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.

Three of a Kind . . . and Maybe Four

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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Here are three more of the pencils I picked up from Ed Fingerman at the DC show last August:

The top one in that first picture I had to keep just fort the size of it - large magic pencils are a commanding sight, and they don’t come around all that often.  The imprint on the extender did my heart good to see, too:

That F in a shield signifieds Fairchild & Co., and I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for all things Fairchild due in part to the fact that my friend David Nishimura wrote a substantial piece of Fairchild which appeared in the last issue of the Pennant I edited (“Leroy W. Fairchild: The Little-Known History of a Well-Known Company,” Winter, 2016).

In the article, David indicates that after the shuttering of Leroy W. Fairchild’s operations in 1896 and subsequent takeover of the firm’s assets by a firm established by his son, Leroy C. Fairchild, another of Fairchild’s sons, Harry P. Fairchild, established a firm with Ephraim S. Johnson, Jr. (The son of another famous New York maker, Ephraim Johnson) in October, 1898.  The firm, Fairchild & Johnson, used a hallmark of a F and a J inside a shield separated by a diagonal line.

The center pencil from that first picture has the Fairchild & Johnson mark:

After Ephraim apparently got bored with the enterprise and left to pursue other interests in 1905, the company name was changed to Fairchild & Co., and the J was deleted from the shield.

The lower pencil is unusual since it’s hexagonal - and like the first pencil, it has the Fairchild & Co. hallmark:

Then there was this other pencil in Fingerman’s stash, one that I just couldn’t bear to let slip away:

Such an interesting shape certainly calls to mind Fairchild & Johnson.  Unfortunately, the hallmark isn’t very clear:

It looks like it might be the top of an F stamped on there, but without any shield around it.   Or maybe it’s something else . . .

In the Company of Fine Snails

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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As Joe Nemecek and I went through the large collection of Victorian pencils Ed Fingerman brought to show us at the DC show, it quickly became apparent that I was going to have to prioritize.  Even limiting myself to American pieces only didn’t pare down what he was offering sufficiently for me to be able to afford them all; after I had assembled my little pile, I found myself playing a mini-game of “pencil survivor,” making difficult choices about which ones to vote off the island.

When it came to these three, they are all along the same lines . . . but in the end, I simply couldn’t bear to put any of them back:

I’ve heard these referred to as “desk pencils,” not because they fit into a socket or stand but because they are full length and they don’t telescope – best for sitting on a desk rather than protruding from one’s pocket.  All three are sterling, and all three have an exquisitely wrought “snail” pattern.

And if you know what subtle dfferences to look for, you know who made two out of three of them without even having to reach for a loupe to find the hallmarks.

The top example has that great middle section you’ve seen here before, most recently on a gold-filled “Hutch Clutch” pencil (see “The Mabie Todd-Hutcheon Connection” at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-mabie-todd-hutcheon-connection.html), which I compared to a very similar desk pencil marked Mabie Todd.  In fact, this new addition is a nice complement to the desk pencil from that last article:

And both examples have a hallmark used by Mabie Todd, an M within a square (see “M Is for Mabie” at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/12/m-is-for-mabie.html).

Now let’s have a look at the bottom example from that first picture.  Notice that ring of beads at the top end and near the nose?

After you’ve studied these things for awhile, you’d immediately suspect Hicks . . . and lo and behold . . .

There’s the Hicks acorn hallmark, at the right end.  I’ve got a theory – an unsubstantiated theory – that Hicks marked pencils made for its own account with the name “Hicks” or “W.S. Hicks,” but when the firm made pencils for sale by others, they were marked with an X and the acorn.  Maybe the theory isn’t entirely unsubstantiated . . . have a look at a very similar pencil marked with the name of the jewelry firm Black, Starr & Frost and the Hicks acorn in “Welcome to the Family” (https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/02/welcome-to-family.html).

And then there’s that middle example from that first shot.  Well, maybe I exaggerated a bit at the beginning of this article – two out of three of these pencils I could see what they were from a blue mile away, but on this third one the center cartouche is the only thing that’s distinctive (other than the incredibly artistry):

So yes . . . I had to break down and pull out my loupe to see what was going on.  The answer was indeed there on the nosecone:

A shield with an F and a J . . . for Fairchild Johnson.  The errant F next to the shield appears to be a double stamp (note that you can also see traces of the diagonal line within the shield).

The Question I Hate to Answer the Most

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.

I was determined to clear out my backlog of recent photographs before taking more pictures of things to write about, so I’ve been holding off on shooting the items I acquired at the DC Supershow last month - some 75 pieces added to the collection that I’ve been eager to tell you about.  With the last of those older pictures running in yesterday’s article, I let the blog tick along on autopilot for a few days while I finally got to spend some time behind the camera.  All the DC stuff has been shot, along with a few other things I thought were interesting, and the images are now sitting in the hopper just waiting for me to say something meaningful about them.

There are three questions people frequently ask me - one fairly simple, and two I hate.  The simple one: “What’s the oldest pencil you have?”  That’s easy.  My oldest American pencil is probably that Woodwards & Hale I wrote about recently (http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2017/05/an-unbelievable-stroke-of-luck.html), but I’ve got a couple English pieces that are a few years older still.

The first question I hate is, “What’s the most valuable thing you have?”  That’s a double hate there . . . I don’t really understand the question for starters, whether the person asking means monetary value or historical value.  I’ve got bits of junk laying around which I”d pay more for than a solid gold piece – but fortunately I haven’t had to do so.  Besides, asking what’s the most valuable thing in my collection is like asking me to show you my checkbook or my stock portfolio . . . it’s kind of rude and intrusive.

