Reacquainted with Old Friends

Note: this article appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of The PENnant, Journal of the Pen Collectors of America.

Readers frequently ask me which brand of mechanical pencil is my “favorite” out of the thousands of pencils about which I have written. I don’t have one—the blog has featured each of my latest favorites in turn. When I started the project, my thought was that if there isn’t something about a pencil interesting enough for me to write about, it isn’t worth buying.

That went out the window a few thousand pencils ago. I have more new additions now than I can write about during my lifetime, or even my grandchildren’s’ lifetimes.

There are, however, a few brands that cause me to tread perilously close to the line separating hoarders from historians. I can’t resist snapping up early Ever Sharps (yes, that’s two words for the early models) because even if I have one or a few identical examples...I just like them. An Artpoint pencil is another brand on which I’ll splurge any day of the week because hope springs eternal that someday I’ll find an imprint under the cap that will contain some extra bit of information to add to the story.

Another hoard-worthy brand, and the topic of today’s article, is the Salz ’Salrite. Wayward ’Salrites always find refuge here because they have so many interesting little variations that I’m fairly certain whatever I bring home will be different from what I already have. Over the years I’ve bought every reasonably priced example I’ve run across...and only a couple of them have been exact duplicates.

I laid out the pieces of the ’Salrite story as I understood them at the time in a three-part series, “Before Salz Was Salz” (September 5 through 7, 2016: Volume 4, pages 152-159). Since then, a few fascinating new variants have surfaced which cause me to circle back to the subject, but before I introduce them in the next installments of this series, this article will present a summary of the ’Salrite story.

Salz Brothers, Inc., was founded by brothers James, Jacob, and the colorful Ignatz Salz, who began manufacturing fountain pens in New York around 1909, according to Richard Binder’s invaluable online resource, the “Glossopedia.” In January, 1920, Salz Brothers introduced a companion pencil called the “Sta-Sharp” to pair with the company’s pens (fig. 1). The Sta-Sharp was a thin, metal pencil that was unique for its spare lead storage compartment, accessed by unscrewing the nose. It was patented by Lucifer Most (fig. 2) on December 23, 1919, and was manufactured by the newly formed Pencil Products Corporation, incorporated on March 3, 1919.

Figure 1. Sta-Sharp pencils made by the Pencil Products Corporation, from page 132 of the author’s first book, The Catalogue of American Mechanical Pencils.

 

Figure 2. Lucifer J. Most’s patent for the Salz “Sta-Sharp” pencil, applied for on June 11, 1919, and issued December 23, 1919, as number 1,325,570. Spare leads were contained within a star-shaped insert within the barrel, accessed by unscrewing the nose.

In late 1920 or early 1921, Ignatz Salz coined a colorful new name for the Sta-Sharp: ’Salrite — a campy contraction for “It’s all right” — and the new name appears on the clips of a few rebranded Sta-Sharp metal pencils (fig. 3). Beginning in late 1921, Salz introduced a new hard rubber incarnation of the ’Salrite and dubbed it “the machine gun of commerce” (fig. 4). Hard rubber ’Salrite pencils differ from their predecessors only on the outside; the internal mechanism is the same, with the star-shaped metal insert for lead storage replaced with holes drilled into the nose end of the barrel (fig. 5).

Figure 3. Sta-Sharp metal pencils in their original boxes. The upper example has a clip marked “SB,” while the lower one bears Ignatz Salz’s flashy new name for the pencil, ’Salrite.

Figure 4. This advertisement, which ran in Modern Stationer on October 25, 1921, introduced the new hard rubber incarnation of the Salz ’Salrite.

Figure 5.  Hard rubber ’Salrite pencils are identical to their predecessors, with the metal star-shaped lead storage replaced with holes drilled into the end of the barrel.

Within a year, an advertisement by stationer James McCreery & Co. in the Evening World on April 24, 1922, announced that the Pencil Products Corporation had ceased manufacturing metal pencils. I interpret this notice to mean that Pencil Products was no longer making complete pencils but was still making metal components for the new hard rubber pencils. Examples with plain hard rubber tops bear imprints lacking any reference to Pencil Products, but later examples with metal caps through the end of the ’Salrite’s run bear the Pencil Products name, together with the December 23, 1919, and May 3, 1922, patent dates (figs. 6 and 7). The 1922 patent date refers to one issued to the other Salz brother, James Salz — number 1,414,752, for a “hard rubber pencil.” The 1922 patent was also assigned to Pencil Products Corporation (fig. 8).

Figure 6. ’Salrites with hard rubber tops lack any reference to the Pencil Products Corporation, but retain the company’s 1919 patent date.

