First Bounce on the Diving Board

 A couple days ago, as I discussed that new old stock Moore pencil I recently acquired from Gabriel Galecia Goldsmith, I mentioned that I’d be circling back around to the Moore Pen Company’s products. During my long hiatus, I had shot images of my entire Moore collection, planning a “deep dive” into the subject when I returned.

The full deep dive will have to wait a bit, since I need to reshoot several of the images . . . new finds keep arriving, and I’d rather include everything when I get around to discussing those models; however, in the early Moore department – the metal and hard rubber ones – I haven’t found anything new since I shot that last round of images and, in light of that 1925 catalog in the PCA library, I am now itching to tell you about them. On page 21, Moore’s metal pencils are on display, complete with enough model numbers to piece together Moore’s entire numbering system.

One of my favorite non-Sheaffer, non-Eversharp images I took while I wrote the books on those two subjects is this one, featuring my gold filled Moore ringtop pencils:

The catalog doesn’t include every variation, but by comparing the designations of what is listed, you can extrapolate model numbers for all the different sizes, models, and materials.

First digit: size. 1 for full size with clip, 2 for ringtop.

Second digit: metal content. 0 for silver nickel, 1 for sterling, 2 for gold fill, 3 for 18k gold fill, 5 for solid 14k green gold, and 8 for white gold filled.

Third digit: pattern. With that information in hand, here are the formal names and model designations of the above:  

1. Plain (not listed on the metal pencils page, but unadorned fountain pens elsewhere are called “Plain” when unadorned). Plain fountain pens in the catalog have a common denominator of the number 2 for the Plain, so I think this was Model 222. 

2. "Pyramid" – Model 225.

3. "Lotus" – in white gold filled, this is listed as Model 283, so I’m betting in gold fill as shown here this is Model 223.

4. "Grotesque" – seriously, what was Moore’s marketing department thinking with that name, other than perhaps “I really hate this pattern”?? This is listed as Model 230.

5. “Trojan” - in full length, solid 14k green gold this was listed as Model 156, so I think this would have been Model 226. 

6. “Pilgrim” - Model 227 as listed.

Not shown here nor in the 1925 catalog is the “Ribbon” pattern - the common denominator among fountain pens listed in Ribbon is the number 4, so I’m betting – assuming they were made and I’ve just not had luck finding one – that the model number would be 224. I didn’t shoot the silver-colored Moore ringtops, because I have only two: a “Grotesque” in sterling (Model 210, by my calculations) and a plain nickel-silver example (which should be Model 202). 

In my experience, Moore’s ringtop metal pencils are much easier to find than than their full-sized counterparts with clips. I’ve only turned up four over the years:

From top, these would be Model 122 (full length, gold filled, Plain), Model 112 (full length, sterling, Plain), Model 114 (full length, sterling, Ribbon) and Model 134 (full length, 18k gold filled, Ribbon).

Note the ill-fitting cap on the bottom example. Maybe it is a replacement, but I haven’t changed it: it’s the earliest example I’ve found, predating the 1925 catalog by three years or so:

“Pat. Pend.” so this example was made sometime before late 1921 (assuming the barrels were promptly updated with the patent date after it was issued).  Pencils made by Moore were covered by two patents, the first of which was applied for by John G. Liddell on December 14, 1921 Liddell’s patent was granted on August 15, 1922 as patent number 1,425,871.

Liddell improved his design and filed a second patent application on May 10, 1924, which was issued on October 13, 1925 as patent number 1,556,701:

The vast majority of these metal pencils were covered by Liddell’s 1922 patent; out of all of the examples in my collection, only one – the nickel silver plain ringtop – has the 1925 patent date. Nearly all were made after the 1922 patent was issued: only three of mine are marked “Pat. Pend.” 

The hard rubber pencils, however, are a different story. They are marked sometimes with the 1922 or the 1925 patent date . . . and they came in a fun range of variations. That story tomorrow . . .