And Another Thing . . .

At the Detroit Show, Jerry Rosenthal had this little set on his table, and it fit kinda sorta perfectly into a story I was telling here a few weeks ago – see “What’s Wrong (Besides the Obvious)” on September 22.

This is a Conklin set made during the Chicago years – along the lines of the Glider series.

In that earlier article, I had commented how the celluloid used on these most closely resembles those Parker Vacumatic models made in “Shadow Wave” plastic. Here’s the new set alongside the brown example from that previous article; note the tight striations in the plastic. 

It isn’t exactly a Shadow Wave celluloid; Parker’s Shadow Wave series had more black in it, but there’s nothing else I can think to compare to it. It also isn’t exactly proof that Parker had anything to do with making these, although it is one additional piece of evidence in support of that theory to add to a mounting pile. 

There’s one other curious detail, and all that I can do is note this: the Conklin Glider series is not shown in gray in any of the advertisements I have seen. 

What's Wrong (Besides the Obvious)

After the Conklin Pen Company’s failure in 1938, operations were moved from Toledo, Ohio to Chicago by a shadowy syndicate of investors. The identity of those investors remains an open question (see “The Chicago Syndicate That Rubbed Out Conklin” - December 17, 2015: Volume 4, page 42), and the quality of Conklin’s offerings declined significantly after the move to Chicago.

That decline is one most collectors decline to pursue. It’s sad what became of the once-proud company, and many collectors would rather dwell in the earlier, higher quality Conklins made in happier times.

I have never had reservations about chasing down Chicago-made Conklins. The story is fantastic, with all of Joseph Starr’s shenanigans. The story started in Ohio, and any proud burgee-wielding Buckeye feels that sense of obligation to be a completist about an Ohio company, even after they left.

Heck, I even collected modern Conklin Fountain Pens . . . until, of course, their new foreign owners couldn’t even spell the word “Ohio” right in the imprints on their pens. Someone really needs to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, since they still stamp “USA” on their imported nibs.

I digress. Suffice to say I don’t turn up my nose at Chicago Conklins, like this one:

The other reason I like Chicago-made Conklins is that pen companies did things that were far more interesting when they were struggling than when they were cruising along and basking in their success. They did whatever they needed to do to survive when they had little or nothing to lose. 

One of the more interesting things that I believe Conklin did during its twilight years involved the Parker Pen Company, that sacred cow of Pendom which has caused many a heretic to be burned at the stake for impugning its reputation. I have so impugned Parker three times now when it comes to Conklin, and while I have heard much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I haven’t heard I’m wrong.

The first time was when I suggested a pencil marked “The Glider Pen” was actually a Parker-made Parkette rebadged for Conklin in Chicago. See “Finally Enough Proof . . . and a New, Heretical Question” (February 27, 2018: Volume 5, page 166):

In that same article, I also noted that the “Glider Pen” pencils (Glider was a Conklin brand name - we’ll get to that in just a minute) were also constructed the same way as the cringeworthy “Minuteman” line of pencils Conklin offered . . . right down to Parker’s patented spare lead cartridge, painted an inconspicuous red rather than in Parker’s usual black and gold:

That was an intriguing, undocumented and wildly unpopular theory . . . so of course, I had to do it again. A month later, I posted “Poking the Wounded Bear” (March 14, 2018: Volume 5, page 188), in which I challenged anyone to tell me why I shouldn’t believe these crappy, washer-clip Chicago Conklin fountain pens were made by Parker, when anyone on the street would swear those pens were a match for Parker’s budget line of “Zephyr” pencils.

I apparently didn’t get enough abuse that time either, so I returned to the subject in 2021 with “Halcyon Once Again” (April 18, 2021: Volume 7, page 47), in which I compared a pencil marked “Parker” on its clip to the Penman – the Penman, of course, was part of Joseph Starr’s web of companies that also included Conklin.

“If we continue to deny Parker had anything to do with stuff like this, we are denying an increasing pile of evidence to the contrary,” I wrote. “Now we have the same plastics, a rudimentary version of Parker’s patented lead cartridge, and now a Parker-marked pencil constructed the same way as nearly every low-budget production made during the 1940s. 

“I think this is an extremely rare glimpse behind Parker’s gilded curtain. Like any other business, Parker had to find ways to survive.”

If you weren’t convinced before, you might be now. When I saw this Chicago Conklin in an online auction, I couldn’t figure out exactly what wasn’t quite right about it.