Figure 7. Later ’Salrites with metal caps indicate Pencil Products continued to manufacture metal components for Salz. Note the May 5, 1922, patent date has been added.

Figure 8. James Salz applied for this patent for the hard rubber incarnation of the ’Salrite on November 27, 1920. It was granted on May 5, 1922.

From all appearances, judging from numerous large, flashy newspaper advertisements in 1921 and 1922, the hard rubber incarnation of the ’Salrite was wildly successful ... until, that is, Salz attempted to register a trademark for the name “Salz Rite.” The Sandfelder Corporation, owner of the “Shur-Rite” trademark for mechanical pencils, objected to trademark registration of “Salz Rite,” claiming that the public might be confused. While that argument might appear to be a stretch, there is some evidence that any similarity between the two names was intentional: Salz also coined the name “Shur-Hold” in reference to the clips used on the ’Salrite. 

Ultimately, in a decision rendered on March 30, 1923 [Figure 9], the Patent Office denied registration of the “Salz Rite” name on grounds of likelihood of confusion (fig. 9). In doing so, the Commissioner noted that in use, imprints on ’Salrite pencils either had a very small Z or omitted the letter entirely. This “likelihood of confusion” finding was a death sentence for the name, because it was also an administrative precursor to an injunction by the newly formed Federal Trade Commission.

Figure 9. The Patent Office denied Salz’s attempted registration of “Salz Rite” on March 30, 1923, holding that the name was too similar to the “Shur-Rite” name previously registered by the Sandfelder Corporation.

The trademark scuffle appeared to cripple Salz, which had invested so heavily in national advertising. An announcement in the March 13, 1923, issue of the Winnipeg Tribune (in Canada, beyond the reach of American authorities) stated that 500 ’Salrite pencils were being offered at a discount “because the factory was changing ownership.” In my earlier articles, I indicated that the last reference I had found with respect to ’Salrite pencils being offered at closeout prices occurred in December, 1923. I have since rechecked my sources and I can extend that date, but not by much: G. Fox & Company offered ’Salrite pencils for 59 cents in the Hartford Courant on January 10, 1924.

When I last wrote about the ’Salrite, I noted that one closeout advertisement from late 1923 indicated that three sizes of the pencils were available, in “mottled” and black. At that time, I’d only seen ’Salrites in two sizes, and only in black hard rubber, so I was excited to introduce the first mottled example I had recently found. Since then, I’ve found a few others (fig. 10).

Figure 10. Hard rubber ’Salrite pencils in black and mottled hard rubber. Note the bottom example, which abandons the contentious wraparound “Shur- Hold” in favor of the pressed-in clip seen on earlier metal Salz Sta-Sharp and ’Salrite pencils. This was likely used because the “Shur- Hold” clip was impractical to install over an overlay; the nickel plating, however, also suggests leftover parts were used on closeout models made near the end of the run.

The top two examples in figure 10 are unusual because they lack any ’Salrite markings. While it is tempting to think of these as early or “first year” ’Salrites, I don’t think that’s right: recall that these were marketed as the ’Salrite from the outset, even before the hard rubber pencils were introduced, and note also that the second one from top has the later floral-engraved cap, which includes the December 1922 patent date. I think it is more likely that these were made after trademark registration for the name was denied. 

The bottom example in Figure 10, with its flashy, wide, gold-filled bands complemented by cheap nickel- plated furniture (and a pressed-in clip instead of Salz’s contentious “Shur- Hold” clip), appears to be a closeout model made using leftover parts. In Volume 4 of the Blog, I showed off an identical example that turned up with a ’Salrite clip, but with “Chase Pencil Corporation” imprinted on the gold-filled trim band (fig. 11).

Figure 11. The imprint on the lowermost example in figure 10 has a pressed clip marked ’Salrite, but the trim is imprinted “Chase Pencil Corporation,” which surfaced briefly in 1924. 

The only reference I have found for the “Chase Pencil Corporation” was a November 5, 1924, classified advertisement in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, in which Chase sought sales agents in the St. Louis area. Since the ad indicated that the company was “established three years,” this suggests Chase was a continuation of the Salz pencilmaking enterprise, operating under a different name to evade scrutiny by the FTC.

And then...Crickets. Perhaps Federal regulators, the Sandfelder Corporation, or both finally “chased” down Ignatz and company, stopping all this nonsense once and for all. The ’Salrite apparently disappeared shortly after Chase took over the business in 1924.

Gone...but not entirely. The ’Salrite would emerge briefly for one last, fascinating reprise — more on that in the third installment of this series, after I address a couple of lingering questions, which were answered in one fell swoop and in spectacular fashion, in the next installment of this series.