However, it’s that third question that really gets under my skin: “Which is your favorite?”  Even though on its face the question isn’t nearly as boorish as asking for a peek into my wallet, that’s the question that really, really, REALLY bugs me.

Because it makes me ask myself questions that I really don’t want to answer.

It’s not as though these inanimate objects are children I’m afraid to offend, so that I feel obligated to tell them I love them all equally.  The problem is that it forces me into this existential exercise of questioning why I like something and how much.  It makes me wonder whether I like the historical tidbit I found more or less than admiring a tiny work of art I found.

It also makes me stare into the face of my own greed.  I like to believe I can be equally happy taking a picture of something as I would be owning it, and I hope that’s true . . . there’s been plenty of times when I’ve had the opportunity to photograph things that weren’t for sale, or when the price tag is more than I can swallow, and I’ve satisfied myself (some would say “settled”) for that.  But the question isn’t what I have enjoyed seeing the most, it’s what I enjoy owning the most.

Besides, if there’s that one thing I enjoy owning the most, that means there’s something out there that I enjoy owning the least, which gives me a second crisis to deal with: if it's the thing I least enjoy owning, then why on earth did I buy it?

So far, I’ve only posted one article concerning something I acquired at DC – it was that sold gold Sheaffer with Craig Sheaffer’s name engraved on it, mounted on a card signed by Sheaffer and addressed to Edd Dawson, a pencil collector (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2017/08/craig-sheaffers-gift-to-edd-dawson.html).  Gritting my teeth, I’ve got to admit that is my favorite find from the show this year, and it’s probably in my top five finds of all time.

But as I sit here with a big pile o’ pictures of everything else I found at that show, I’m asking myself where I should start and the logical choice is which one out of all these is my favorite.  After much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I keep coming back to the one I picked up from Pearce Jarvis:

It’s not quite the Parker snake magic pencil I have only been able to admire from afar, but it’s darned close:

I could stare at that fantastic relief of a snake winding its way through the cattails all day long:

The artistry even extends to the top piece

and in the lower corner of that last shot, you can see who was responsible for this fine piece of art: Fairchild Johnson, represented by a shield with an F and a J inside it:

Fairchild Johnson was a partnership between one of Leroy W. Fairchild’s sons and Ephraim Johnson, Jr., sone of E.S. Johnson, which operated between 1898 and 1905.  The complete(ish) story, with thanks to David Nishimura and his excellent article in The Pennant, was posted here at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/10/somebody-elses-news.html.

Whew.  The uncomfortable question has been asked and answered, and the ice is now officially broken.  Now I won’t have as much trouble figuring out what to write about tomorrow, and I’ll be showing off all the other great things which came home from DC with me . . .

in no particular order, of course . . .

Somebody Else's News

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 4; 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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I’ve been holding off writing this article until your Pennant arrived (assuming, of course, that you are a member of the Pen Collectors of America), so that I could quote David Nishimura’s article rather than steal his thunder.   In David’s article, “Leroy W. Fairchild: The Little-Known History of a Well-Known Company,” he clarified something I never fully understood: the Fairchild-Johnson partnership.

I had always assumed that at some point along the line, Leroy W. Fairchild and Ephraim S. Johnson went into partnership together - and that’s not right.  According to David, one of Leroy W. Fairchild’s sons, Harry P. Fairchild, went into partnership with Ephraim S. Johnson, Jr., the son of Ephraim S. Johnson, in October, 1898, trading under the name Fairchild & Johnson.  The following year, Fairchild & Johnson purchased what was left of Leroy W. Fairchild.

Ephraim S. Johnson, Jr. wasn’t into the pen and pencil business as much as his father was, and David says that in 1905, he left the firm to pursue other interests and the name of the firm was changed to Fairchild & Co.

David says that what makes Fairchild & Johnson’s products stand out is “their embrace of naturalistic and asymmetrical Art Nouveau motifs,” and that is what I was going to write about.  Here are two examples I’ve had for awhile:

The top example is a relatively conventional snail pattern – perhaps a vestige of Leroy W. Fairchild, produced after Fairchild & Johnson bought the shop in 1898.  But this one has the Fairchild & Johnson hallmark - a shield with a diagonal line through it, with an F in the space above and a J below:

The cable twist pencil, though, is much more unusual, befitting of David’s description of the company’s unusual designs:

Then there were these two, which came from a collection of Victorians I purchased from Alan Hirsch at the DC show in August:

Note the nice, ergonomic peanut shaped cases unlike anything I’ve seen by any other manufacturer:

The lower example sports an imprint with a date, “Quoin Club 1905,” dating these to the last year of in the partnership’s run:

Both sport the same hallmark:

A piece in the March 21, 1903 edition of The St. Louis Republic, said the Quoin Club “is composed of the advertising managers of magazines and periodicals.”  By 1905, however, the membership in the club included, in the words of this 1906 advertisement, “an association of all the leading periodicals (which reach practically every intelligent English-speaking family in the United States).”

The guest list at the club’s 1906 banquet at the Waldorf Astoria included many of New York’s wealthy, famous and elite.   I did find a notice of the upcoming 1905 banquet, at the prestigious Aldine Club in New York:

This may well have been a party favor for the club’s annual banquet.

My Fair Children

Lately I’ve been getting more into Victorian pencils.  Here’s a few I’ve found recently:

All of these were made by Leroy W. Fairchild, the New York manufacturer who supplied nibs to the L.E. Waterman Co. early in Waterman’s history.  With the mechanisms advanced, they look like this:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

. . . And The Ones I Left Behind

I didn’t buy everything I liked at Andy Beliveau’s table in Philly that I wanted to, for two reasons. First, I couldn’t afford to. Second, some of them weren’t for sale. This one fit into both categories:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.