A Tale of Two Clips

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 6, now on sale at The Legendary Lead Company.  I have just a few hard copies left of the first printing, available here, and an ebook version in pdf format is available for download here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy this article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

In an inconspicuous bunch of pencils in an online auction, this guy could be seen peeking out between two nondescript bits of flea market fare:

I was hoping when it arrived that it would clean up nicely and that it would have an imprint for LeBoeuf on it somewhere . . . and one out of two isn’t bad.  That plastic just screams LeBoeuf, which was known for attractive celluloids with spectacular depth of color.  And yet, that clip . . . I just couldn’t remember that clip being used by the company, and there was no marking on the pencil anywhere.

So I posted a quick note on Facebook and received confirmation that yes, this is a later LeBoeuf – I had a desk pen some years ago that was also unmarked, except for the P on the nib for the company’s flagship line of pens, the “Pilgrim.”   At the DC show which followed, one of my pushers (reinde me who you are!) added a bit to my unmarked, later LeBoeuf fold with a grey ringtop:

If your initial reaction when you saw that clip was Eisenstadt, you’re in good company.  That’s certainly where the inspiration came from – I showed off an Eisenstadt pencil made by the Rex Manufacturing Company here at the blog very early on (The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 1, page 68):

Of course, the clip mountings are totally different, since this uses Rex’s patented clip.  For a better example, I do have one of the company’s pens, with their distinctive “backwards” levers (the tab of the lever faces towards the nib rather than the top of the pen):

OK, I’m showing off a little with that black and pearl Eisenstadt.  Most are black hard rubber, and these are really tough to find – but this is a pencil blog, right?

Note that Eisenstadt clips, in addition to being longer and more substantial, have the company’s logo of an E nestled within a carpenter’s square at the bottom.  However, the exact clip found on my LeBoeuf has an exact counterpart elsewhere in pencildom:

These are stamped “Good Service Fountain Pen Co. Chicago Ill.”

Good Service was a brand name used by Sears Roebuck & Co. on its lower quality pens and pencils – a step below the higher quality Diamond Medal and medium quality Webster brands.  In The Catalogue on page 82, I had suggested these were turned out by National Pen Products, which has widely been regarded as an error - Parker Pen Company was the likely manufacturer, (with, of course, Cross supplying the innards).  Of course, mixing and matching bits and pieces was a hallmark of National, and these have a little bit of everything in them: Parker's outsourced innards from Cross, celluloid reminiscent of that patented by Seth Crocker, a center band that looks more than a little like what is found on some Moores . . .

and clips from a late-model LeBoeuf.  Richard Binder’s Glossopedia reports that LeBoeuf filed for bankruptcy in 1933, and the LeBoeuf-Pilgrim Pen Company, Inc. came later.  Which came first?  I’m sure there will be a follow up article when I figure that out.

Another DeWitt-LaFrance Connection

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy this article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

Joe Nemecek jokes with me that by the time I'm done researching pencils, I will have concluded that DeWitt-LaFrance and the Rex Manufacturing Company made everything.

I did take one small step in that direction earlier this month.

Late on Sunday at the Chicago Show this year, an acquaintance of mine brought around a case of things he had for sale – mostly pens, but one was accompanied by a pencil and all I could say was “I’d like to have that.”

Those clips practically jump out at me whenever I see one, as long as I’ve been a devotee of DeWitt-LaFrance, the Cambridge, Massachusetts firm whose founder, David LaFrance, was the inventor of the Sheaffer Sharp Point pencil before he joined forces with William DeWitt and went on to manufacture the Superite and a host of other brands before the company was sold to Carter’s Ink Company in 1925.  That’s why the Carter’s line continued that distinctive clip:

A nice, clean DeWitt-LaFrance set is always something I’ll snap up when they are reasonable . . . but when I took a closer look at this, “reasonable” quickly became relative to the context:

The Eisenstadt Manufacturing Company was a jewelry firm in St. Louis, most famous for the company’s hard rubber pens with a “backwards” lever – the end of the lever faced the point of the pen rather than the end of the barrel.  Not so with this set: the pen is a dead ringer for a Superite, right down to the nib:

Yep.  That’s S for Superite.  

I have only found one other Eisenstadt-marked pencil.  I posted about it here more than five years ago, when this blog was only a few weeks old.  That example was a member of the Rex Manufacturing Company family of pencils:

After I posted about that first article on fountainpennetwork.com, one commenter added “Some late Eisenstadts no longer sported this clip (using a Dewitt-LaFrance clip instead). Most of the pens seem to have been manufactured in the mid 1920s. The pencils may perhaps provide additional clues as to chronology.”

Indeed they do.  My DeWitt-LaFrance made Eisenstadt pencil is marked patented on both on the clip and the barrel, which indicates that the pencils were made after November, 1922 (when the latter of the two patents, for the pencil itself, was issued) and before the company was sold to Carter’s Ink Company in 1925.  My Rex-made example has all four of the Rex patent dates on it, which means it was made in 1926 or later.

So, Eisenstadt pens and pencils with DeWitt-LaFrance clips were made before the hard rubber pens with sweeping clips and backwards levers (the lever itself being patented in 1924).

About a year ago, Silviu Pincu wrote and posted the most detailed history I’ve seen of the Eisenstadt Manufacturing Company (his article can be found at https://issuu.com/silviupincu/docs/eisenstadt), and the story the pencils tell squares perfectly with the evidence Silviu published: he found no evidence of any advertising for Eisenstadt pens before 1924, and when the advertisements do appear, they are for the black hard rubber pens (with a suggestion that Sheaffer might have had something to do with the manufacture of the pens).

The Blind Squirrel Finds a Second Nut

About seven years or so ago, I was pretty new to the hobby and was just starting to exhibit at pen shows.  The stuff I was putting on my table those first few shows wasn't much to write home about - ok, it was stuff that a beginning collector wasn't all that interested in.  But everybody has to start somewhere, and I had a lot of fun doing it. 

I also had a lot of fun, as I still do today, buying box lots and sorting through them.   Today's story begins with one of those box lots, although it's been so long ago I don't remember which one.  What I do remember is that in some box of junk I'd bought there was a large, black flattop pen with a lever that looked like it was in backwards (the part that lifted up faced the nib rather than the end of the barrel).  It had a great imprint on it - "Eisenstadt."  I don't remember whether or not it had the clip, but from what I remember I don't think it did.

My next show was the DC show that year.  I didn't know enough about my find to just put it out on the table and take a guess at how much I should ask for it, so I kept it behind the table and showed it to a couple of people I trusted to ask them what they thought.

Word got around that more quickly than I ever would have thought.  High-end dealers who had dismissed me as not just a pencil collector, but as even worse -- a beginner pencil collector -- were coming up to me and asking in hushed and reverent voices, "may I please see the Eisenstadt?"

From what I recall, those who were inquired were equally split between those who wanted me to name my price and those who just wanted to see one because they never had.  It was the first time I had that rush of finding something really speciall and important that others appreciated. 

Or, as Janet likes to say, "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while."

I did end up selling the Eisenstadt that day, although I don't remember to whom it went.  I do remember feeling that I was getting a fair price, and that it was going to a collector rather than someone who was just going to fix it up and make a buck on if.  I haven't seen it or another one like it since.

In the pen, that is...

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company