When Good Luck is a Bad Thing

My “bank” of articles heading into the Ohio Show this weekend is pretty thin. I write these articles in advance and schedule them to publish automatically, but lately it seems like everything I touch has a great story that requires more time and research than I thought it would.

It’s October 25 right now, and as time runs short before the show, with friends from all over letting me know when they are arriving, I’m switching to simpler “one-off” show-and-tell articles that are worth telling, but without too much to tell. You’ll have something new to read each day, and I’ll be back with more in-depth stories after our community has adjourned and things quiet down for a long winters’ nap.

Here’s one I don’t have much more to say about than I did back in 2012, when I reported that Lee Anderson had shown it to me at the Chicago Show that year. I wrote that there was “zero chance I was going to talk him out of it.” See “Also Seen At Chicago” (May 27, 2012: Volume 1, page 218).

That brown marbled plastic is one of the more unusual and uncataloged Parker colors, perhaps used for test marketing, and this remains the only example I have seen in Parker Vest Pocket configuration. When I ran the article all those years ago, the only pictures I had of it were the terrible shots I captured at the show.

Times change, and Lee isn’t as active in the hobby as he was. A few months ago Lee emailed to ask if I wanted to bring this one home. Of course I do, I said, so here it resides these days.

I also ran across another Parker Vest Pocket pencil, although I don’t remember where, how, or when.

There isn’t anything new to report about this, other than a little bit of paper stuck to the side of the barrel.

Model 500, it was. $2.50, it cost. And it joined an example in black that I already had in the collection – in black, this was Model 510.

The only difference between them is the top rings. 

One of these days I will take a moderately deep dive into Parker’s ringtop rings. Maybe I’ll conclude one of these is a replacement from something else, or that different shapes were used in different years.

More on Racing Stripes

As detailed on October 28, it was Ephraim S. Johnson and not Alonzo Cross who was awarded the design patent for “racing stripes” on writing instruments, but those rights were likely shared with Cross (and with those whom Cross supplied, such as Bates & Bacon) while the patent was active. 

After Johnson’s patent expired, though, A.T. Cross would take Johnson’s idea to an entirely new level. In this group of Cross “Alwrite” pencils, note the bottom one:

That striped green one came from Jeffrey Krasner, who sold me a box full o’ stuff at the Boston Show in 2022. All of these are marked Cross with “Alwrite” in script below:

“Alwrite” was a Cross trademark, applied for by Walter R. Boss, its president, on January 13, 1919. Boss claimed that the company began using the mark on December 5, 1918, and the mark was awarded registration number 129,664.

Those large plastic models, with their two-piece tips, were also rebadged and supplied to LeBoeuf and Grieshaber, and I haven’t had the heart to scavenge a tip to complete that jade example. The real focus for today’s purposes are the twin sets of twin stripes on the bottom one: those aren’t painted, but are separate pieces of black plastic sandwiched in place.

Next is this one, which slipped through the cracks. It was hiding in a pile of junk that sold for peanuts in an online auction:

The Cross Century is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to miss what’s special here, although I’m surprised nobody else noticed the telltale racing stripes. This isn’t a Cross Century - the name was adopted in commemoration of A.T. Cross’s 100th anniversary in 1946. For the Century, clips are more streamlined, and when you see a ball clip, that’s a dead giveaway that we are looking at a pre-Century streamlined Cross pencil. In fact, this one has one foot in the past and one foot in what’s to come: it’s somewhat obscured by the engine turned pattern, but it has the Alwrite name mid-barrel.

As you can see, it is missing the typical conical black plastic piece on the top. No worries, I thought – but in hindsight I should have worried a little bit, because it was tougher to replace than I expected. I had thought all I needed to do was salvage a black plastic top from those common, chrome Century ballpoints and pencils. Not so:

The tops on Modern Cross Century pens and pencils are press fit, while these pre-Century pencils have end pieces that are threaded. I went through my stash and found a couple other ball clip Cross pencils

Since I found two and one is a duplicate, I wasn’t too concerned repurposing the top piece from one of them.

And, once the transplant was completed, I had what I considered to be the finished shot for this article - a happy family of Cross racing stripes on parade.

