For Art's Sake

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There are times when I don’t look at a new acquisition as a neat pencil, or a window into a moment in history.  I just appreciate it as a work of art:

The hallmark on the extender is a shield with F/J inside, for Fairchild Johnson, the partnership between Leroy Fairchild’s son Harry and Ephraim Johnson’s son Ephraim Johnson Jr. established in 1898 and ending in 1905:

These pictures don’t convey the size of this piece.  Here it is alongside a full-size Waterman Patrician pencil:

I’m not sure how the barrel was made; the relief is probably too deep to be accomplished by acid etching.  Perhaps it was cast using a lost wax technique, with some detail added by engraving after the casting was complete:

Another pencil along these lines came my way just a week or so later:

This one is a more normal size, with a hallmark for Edward Todd:

The barrel relief and more two-dimensional pattern on this one is also closer to normal for acid etching, although there might be some details added by engraving:

This last one is normal for acid etching – but not normal at all for the pencil on which it turned up, courtesy of Brian McQueen:

This is an early Wahl-made Ever Sharp (two words), with John Wahl’s patented clip but Keeran’s earlier imprint.  That combination of features dates the pencil to 1917:

I briefly introduced a ringtop version of the acid-etched Ever Sharp in Volume 5, page 103.  This full-sized example has less pronounced detail:

Still, it’s early, extremely rare, and it just oozes class.

An Acid-Etched Eversharp

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.

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This one had an appointment to meet me at the Raleigh show this year:

At first blush, it looks a lot like one of those sterling hand engraved Eversharps, but it isn’t . . .

The barrel on this one is acid etched to create that pattern, not hand engraved:

These are exceedingly difficult to find and, we know from the imprint, were a very early experiment by Wahl soon after the company took over production of Charles Keeran’s Eversharp:

The imprint is the two-word “Ever Sharp,” with no mention of Wahl.  Without the side clip, you might wonder how I could be certain this is Wahl-made: the answer is that there is documentary evidence that the ladies’ size was introduced by Col. William Smith at the 1917 Stationers’ Banquet in Chicago in January of that year . . . as reported in the February, 1917 issue of Office Appliances, at page 41.

I read this excerpt, which describes the ladies’ model as “a trifle shorter than the usual Eversharps” and . . . eequipped with a ring on the top” as an indication that these were new.  The tidbit surfaced in the course of researching “Wahl, Sheaffer and the Race for Boston,” which appeared as a two-part series in The Pennant in the winter, 2015 and spring, 2016 issues; I reformatted the article as a series of posts here, beginning at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/12/wahl-sheaffer-and-race-for-boston-part.html (the installment which refers to this excerpt is the third installment).

Before there were Wahl Pens, Wahl’s only writing instrument was the Ever Sharp, and the Wahl name wasn’t included.  After the purchase, for a brief time Wahl continued to market Boston Safety Fountain Pens under its original name, not adopting the Wahl Pen moniker until a short time later.

Was this one of the pencils Col. Smith handed out to the ladies in attendance at the 1917 Chicago Stationers’ Banquet?  Sadly, no.  The article indicates that those were gold filled.  Additionally, this example doesn’t have a ring on top, whether the original top was replaced with an interchangeable cap from the side clip model or whether it was specially made for a special sort of barrel.  I also wonder if that original batch from February, 1917 didn’t also have the names of the ladies in attendance engraved on their barrels – after all, that’s what Col. Smith did when he handed out Boston Fountain Pens the preceding year.

So I’m fairly convinced that this pencil was made early in 1917 – after the Chicago Stationer’s Banquet in January, 1917, but before Wahl’s name was added to the imprint later in 1917, and before”Ever Sharp” was contracted to one word in 1918.  .