The Chicago Victorians

I found a few great Victorian pieces to add to the museum at the Chicago show this year. I know a few of these came from Mike Greaney, and it was great to catch up with him since I last saw him:

That top one is a convertible pencil - you can either keep it in the holder on a chain, or withdraw it:

The neat ribbed top had me thinking Edward Todd before I pulled out my loupe - but the Edward Todds I have along these lines are telescoping pencils that extend by friction as they are withdrawn:

The patent on the Edward Todd pieces is August 9, 1892; I wrote about these in “The Hicks Variation” (August 24, 2017: Volume 5, page 96).

The more I thought about that, the more I thought that wasn’t right. It wasn’t – I had the wrong Todd.

This one is marked Mabie, Todd & Co., and the patent date imprinted is March 10, 1891 – that’s number 447,879, issued to John C.W. Jeffreys and George Dickman of London, England and assigned to George W. Mabie. That patent got past me when I wrote American Writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910; it wasn’t filed in any of the usual patent categories for pens and pencils, but in Class 63, “Jewelry,” subclass 22, “Bar: Devices comprising means to be passed through a buttonhole to secure the chain to the clothing.”  See “Another Forgotten Corner at the Patent Office” (December 7, 2015: Volume 4, page 25).

Once I had the right maker in mind, it was easy finding that example I wrote about ten years ago, and another one with that same neat ribbed top.

This next one, if I remember right, came from Pete Kirby. It has a patent date I remembered:

I remembered having another one along these lines, too. Fortunately it was with a different pattern, and they do look very nice together:

And, I remembered the trick about these from the last time I wrote about them, in “Three Interesting Hicks Patents” (September 22, 2016: Volume 4, page 181). There’s something on the other end of that pencil, I thought . . . 

Well, there should be, anyway. The one I had in my collection is intact, with a nice John Holland No. 6 dip pen nib. The pencil part of the new addition works just fine, but the band that secured a dip pen nib has gone missing.

The next Victorian that came home from Chicago with me was this hard rubber example:

It is also a Hicks, but there isn’t a patent associated with this one.

What makes this one unusual is its large pencil mechanism, operated by a simple slider. By this time, in the 1870s or 1880s, the slider function was usually reserved for dip pen nibs, with pencils advanced by some sort of spiral or twist mechanism.

The fourth pencil in this group is another Mabie Todd, and with that fat front end where the nose come out I knew exactly what it is:

The barrel imprint reads “Pat. Mar. 16, ‘75 / Mabie, Todd & Co. / 1664":

These have come up a couple times here over the years, in “Mabie’s Other Patent” (June 14, 2021: Volume 7, page 194) and “Something I Never Knew Was There” (November 30, 2016: Volume 4, page 276). The reference is to George Mabie’s patent number 160,924:

The nose pulls out of the barrel and reverses for the dip pen nib.

Usually these are much bigger than this example, which fits well with the ones that were pictured in David Moak’s book, Mabie in America. It’s in better shape than my other hard rubber example – and it’s in a different pattern, too.

The last of my Chicago finds will have to wait until tomorrow. As I poked around for more information about it, an amazing story emerged . . . and when I’m finished telling it, you are going to think I did this on purpose.