Alas . . . the family was about to get happier. 

This one also appeared in an online auction, with badly deteriorated paint and like the other one, missing its top piece. I was hesitant to steal the one from my other plain, ball clip Cross - so I experimented a bit with the press-fit top that I had removed from a modern Century. After I turned down the diameter a bit, I was able to get it to thread into the top end; while the attachment is different, the more modern Century top piece is otherwise a perfect fit.

Then there was the paint, which was badly chipped in several spots showing ugly brass underneath. I used masking tap, a bottle of Testor’s black model paint and a set of tiny paint brushes to bring it back to life.

In 1996, Cross did do a 150th Anniversary pen in this same configuration, complete with ball clip, and there was also a matching pencil (although the pencils I’ve seen were in gold fill rather than chromed). There are differences, though, and this one is the real deal. The 150th Anniversary pens and pencils used .9mm leads, while this one takes 1.1mm. In addition, the Anniversary edition was not marked with the pre-Century AXT imprint – as in A.T. “Cross.”

More on Ephraim Johnson

As mentioned yesterday, Ephraim Johnson is best known for his “Pearl Patent” of December 5, 1871, which protected the manner in which he affixed slabs of mother of pearl to his pencil barrels. Now we know from yesterday’s article that he was the originator of the enameled “racing stripes” for which the A.T. Cross Company became so well known in later years.

Another design feature for which Ephraim Johnson is well known is the way he inlaid metal and mother of pearl into hard rubber and celluloid barrels; two examples of this technique were in that collection of Victorian pens and pencils David Nishimura and I purchased from Rob Bader:

Magic pencils with this treatment are without exception marked for E.S. Johnson.

The sliding dip pen, however, is marked for A.W. Faber.

I sorted out the relationships between all of the Fabers in a series of articles beginning with “Faber in America” (January 5, 2015: Volume 4, page 69). Both A.W. Faber and Eberhard Faber descended from Kaspar Faber, who started making pencils in Stein, Germany in 1761. Kaspar was succeeded by his son, Anton Wilhelm Faber, which is where “A.W. Faber” came from. Anton Wilhelm in turn handed the business off to his son Georg Leonhard Faber; two of Georg’s sons, Lothar and Johann, then took over the firm; Georg’s third son, Eberhard, emigrated to the United States. 

Initially, Eberhard’s mission was to run an American branch of the A.W. Faber, but as the years passed the American and German firms diverged. This dip pen was likely made during the turbulent times when the unruly Americans were asserting their independence and A.W. Faber was evolving from the remote home office into a competitor. 

None of these examples with Johnson’s inlay work are stamped with a patent date, although I was certain at some point I had seen a design or utility patent by Ephraim S. Johnson for it. As I browsed through American writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910, I found several other Johnson patents, including Design Patent 5,377, issued on November 21, 1871.

This one caught my eye because it reminded me of something else that came out of Bader’s Victorian collection.

This dip pen and pencil set did not initially make the cut for entry into the museum, and I had to fish it back out of the cases of inventory I’m taking to the Ohio Show later this week. Johnson’s patent protects “dots or studs of gold, silver, or pearl, arranged in an ornamental manner,” and this isn’t quite that - instead, star-shaped cuts are arranged in that same pattern, and at the ends there’s a maker’s name. Yep: A.W. Faber.

As much as I would like to attribute this one to E.S. Johnson, I don’t think so in this case. Samson Mordan in England liked to do very similar patterns, long before E.S. Johnson received his 1871 patent, and this set has more of a continental vibe than anything Johnson would have made. In addition, the opposite side of the pen and pencil is another, less prominent stamp that suggests this was not made in the United States. “Depose,” it reads.

The word “depose” in jewelers’ circles means “registered” in French – not necessarily registered in France, although that would be a reasonable conclusion. Made in Germany for export to France would also make sense. 

Still, this set fits in so nicely, both in this article and in the Faber (Eberhard and A.W.) wing at the museum. Even though I generally try to limit my collection to American items, I think this set is going to hang around here for awhile alongside its American cousins. 

