people had on their tables. This is stupid with two O’s, I told myself. The show is already over, I’m more than 2,000 miles away, and . . . what’s that? I think I hear sleet hitting the window . . . 

I was doing it anyway.

One of the images Miro posted showed a guy I didn’t know. That wasn’t too surprising: while I know most of the active participants in our hobby, there are people in our community who don’t cross the Mississippi.

I scanned the crowd to see who else I knew in the background, then instinctively I zoomed in for a closer look . . .

Wait what?? Is that a Dunn? In the box? With what looks like paperwork? Dunn pencils are scarcer than hen’s teeth, and my research had not turned up much: in “Dunn and Done” (October 24, 2016: Volume 4, page 226) I laid out most of what I knew: the Dunn Pen Company failed in 1924, and was replaced by Dunn Pen and Pencil, Inc., which only operated for two years and folded in 1926.

There were several Dunn articles included in Volume 4, but the discussion centered around similarities between Dunn pencils, Esterbrook repeating pencils, and the Wall-Stieh Company’s Selfeed. A little bit of paperwork included with an example in the box might well add something to the history of the Dunn Pencil!

The chase was on, so I posted a comment asking who the mystery man was in that picture, and Scott Jones identified him as Craig Roccanova, who now goes by Reese Roccanova. I sent a message to Reese, and we had a very pleasant conversation . . . unfortunately, he said, that pencil wasn’t his. The picture captured the edge of the display next to his.

And who was that? Gabriel Galecia Goldsmith, all-around good egg who has lent me things to photograph in the Sheaffer and Eversharp books. Gabriel confirmed he still had the Dunn – in addition to several other items he was thinking about offloading. He sent me a picture, the negotiations were brief, and I took them all:

That’s the image I took right after I unwrapped them all, still laying on the bubble wrap inside the box. There’s a lot of good stuff I’ll be writing about in upcoming articles, but for today I wanted to show you these – that Dunn was not the only box-and-papers pencil in the group:

I’ll start with the Dunn, since the Dunn is what started it all. Here it is alongside the other examples at the museum:

Perfection . . . almost. One of my examples has a price band identifying it as Model 300R, which adds some context to Gabriel’s example:

The box as it came to me includes a plain barrel ringtop – it would be reasonable to assume that would be a Model 100 for a plain barrel, Model 100R for the ringtop. The end of the box, however, is inconsistent with what is inside:

Model 100C and, in case you couldn’t figure out what the C stands for, it means “Clip.” No, I'm not disappointed, because I’ve never seen a Dunn-Pencil Box in any condition and finding a Dunn pencil in any condition is worth at least one whoop or holler. Besides, I had yet to unfold the paper inside:

Great artwork, but there are no revelations here that add to what we know – and yes, I already knew not to put “oil, water or anything in the barrel with the idea of cleaning it.” But wait . . . it says to see the other side for information about Dunn leads . . . 

There’s one of those pesky fountain pens, for those who like that sort of thing. Also, there is a detail worth noting in the lower left corner: two New York addresses, 71 Fifth Avenue and 170 Broadway – at the corner of Maiden Lane. It looks like the Fifth Avenue address was intended to be crossed off. 

In my previous article, I discussed the copy of Dunn letterhead in the Pen Collectors of America’s library:

This announcement is undated, and in my previous article I corrected the “ca. 1920" notation added at the top, since Dunn Pen and Pencil, Inc. was not created until 1924. While it is possible Dunn had both the Fifth Avenue and Broadway offices at the time the document in the PCA library was printed, it doesn’t make much sense to have two offices three miles apart in Manhattan. I suspect that the Broadway office at the corner of Maiden Lane might have been opened later, and then the Fifth Avenue office was closed – all between 1924 and 1926.

One source indicates that Dunn was located at the Broadway address only in 1925, suggesting that the old Dunn Pen Company was located uptown, then soon after the 1924 reorganization the company moved.

That little extra bit of context may have been all that I needed to feel like I got my money’s worth, but there were several other boxed items that came in Gabriel’s lot. I’ll tell you about those tomorrow . . .