Rehabilitating a Lovely Rulebreaker

I simply had to have this one when it showed up in an online auction recently, even though it broke one of my rules:

This sterling silver pencil has everything going for it . . . everything, that is, but that one thing I always look for: some marking to indicate who made it.

I held out hope, however, that the information stamped on the clip might help me attribute it to a specific maker and bring this wayward pencil into the fold. “Pat. Apr. 19, 1910" it reads:

Finding the patent wasn’t difficult, but it wasn’t very helpful, either. Joseph W. Kessel of New York City applied for patent 955,517 on November 19, 1909.

Kessel’s patent was not assigned to anybody, and it is his one and only appearance in American Writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910. He appears three times in American Writing Instrument Patents Volume 2: 1911-1945, and from those later patents we know his full name was Joseph Warren Kessel. All three of those later patents were for clips, none of them were assigned to a specific maker, and none of them are anything I would associate with any particular manufacturer, either. Kessel is a dead end.

Note that Kessel’s drawings show studs on the back side of the clip rather than protruding through the face as seen on my example. Still, no other clip patents were issued on that date, so I conclude this must be the right patent; perhaps in practice it was easier to have the studs protrude through the face of the clip rather than soldering them to the back side.

Wait a tick . . . that sounds familiar . . . 

My mystery pencil is what I call a leadholder. There’s no means of propelling or retracting a lead; turning the nose one way loosens a clutch to release the lead, and turning the other way tightens the clutch to secure it. Aiken Lambert made similar leadholders, and the Aiken Lambert tree trunk figural shown here is one of the prizes in my collection. Aiken Lambert supplied nibs to L.E. Waterman in the Nineteenth Century, and Aiken Lambert gradually became a captive supplier for Waterman, formally becoming a Waterman subsidiary in 1907.

And . . . Waterman was well known for using that riveted clip on fountain pens and pencils. The clip on my tree trunk has the design carried forward onto the clip, but usually these clips are stamped with a patent date of September 26, 1905 as seen here:

That date refers to William I. Ferris’ patent number 800,141:

But wait a minute . . . Aiken Lambert can’t be right. First, our lovely pencil operates by twisting the nose to release the lead, while Aiken Lambert leadholders are operated by twisting the top. Also, it doesn’t make sense for Aiken Lambert and Waterman to develop the elegant Ferris clip, in use from 1905 through the late 1920s, then put a less elegant – even awkward – Kessel clip into service around 1910.

Whoever made today’s pencil was not Aiken Lambert or Waterman – it must have been some other manufacturer trying to get around the Ferris patent.

There was a well-known manufacturer which was prolific in the art of nose-operated leadholders: Mabie, Todd & Co., which offered “Mabie Magazine” pencils in the early teens. The clips for which Mabie Todd pencils are so well known, however, are not the Kessel clip - they typically sported a clip patented on January 19, 1915. Here are three Mabie Todd “Fyne Poynt” screw drive pencils sporting different variations of the 1915 clip:

As with our sterling silver pencil under examination, the metal work on these is also exquisite:

I had photographed these together to illustrate the different clip variations, but it makes sense to include them in this article since Mabie Magazine pencils also typically used these same clips.

The patent date refers to Charles Mabie’s patent number 1,125,144, applied for on May 20, 1914.

I’ve accumulated dozens of metal Mabie Todd pencils, both Fyne Poynt and Magazines, because they are just too pretty to turn down. They had become so crowded together on the wall o’ pencils that when I picked up another printer’s cabinet last year, one of my first orders of business was to spread out my Mabie Todds so I could better see what was there (and cull a few duplicates from the herd).

As I filed away these three new Fyne Poynts in the newly organized Mabie Todd wing of the museum, I found something . . . 

There it is: apparently before Charles Mabie patented Mabie Todd’s ubiquitous clip, at least some Mabie Magazine pencils sported Joseph Kessel’s weird Ferris-ish clip.

At this point, you might think we now have our mystery pencil pegged: it is a Mabie Magazine pencil, but lacking the typical Mabie Magazine imprint at the nose. That is part of the answer, and I have filed this example with my other Mabie Todd pencils, since I do believe that is who likely manufactured it . . . not to mention that’s the best way for me to remember where I put it.

The more complex question, however, is whether this is an unmarked Mabie Magazine pencil, made by Mabie Todd for its own account, or whether Mabie Todd might have manufactured it for someone else.

I’ll address that as soon as I send Gabriel Goldsmith some money and wait patiently by the mailbox for part of that answer to arrive . . .