Racing Stripes: The Origin Story

Many years ago, I wrote a series of articles exploring A.T. Cross after I photographed the late Jim Rouse’s collection at the 2012 Baltimore Show. The title of the article that included these was “A.T. Cross: Racing Stripes” (May 6, 2012: Volume 1, page 192).

Black enameled stripes on a metal pencil are usually a clear indication that Cross was the manufacturer. This example recently turned up in an online auction:

Yes, it is marked AXT as so many of the pencils along these lines are . . . but what caught my eye is what is stamped on the extender of this magic pencil.

“Design Patented. Mar. 25, 73.” I haven’t seen this on any other Cross pencil, and those of use who like Cross have long puzzled over whether there was ever any design patent, trademark, or other intellectual property claim protecting the “racing stripe” look, since that is such an easily recognizable feature of Cross pencils.

I pulled out American Writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910 – I was sure I would have remembered seeing this one, as I went through them one by one in the course of writing the book, but maybe I forgot . . . no, there are no design patents listed in there for March 25, 1873. That left no alternative but the old fashioned way, thumbing through patents issued on that date one by one until it turned up.

No wonder I missed design patent number 6,523 - it was filed only in a design patent category for “paper products.” I also wouldn’t have found it by searching Alonzo T. Cross by name: it was issued to Ephraim S. Johnson, perhaps best known for his “Pearl Patent” of December 5, 1871. The “Pearl Patent” was for a method of attaching distinctive pearl-slab barrels like the one at bottom in this group of E.S. Johnson pencils. 

Design patents protect the appearance rather than the function of an item, so Johnson’s patent 6,523 would have protected the black banding on this pencil too, even though these are hard rubber bands rather than painted. However, there’s no reference to Johnson’s 1873 racing stripes patent on this one - just the usual “Pearl Patent.” Perhaps he had yet to apply for his design patent for racing stripes.

The New York writing instrument manufacturers had a gentlemen’s agreement to share patents and pay each other royalties rather than litigate disputes over who invented what. As I was preparing to write this article, this next one appeared in an online auction – if my antennae hadn’t been up thinking about these at the time, I might have dismissed it as a common Cross magic pencil:

This one sure looks like a Cross, and comparing the front end to the first picture in this article, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that Cross made it . . . but not for its own account.

“Bates & B.,” as in Bates & Bacon (see “B Who?” on October 19, 2012: Volume 1, page 383), the Attleboro, Massachusetts jeweler responsible for a disastrous 1898 fire that originated – of all things – when lacquer caught fire in their factory. Bates & Bacon rebuilt after the fire, but the company was sold in 1901 to the Philadelphia Watch Case Company. 

Ephraim Johnson may have come up with the idea and held the design patent for the racing stripe idea, but it was Cross that would pick it up and run with it so successfully for decades after Johnson’s patent expired.

Protracted Negotiations

Yes, it took five months for David Nishimura and I to finally do our deal with the Standard Pencil Company dropper from the other day. That reminded me . . . as far as our transactions go, that one wasn’t the longest. Not by far.

For I don’t know how many years, David has always brought his single case of show and tell and (maybe) sell stuff to shows, and for several years he had a Triad set in that little case. He wanted to sell it as a set, and I don’t blame him . . . but show after show, he’d open that case for me with a dramatic flourish and let me know the set could be mine . . . 

I never bit on the set, but after a few years I did manage to buy a pair of Triads from David at the 2024 Ohio Show. He encountered a customer who was wild for the fountain pen, but who felt the same way about buying pencils as I do about buying pens. His other customer took the pen, I took the pencil, and then for good measure, I took another of the pencils that David had.

The smaller of the two here is the one I’ve eyed for five years or more; these smaller ones with clips are even harder to find than the big ones, although that blue streaked celluloid is just killer.

These two join a ringtop I ran across back in 2021 – I don’t remember how or where – in an exquisitely preserved jade.

Triads are found with either a flat top or with a triangular angled top reminiscent of the triangular barrels – this is the first smaller Triad I’ve found with the triangular treatment.

These two additions have really rounded out the Triad wing at the museum, from the full sized models . . . 

To the smaller size, both in their side clip and ringtop configurations.