It looks like a Glider - not those “Glider Pen” Parkette-style affairs I wrote about earlier, but the real Conklin Glider, as advertised by Conklin after the move to Chicago. It is generally regarded as the last passable excuse for pens and pencils that Conklin offered. Here’s an advertisement for Conklin’s Glider “Cushion Point” pens, as published in The Saturday Evening Post on January 19, 1946:

This one, though, isn’t quite a Conklin Glider pencil. Here it is, posed between a Glider at top, and beneath by an uncataloged but established variety from around the same era:

That is not the same celluloid by any stretch of the imagination, even accounting for variations between lots of rod stock. The pattern is too tight, and doesn’t have the grey of a Glider.

But we have seen it before.

These are Parker Shadow Wave pencils made, according to their stamped date codes, between 1938 and 1941. Note the tighter striations and note the dimpling around the nose cone. The browns have a little more orange in them, though – “halloween” colors, one might suggest. If that causes you to pause, try on these Shadow Waves:

We may never find written documentation that Parker supplied Conklin with lower-quality writing instruments while Conklin struggled to survive, and that may be because Parker was as careful about curating its reputation then as its fans are today. Nothing I’ve presented says that Parker was an evil empire . . . just that it was the same as every other company and if anything, it was trying to survive, and it was a helping hand supplying competitors with what they needed to survive as well, too.

It might be a different way to look at Parker, but it is no better nor worse than any other way.

Conklin Absurdities

 Sometimes, I breathe a sigh of relief when I find that last variant of something I know is probably out there somewhere. This was not one of those times.

I initially rejoiced when I found this red hard rubber Conklin Duragraph pencil:

The Duragraph, introduced in mid-1924, was the immediate predecessor of the Endura line. Conklin’s 1924 catalog makes no reference to the Duragraph, so it apparently was unveiled and discontinued in a matter of mere months. Duragraph pencils are thinner than their later Endura counterparts, distinguished by their hard rubber (and very fragile) nose cones, and I had been looking for the short red hard rubber one for years. It was so satisfying to take this picture:

Red, mottled, and black, all wrapped up in a bow. Assuming, of course, that I leave the monkeywrench out of the picture:

I may wait years before finding the short model with the side clips in mottled and red – if I ever find them at all. These short models are known to occur in both the Duragraph and Endura lines. I have had a short Endura in mottled for years, without finding another. One fly in the ointment, I told myself, is interesting.

But then one comes along in lapis, shown here alongside a Conklin Dollar Pencil:

Leaving me to wonder . . . did these come in all of the Endura colors?

It gets better or worse from there, depending on how you look at it. At the Ohio Show a couple years ago, I think it was Rob Bader who sold me this:

If I thought these letter openers could be found in the other Endura colors, I’d be on a rabid all-out hunt for the other ones.

Sigh . . . I suppose the only thing worse than missing a variant or two would be having all of them and nothing left to look for. Besides, the Conklin Endura spread at the museum, while arguably incomplete, still makes me smile. The oversized ones are not shown, since they are found in the next drawer. 

As I gaze upon this picture, my smile fades a bit. Did the Imperial Blue (bronze and navy blue) come in the other two sizes? Were all four sizes found in both shades of green?

The Toledo Art Project

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I paid less than I should have for this one, because when they aren’t properly described, few people know what they are:

The paint isn’t the result of some student growing bored in art class - it’s factory.  Sheaffer did something similar, although I believe the Sheaffer version is better documented.  This one is no Sheaffer – it’s a Conklin.  The name is still visible under the band of black paint near the top:

The evolution of Conklin’s metal pencils is discussed in detail in The Catalogue of American Mechanical Pencils, on pages 31 and 32.  Most bear a patent date of July 6, 1920, a reference to Harry P. Fairchild’s patent number 1,345,436, but only the earliest Conklin pencils have the six-spoked lead chamber shown in Fairchild’s drawings (visible when the top is uscrewed).  The company quickly went with a later design with a three-spoked lead chamber, which is shown in C.N. Johnson’s later patents, applied for in 1921 and issued September 16, 1924 (number 1,508,795) and May 20, 1924 (number 1,494,424.

I know without even removing the cap that these are not “Fairchild” Conklins, since the rounded caps on those are significantly shorter.  But there’s something else to notice about this cap: it is noticeably more squared off than what you will find on most Conklin metal pencils.

