More for the DV File

This commanding magic pencil turned up in yet another online auction:

What attracted me to it was a hallmark that I hadn’t seen for awhile - in fact, I’ve only seen two others, and both of them reside here at the museum.

The story behind that interlocking “DV” hallmark was finally unraveled here in “Time to Get Serious” (July 14, 2021: Volume 7, page 259). The mark was included in Trade-Marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades, but in the section dedicated to watches, not pens and pencils. Maurice Ditishiem & Cie (company), the Swiss watchmaking company – that’s the “D” – adopted the mark in connection with the firm’s line of “Vulcain” pocket watches – that was the “V.”

Ditisheim didn’t make pens or pencils bearing this mark; just like Tiffany, Cartier and other high-end retailers, Ditisheim sourced pencils from high-quality makers, marked with the firm’s logo. The other DV-marked pencils in that earlier article were likely made by Hicks, and that’s a reasonable conclusion with this one, as well.

And then, the twist . . . 

On arrival, I started playing around with this one to make sure everything was working, and it did something I wasn’t expecting. Magic pencils such as this are usually propel only; twisting the nose advances a simple pushrod which advances the lead, and the lead is held in place by friction.

This one, however, both propels and repels – twisting the nose the opposite direction retracts the lead. When I removed the nose cone, what I found surprised me . . . 

All it takes to make a propel-only magic pencil into a propel-repel model is welding on a simple sleeve to receive the lead. It’s a great idea, and I wonder why more Victorian makers didn’t adopt it.

Time To Get Serious

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This pencil was advertised as “gold tone” . . .

That’s some serious “tone.”  You had to read the entire description to see “Item is marked 14 ct and some other letters I can not read.”  

Nobody was reading descriptions that day, and it came home for $22.99.  At that price, I didn’t grouse about the shipping charges – the letters the seller couldn’t make out are an H, with a W above the crossbar and an S below it, the “Big H” mark for W.S. Hicks, and yeah . . . it’s solid gold.  

But that’s not why I’m excited about this one.   All right, maybe that isn’t the only reason I’m excited about it.  I have just one other pencil in this unique shape, and I haven’t written about it here yet:

Both of these have a three-stage extendible pencil inside, an homage to the Hicks version of the same pencil patented July 13, 1897 (see Volume 5, page 96).  

However, the commemorative engraving on the new addition reads 1921 - much later than the original patent, but much earlier than it looks:

I found the larger one at the Springfield “Extravaganza,” that indoor/outdoor antique show that never disappoints.  The dealer who had it knew it was solid gold, and I just HATE paying for gold.  I saw, I asked how much he wanted, and I told him I would think about it, thinking I’d check back in at the end of the day.  He softened a little bit when I stopped back close to closing time, but not much . . . still, I couldn’t resist because of what’s stamped on the barrel:

“DV,” or maybe “VD.”   I’ve been saving this one for the day when I finally figure out that hallmark – I sent out a distress call about it years ago (Volume 3, page 233), in connection with a sterling pencil which appears to be patented by Hicks in 1918 (see Volume 3, page 231 for the article about the Hicks patent).  

This makes two instances in which the DV mark appears on pencils which appear to have been made by Hicks:

But for whom?  Fortunately, I’ve got a few research tools I didn’t have when I last posted about “The Mystery Mark” in 2015.  Unfortunately, the DV mark didn’t surface as I was writing one of them, American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953; all that means, though, is that the mark wasn’t registered with the United States Trademark Office for use on writing instruments.  Maybe it is an unfiled mark?  For that possibility I turned to the excerpts from Trade-Marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades published in the appendix to the book – unfortunately, the mark isn’t listed there, either.

Maybe, since Hicks was making these pencils for someone else, that someone was involved in one of the other “kindred trades”?  I have complete copies of the 1904, 1915, and 1922 editions of Trade-Marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades, so I rolled up my sleeves and started poring through them page by page, until I found it, listed under “watches”:

The exact mark was used by Maurice “Didisheim” (that’s a typographical error, it should be Ditisheim) of Ditisheim & Cie (company), the Swiss watchmaking firm.

Maurice Ditisheim (1831-1899) founded Ditisheim Manufacture in La-Cheaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 1858; in 1894, he introduced a model of pocket watch called the “Vulcain,” and that same year he renamed his firm Vulcain Manufacture.  The Ditisheim name, however, continued to carry significant weight, with several members of the family engaged in other Swiss watchmaking firms (one of whom coined the Movado brand name).

Vulcain’s greatest contribution to watchmaking was the development of an alarm watch, introduced in 1947 as the Vulcain “Cricket.”  After several mergers and a hiatus during the 1980s when demand for mechanical watches collapsed with the introduction of quartz movements, the brand was relaunched in 2001.

Watches and writing instruments go hand-in-hand as luxury accessories, so it’s no surprise that a watch company would seek to offer pencils to accompany them.  Tiffany & Co. and Cartier also did so, and just like Vulcain, these firms had Hicks make pencils for them, too.