The Wild Geese Come Home

I cringe and smile at the same time when I reread articles that posted during the first year here at the blog. The writing was crude – most of its rudimentary articles were dashed off in an hour or so just to introduce something I had found that wasn’t included in The Catalogue. The research tools were also crude: internet research tools were comparatively less developed than they are now, and I hadn’t yet written the patent and trademark books on which I rely so heavily. 

But I smile at the exhuberance. Everything was new at the time, and The Catalogue had just unleashed an avalanche of interest in mechanical pencils. That first volume introduces many of the people who are now old friends, and whenever I thumb through Volume 1, I relive the excitement of learning things that are second nature now, and meeting people that have become old friends.

Towards the end of that first volume, I was just beginning to engage in deeper research dives to learn the history behind these pencils rather than just showing off the pencils themselves. “One Wild Goose Chase” (November 1, 2012: Volume 1, page 401) is a good example of the transition from an update service for The Catalogue into the ongoing research project it is today. 

In that article, random observations about Selfeed repeating pencils led me to an eBay auction that had closed four years previously. At the time, eBay’s search tools still allowed random strangers to identify buyers and sellers in past auctions, and with the help of several new friends I learned that the seller was Michael Kidd, who had bought a group of Selfeed pencils from Rob Bader. I knew Rob, but Michael was a stranger with whom I forged a new friendship; he snapped this picture of what he had bought from Rob, which was included in the 2012 article:

A few weeks ago, Michael sent me an email to offer me a few pencils before he listed them in the online auctions. Although he has followed the blog all these years, it had been so long since we last conversed that I didn’t remember where I had seen some of them.

Michael mentioned that I had seen what was on that instruction sheet, but I thought he meant that I had seen a Selfeed instruction sheet – not this exact one.

I had forgotten that these were the very same pencils I had written about so long ago, and their addition to the museum is an ever-present reminder that none of us, myself included, really own these things. We are only privileged to be their caretakers for a time.

There were some other items in that care package Michael sent me that I will tell you about later, but one bears mention here: Michael said he was including a pencil that he had grown weary of trying to figure out. He didn’t send a picture of it, but when it arrived I was able to tell him exactly what it was:

The short ringtop is shown here alongside the “Rite Away” pencil I just wrote about here on September 30 in “A Long-Lost Cousin.” The two are identical – even the noses are interchangeable. I scoured the barrel with a loupe looking for any imprints, and there’s nothing there that I can see.

Perhaps this is another Rite Away, but without a barrel imprint. Perhaps, as I theorized in that last article, this is an unmarked Eagle Pencil Company product.

Perhaps, in another thirteen years or so, some random stranger will answer that question for me!

Wingnut of the Universe

There I was yesterday, minding my own business and telling you about a few Victorian pencils I brought home with me from the Chicago Show in May. Five pencils there were, and after I told you about the first four, I had to poke around a bit so that I could tell you about that last one.

This one did come home from Chicago with me, but I had been talking with David Nishimura about it since he first showed it to me at the Philadelphia Show in January. I was smitten with it at first sight, but I didn’t feel like spending the money at the Philly show (I had thought I might actually break even in Philly this year . . . before I heard about that Tiffany Met Life pencil in “Two Kings”). David brought it along again to Baltimore in March . . . at that point, I was digging myself out of a deep hole after buying Terry Johnson’s pencil collection.

In Chicago, however, I was vulnerable. My grand deal with Zeppelin Commander Bader left a bit of cash in my pocket, ripe for the picking. I got picked.

The metalwork is exquisite, and from the first time I saw it, I thought it resembled those John Foley “Madeleine” pencils I wrote about just a few weeks ago (see “That Other, Bigger Shoe Drops” on September 25, 2025). There’s no maker’s mark on the pencil, but it does have a patent date I didn’t recall seeing before: December 8, 188 . . . something . . .

I thought, as I started writing up that fifth Chicago purchase, that I would simply look up a new, obscure patent, show off a few images, and call it a day. I was wrong. There’s a lot more to this story, and you are going to be convinced that I did this on purpose.

Twice.