That difference allows for more precise dating of this example.  Many of Conklin’s catalogs are preserved in the Pen Collectors of America’s library, and catalogs through 1923 show the more rounded tops.  Here’s the ringtop pencil page in the 1923 catalog:

For 1924, as the company moved away from rounded pens in favor of flattops, Conklin reshaped the cap into what you see here:

By the late 1920s, the writing instrument industry in America had largely discontinued metal and hard rubber in favor of brightly colored celluloids.  While celluloid had been in use for many years, its popularity took off largely as a result of the success of the LeBoeuf Pen Company’s introduction of the material in the mid-1920s.  For that reason, these flatter-topped Conklin metal pencils were produced only during a very narrow window in time, making them much more difficult to find.  I have three ringtops in my collection, including this new addition:

One of the three, the first one I found, has the imprint at the wrong end.  Since the barrel is a straight tube, I attribute this to a factory error (see Volume 1, page 25).  At the time, I suspected these were a metal version of the Durograph - that is incorrect, but I was right that it is later production, since the all-hard rubber Durograph also makes its debut in the 1924 catalog).

I don’t see hand-painted Conklin pencils in any of the company’s catalogs in the library, but there is a gap between the 1926 and 1930 catalogs it contains.  The paint on this one is nearly perfect, a rarity since hand-painted pencils are usually found with only traces of the paint remaining after a century or so of use:

This example matches one other example in my collection, which suggests this might have been leftover stock, dressed up and sold in the 1930s in those days when all manufacturers were selling anything they could:

The blue ringtop was included in “A Step and a Half Up From a Buck” in Volume 4, page 33, but I didn’t index it very well and it took me forever to find where I wrote about it – it is at the end of the article, described as a having the gold filled trim of Conklin’s “Two Fifty” pencils but the plain flat blue barrel used on the “Dollar Pencil” line.  I also included the reference to these pencils in Conklin’s 1930 catalog:

Both metal and pyroxylin (celluloid or plastic) sets, but no blue plastic mentioned and no metal with yellow.  Of course, since the only reference to these is in the 1930 catalog, perhaps these were made earlier or later than 1930 - or perhaps off-catalog.

Halcyon Once Again

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Some of my Parker-fan friends rankle a little bit when I write about their beloved brand, because I don’t seem to have a lot of positive things to say about it.  I’m really not a Parker hater, and I’ve got enough examples in my collection to back up that statement.

The perception that I am anti-Parker, I believe, comes from the fact that I don’t treat Parker any different than when I’m writing about any other brand.  For example, whenever I write about a dumb idea that came from Wahl, nary a blip of discontent is expressed. People have long accepted that Wahl had dumb ideas long before I came along, so even if I’m writing about a new boner from the company, it’s accepted.

What I enjoy about writing this blog is writing about things that haven’t been written about or thought about before.  When it comes to Parker, a disproportionate amount of what has been written before sings the company’s praises, to the point that it is almost taboo to suggest the company made any mistakes.  It’s become almost like some prized show dog that is only expected to crap turds made of solid gold, so if I suggest that one doesn’t smell like daisies the devotees of the brand take almost a personal offense.  “Wounded bears,” I once referred to them . . . predictably, I suppose, that didn’t help.

Parker is as fascinating to me as every other brand, but posting an article just showing off a wide range of colors in a model you’ve already seen and admired for decades is . . . boring.  As with any other brand, Parker is more interesting when the company failed or flubbed, and the flubs haven’t been written about nearly as much as the company’s triumphs.  If I’m writing about Parker and I’m writing about something that hasn’t been written before, more often than with other brands I’m documenting a swing and a miss.  Remember, Babe Ruth not only dominated baseball with home runs – he also was a leader in the number of times he struck out.  To carry on the metaphor, perhaps Parker was always swinging for the fences.

I took some heat a few years ago when I wrote an article that suggested those crappy later Conklin pencils with washer clips might actually have been made by Parker (Volume 5, page 187 - that’s where the “wounded bear” comment comes from):

The pens shown in that picture are Conklins, and the pencils are Parker “Zephyrs.”

I made another Conklin-Parker connection when I showed off the insides of a similarly cringeworthy Conklin Minuteman pencil, sporting one of Parker’s distinctive (and patented) lead cartridges, though unmarked and painted red (Volume 5, page 165):

I hope the last two articles have softened up the Parker crowd, because I have to circle back around to that point in light of a recent find.  When I referred to every beginner’s “halycon” days, in which we all were excited by things we really shouldn’t have been excited about at the time, I don’t think I was alone when I thought there must be a connection between Parker and the Penman, a low-quality brand that often sported arrow clips – just like a Parker, I thought in those early days:

Incidentally, you’ll find the mosiac plastic that top example was made from on some later Conklins . . . that might just be a coincidence, and it isn’t the point of today’s story.  That middle one?  Yes, it is made from that same brown Parker Zephyr plastic, but that isn’t the point of today’s story, either – in the case of the Penman, these pencils are fundamentally different from anything Parker is known to have made.  The Penman, like so many other low-quality brands, is a cheap, nose-drive pencil, and the barrel halves unscrew to reveal an eraser stuck into the bushing that joins them.

