More Fine Snails

The “snail” pattern is ubiquitous among Victorian makers; in “In the Company of Fine Snails” (February 15, 2018: Volume 5, page 152), I presented desk pencils with that sort of treatment made by Mabie Todd, Hicks, and Fairchild & Johnson. There were a few snails in that recent collection I recently purchased from Rob Bader, too.

The example at top is an ordinary magic pencil made by W.S. Hicks – nothing extraordinary, but very clean. It bears that acorn mark I have theorized indicated it was made by the Hicks firm for wholesale to retailers.

The second pencil down is also made by Hicks, but it has an interesting “twist.” 

The nose is fixed in position. The back can be pulled out as an extender, and twisting it advances and retracts the lead; the Eagle Pencil Company did something similar. Like the first one, this one also bears the Hicks acorn:

The next pencil down advances into position by twisting the back half of the barrel; this is the pencil part of John Mabie’s ubiquitous patent 11,762 issued on October 3, 1854, but without the nib slider found on Mabie Todd patented combination pens and pencils. It’s a chunky hunk o’ sterling, but the reason I wanted to keep it in the collection is because it bears a mark I don’t see very often:

In “Two Hallmarks, Two Connections” (June 29, 2021: Volume 7, page 227), I showed another pencil with a similar mark, which was picked up in the 1904 edition of Trade-Marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades as a state-protected mark by Ephraim S. Johnson & Co.

Whenever I find that sideways J in a diamond, it is flanked by the numbers 925 and 1000, denoting sterling silver. Typically, that appears on pencils made for export to the European market, but their near universal presence on Johnson pencils suggests that Johnson was simply adding a bit of continental flair to his hallmark. 

This next item isn’t a pencil at all. It is an empty container with a threaded cap – its dimensions suggest that it might be a thermometer holder. I kept it because of the hallmark on both the cap and the barrel:

The Hutcheon Brothers mark isn’t surprising on a snail-patterned piece, since Mabie Todd was a prolific user of this pattern and Hutcheon was named for Alfred G. Hutcheon, who left Mabie Todd but retained an unusually close relationship with his former firm; see “House of Hutcheon” published October 15, 2025. 

The last example isn’t quite the same level of quality; the pattern is less refined, and a couple spots of wear reveal it is plated brass rather than sterling. Still, a desk pencil like this is quite the step up from its maker’s usual fare:

The Eagle Pencil Company was a pioneer in producing less expensive writing instruments that had the look of something more exclusive – a wolf in snail’s clothing in this case.