Finding the patent was not difficult, thanks to American Writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910. American patents were only issued on Tuesdays, so in the chronological section of the book all I had to do was find a patent for a dropper pencil, issued on a December 8, sometime in the 1880s . . . 

Stephen M. Brougham of Brooklyn, New York was awarded patent number 331,941 on December 8, 1885 for his “drop movement for pocket utensils,” and the patent was assigned to the Standard Pencil Company of New York. Back I went to American Writing Instrument Patents, where I found another entry under Brougham’s name: Patent 194,216 issued on August 14, 1877, for a combination pen and pencil:

Brougham’s earlier patent was not assigned to anyone, and it is intriguing that it was ever issued at all. His design is for a split slider: a slotted outer ring advances a dip pen, and a second slider slips through that ring to advance a pencil. Perhaps it was issued in error, since this patent so closely resembles a much earlier patent issued to Henry Withers in 1836. The oversight may have resulted from the Patent Office fire that year, which wiped out any record of nearly all of the patents issued up to that point. After the fire, the Patent Office began numbering issued patents, something that had not previously been done; Withers’ patent was not numbered initially, but after the fire it was retroactively assigned an “X-patent” number of X9527, with the X denoting it predated the fire.

Note: David Nishimura broke the news about Withers’ Patent at his blog in 2017. His article is published here.

I next turned my attention to this “Standard Pencil Company,” and that’s where things became really interesting. Incorporation of the company in New York was announced in the Brooklyn Daily Times on December 1, 1888: the “trustees” of the company were Brougham, joined by Edward Flackman and Edwin Terry:

By 1890, Standard had apparently diversified into fountain pen manufacturing; the company advertised for “rubber turners on fountain pens” in the New York World on June 17, 1890. The Company received a short writeup in History and Commerce of New York (1891), in which Brougham is not mentioned but Edwin Terry is identified as Treasurer of the company. Albert Terry, presumably a relative of Edwin’s, was the company’s president; when Albert wasn’t messing around making pencils, he was busy running a successful brick manufacturing business in Brooklyn.

The day to day operations of the company, according to this report, were attended to by “worthy superintendent” Gideon Isley of Jersey City, New Jersey, a Civil War veteran who had previously served as Jersey City’s Fire Commissioner. Isley died July 30, 1893 at the age of 52; his death was reported in the New York Herald on August 1, 1893:

The Isley lead proved to be a good one: a Henry Isley, also from Jersey City, co-invented another dropper or gravity pencil with none other than William S. Hicks. Patent number 280,313 was issued on June 26, 1883:

Two men with the last name Isley, both from Jersey City, both patenting dropper pencil designs within two years of each other? That would be a whopper of a coincidence if one believed in such things, and I don’t. I have written about a Hicks gravity pencil here, but the one I wrote about was patented nearly twenty years later, in 1905 – see “That’s Heavy, Man” (December 20, 2016: Volume 4, page 294).

I then turned back to my search results for the Standard Pencil Company, and I hit paydirt. This is the first part you’ll think I did on purpose.

I found a reference in the United States Patent Office Official Gazette for a patent application filed March 3, 1887 by James B. Smith of New York, which was assigned to the Standard Pencil Company:

Smith’s application was for a “glove or shoe buttoner,” and the patent was issued on August 9, 1887 as number 368,024:

Since Smith’s patent was for a button hook, it wasn’t filed in any of the categories in which writing instrument patents are located. That’s why I couldn’t find it in the course of researching my John Foley “Madeleine” pencils.

Boom. Now we know to what the “Pat. App. For” imprints on John Foley’s Madeleine pencils refers.

Now for the other thing I said you might think I did on purpose . . . 

I had some difficulty researching the later history of the Standard Pencil Company, because there was more than one business going by that name. On February 5, 1903, Geyer’s Stationer reported that a Standard Pencil Company registered as a foreign corporation in Newark, New Jersey. I’m not sure whether this was the same company, because none of the same names are affiliated with this Standard: shares were held by Harry H. Picking, Charles A. Greene and C. Frederick Smith.

