In that moment when I first walk into the hotel at one of these pen shows, there’s a core set of emotions and feelings swirling around in my head. I’m looking forward to seeing my friends. I’m wondering what artifacts I will discover. I wonder what new things I will learn.
However, there’s something more to it when I arrive at the Baltimore show in March each year. There’s an air of springtime optimism - even in years when the weather has been crap, the drive isn’t oppressive like the trek to Philadelphia is in January, because we know it’s winter’s last gasp. Baltimore is a busy show, almost as busy as Chicago or DC, but it is not as frantic on arrival: nothing much happens on Thursday, so there is time to work into the craziness gradually.
The bar and restaurant staff at the BWI Marriott are very friendly, so after Janet and I arrive early Thursday afternoon, we’ll sit and enjoy a few drinks while our friends trickle in. It’s a great time to catch up, and we’ll engage in relaxed show and tell sessions, with small cases of recent finds in hand.
The year before last, I was showing and telling something I had recently acquired over lazy Thursday afternoon beers and appetizers . . . but on my freaking cell phone. It had come to me in an online auction which closed (I thought) with plenty of time to spare before I left for Baltimore. I was greatly chagrined that it had not yet arrived, because I wanted answers about it and I couldn’t even properly ask the questions until my paws were upon it. All I knew was that (1) it was weird as all get-out and (2) there were some tantalizing clues in the crappy auction photos.
Of course it was waiting for me on the porch when I got home. My apologies to all of my friends who puzzled with me over this one at the time:
It almost looks like a stockbroker’s pencil with an enormous lead, but it doesn’t match the profile of any stockbroker pencil I’ve ever seen, particularly when the crown is given a tug:
This is where the auction photos were misleading, because it showed that piece as I presented it here. In operation, however, that ring is a slider, and friction advances the pencil as the top is withdrawn from the barrel.
The slider ring is stamped “Pat. Apl’d For,” but I’m confident no patent was ever issued. The idea of a slider ring advancing a writing instrument had been around since the 1840s, and this one was obviously made much later than that. A pencil that is advanced into position by friction as it is drawn from a case wasn’t anything new either. See “The Hicks Variation” (August 24, 2017: Volume 5, page 96), which compares Edward Todd’s 1892 patent pencils to W.S. Hicks’ 1897 pencils, which operated in a very similar fashion. If this was a Edward Todd or Hicks, it would likely be marked as such – and it isn’t.
The pencil nested in back has nothing to do with the fat “lead” at the other end, which isn’t lead at all . . . it is a metal plug secured in place by a spring, so it can be pushed in a little bit. Just above it there was more information only partly visible in the auction pictures, now fully revealed with the item in hand:
Patent number 824,391 and the name “Presso.” Search as I might, I found nothing regarding a pencil marketed as the “Presso,” but a complete patent number did yield a bit more of the story:
Patrick A. Toomey of Chicago, Illinois applied for this patent on April 8, 1905 and it was granted on June 26, 1906 . . . not for a pencil, but for a “Toilet-Powder Receptacle.” Toomey shows his invention both as a standalone receptacle to keep in the bathroom at home, and as a tubular receptacle for toilet powdering on the go, either tucked as shown into a lady’s pocketbook or kept on a watch chain for men. Pressing on that metal piece creates enough of a gap to dispense a bit of the stuff.
Yeah, there’s an “eww” factor involved in thinking about Victorian hygeine; the word “toilet,” however, referred to the room as much as it did the receptacle at the time. The phrase “powder your nose,” often a euphemism for the real reason one might adjourn to such a room, is what I believe was intended.
At least I hope so, I thought as I washed my hands.
As for who made it, I don’t think it was either Edward Todd or Hicks. As mentioned earlier, both of those makers typically marked their stuff, and the turquoise top reminds me more of lower-quality manufacturers such as the American Lead Pencil Company and the makers of the BeeGee. However, this is just a little nicer and more interesting than I would expect from either of those manufacturers.
There’s also the long distance separating New York from Chicago. Of course some New York manufacturer might have obtained rights to a Chicagoan’s patent and made things pursuant to those rights, but at the dawn of the last century manufacturing was still more localized than it is today. I would think someone in the Midwest might have been a more likely source.
Maybe in six months, while Janet and I are sipping a beer in the lobby in Baltimore on our arrival, some random reader will approach me and start a conversation with “I read that piece your did on that ‘Presso’ pencil, and I’ve got something to show you . . .”
Bring a beer. I’ll reciprocate.
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