When I last poked my beloved wounded bears out there, the consensus was that Parker must have sold off leftover plastic to the hucksters who made those terrible Conklin pens, never sullying its good name by associating itself with such a low-quality production.  As for the Conklin Minuteman with the Parker lead cartridge?  Crickets.

The Parker sloppy seconds argument seems to work just as well with the Penman as it does for those Conklin pens, and in fact might seem even stronger since the only things that brown one has in common with a Parker is the color of the plastic and a Duofold-style washer clip in the shape of an arrow, made long after Parker’s patent on the washer clip expired.

After all, Parker never made anything like the Penman, right?  I’ll just set a red pill here in front of you . . . whether you take it is up to you:

I was certain the online auctioneer was adding pizzaz to his or her listing, but yes . . . this one is clearly marked “Parker” on the clip:

And . . .

Same construction, too.

We can continue to make excuses for Parker, but the only excuse left is that some huckster made a blatantly suicidal decision to put Parker’s name on a low-budget imitation that wasn’t going to fool anyone.  If we deny Parker had anything to do with stuff like this, we are denying an increasing pile of evidence to the contrary:  now we have the same plastics, a rudimentary version of Parker’s patented lead cartridge, and now a Parker-marked pencil constructed the same way as nearly every low-budget production made during the 1940s.

I think this is an extremely rare glimpse behind Parker’s gilded curtain.  Like any other business, Parker had to find ways to survive.

I’d offer you a blue pill as an alternative to that red one, but I’m fresh out.  

UPDATE: on the day this article posted, Trevis Young commented that he had found something similar, a later pen marked Mabie Todd with that same clip, in a lizard-skin plastic:

By chance, that very day I was spending some time researching the “Wilrite,” a third-tier brand from New York - and I had found an advertisement in the September 27, 1941 issue of the Pottstown, Pennsylvania Mercury that puts an exclamation point on the end of this article:

There’s the same plastic, same clip . . . and it’s a button-filler, “with all the Best Features of a nationally-known pen . . .” such as the button-filled Parker Duofold.  And last but not least, notice the nib illustrated, with that funny arc below the breather hole:

Just like a Parkette, but arched the opposite way.

Loose Change from the Dollar Line

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(Originally scheduled to post May 16, 2018) 

I’ve had some pictures in the archive of some details to add regarding Conklin’s “dollar pencils,” starting with this bunch, which came my way by David Nishimura so many years ago that these pictures were taken on the old camera.  Now that I’ve gotten better at photo editing, the images are presentable:

There’s new old stock, there’s mint . . . and then there’s time machines that catapult you back to a stationer’s counter nearly a century ago:

The tissue paper wrappings, with purple stars, are cinched closed with stickers indicating what model pencil is wrapped inside:

A couple of the tissue wrappings were damaged, so I slipped the pencils inside from their coverings for this shot:

The short model with Conklin’s lower-level clip (see The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Vol. 2, page 25) - designated Model #0SC - is a real prize.  Note also the fingerprint of someone who handled the pencil a century ago on the ringtop:

In fact, in that earlier article I posted, both of these pencils show up in the image I included from Conklin’s 1922 catalog:

I also have a couple details to report on Conklin’s 1925 dollar pencils (see "A Fist Full of Dollar Pencils").  First, there were two blues - one more teal, and the other a brighter robin’s egg blue:

And, in addition to the black, orange/red and blue shown in the 1925 catalog, they are also found in dark green:

Since green is not shown in the 1925 catalog, but is shown in the 1930-1931 catalog for that other line of dollar pencils . . . 

. . .  I’m inclined to think green was added later in the line, and if true, that might indicate that the shorter caps I’ve noted here before are later production:

Speaking of those 1930-1931 dollar pencils, I’ve managed to find examples in black and red:

Half of a red one, anyway . . . the material is very brittle and my example has a gaping crack next to the clip.  In the years since these pictures were taken, I still haven’t turned up a better example.  Or a green one.