Further confusing matters, the School Journal’s report of this filing on March 7, 1903 states that this Standard Pencil Company had been “incorporated” in New Jersey, not just registered as a foreign corporation to do business in the state. Maybe this was sloppy reporting, and maybe the owners of the original Standard Pencil Company organized another company by the same name in New Jersey.

Then there was another, totally unrelated Standard Pencil Company that arose from the cornfields of Hutchinson, Kansas in 1911. The Kansan Standard Pencil Company’s business was selling wood pencils painted with advertising, and on October 30, 1911 the Hutchinson News reported that after only a few months in business, this new company had placed an order for 1,300,000 wood pencils, “the largest shipment of wood pencils ever to be shipped to any point in the west.” The shipment was sent in two filled boxcars, and the order was so large that it was filled by two New York manufacturers – the American Lead Pencil Company and the Eagle Pencil Company.

Just a couple weeks later, the Brooklyn Daily Times reported on November 10, 1911 that a Standard Pencil Company had been organized in New York, and Nathan Bloom was named a director. 

On December 20, 1917, the New York Herald reported that an explosion at the New York Cordage Company had destroyed a four-story building at 42 South Street; the upper floors, according to this account, were occupied by the Standard Pencil Company.

This one, I believe, was our Standard Pencil Company – it had been located at 3 and 5 Coenties Slip in 1891, according to The History and Commerce of New York, which was only a block away from 42 South Street – at least, if it wasn’t the same company it would be another wildly improbable coincidence. If it was, the explosion likely was the end of the company Stephen Brougham had founded.

The Kansas wood pencil company by the same name, however, adds more to our story. When it was founded, the company sourced complete wood pencils from manufacturers, which Standard painted with advertising. By 1914, this Standard Pencil Company had moved to St. Louis and was manufacturing its own pencils. In 1920, The Retail Grocers’ Advocate published a short writeup about Standard’s impressive new factory. “Standard Pencil Company products are marketed under the names of birds, lark, wren etc.,” the report notes.

Standard Pencil took the avian theme to a new level, securing a trademark for the phrase “It’s a Bird” with artwork. M.B. Wallace, Jr., as secretary of the company, signed the declaration on the registration certificate, applied for on October 18, 1920. He claimed the mark had been in use since September 28, 1920.

By then, the affairs of the Standard Pencil Company were being directed largely by its vice president, Asa B. Wallace. According to the Centennial History of Missouri, published in 1921, Wallace was “a young man of enterprising business ability who is making his way steadily upward and has already secured a position which many a man twice his years might well envy.”

Wallace’s youthfulness might also have made him impulsive, and under his direction the Standard Pencil Company unwisely adopted another sort of bird for use on the wood pencil company’s letterhead . . . an eagle. Standard’s former supplier, the Eagle Pencil Company, was not amused. 

On February 25, 1921, Modern Stationer and Book-Seller reported that The Eagle Pencil Company, holder of dozens of trademarks with the representation of an eagle, had swiftly and decisively won an injunction against the “Standard Pencil Company of New York.” The decision was a complete rout for Wallace’s company: Standard was permanently restrained from using an eagle in its products or advertising, and the Eagle Pencil Company persuaded Judge Delahanty to go even farther. The judge also ruled that the Standard Pencil Company could no longer use of the word “standard” in connection with its products – even though neither Eagle nor anybody else had secured registration of a trademark for the word.

Ironically, the Standard Pencil Company had also advertised in that very issue of Modern Stationer and Book-Seller. “It’s a Bird” takes on a new context in light of the infringement case, because the timing of the trademark filing – five months before the injunction was issued – suggests that Standard was already being threatened by Eagle when the mark was adopted. “No it isn’t an Eagle, it’s just a bird,” the mark doth seem to protest too much.

The Standard Pencil Company would change its name in obedience to Judge Delahanty’s decision, to – you guessed it – the Wallace Pencil Company.

That’s the second thing you probably think I did on purpose. This blog is about mechanical pencils, not wood pencils, and I can count on one hand the number of articles that have included them. One of them was just a few days ago, when I mentioned my only pencil-related find after scouring the biggest antique malls in the south:

A Charles Lindbergh pencil box made by . . . the Wallace Pencil Company.

Maybe I do believe in coincidences after all.