Zen and the Art of Picking

After David Nishimura and I finished negotiating the purchase of a Victorian collection from Rob Bader in DC, Rob mentioned that he had a few other random pencils that had come from that same collection. Since we bought everything else, Rob said, take whatever you want out of them.

I wasn’t greedy, but I did grab a couple items that are perennial favorites to me, including these four:

First is that cute little Gordon, with its telephone dialer and hugely disproportionate “fanged” clip. Even if I had five identical ones at home I would have snagged this one – the color is amazing, the telephone dialer ones are a delight, and besides – it was “free” (ish, he tells himself, after the amount of money he spent on the Victorians).

The clip didn’t look nearly this nice when I rescued it, and there was a lot of work involved in getting it looking presentable. The effort was worth it, because this scratched one of those longtime itches I’d forgotten I had.

In “Like Playing the Lottery” (March 7, 2013: Volume 2, page 83), I mused whether a two-tone Gordon was correct. “It’s possible that Gordon decided to jazz things up a bit by making two-color pencils out of parts from each,” I wrote, “but if anyone’s got a red veined example with a bronze and cream cap and wants to swap parts, I’m all ears!”

Now I’m all ears for an all red veined example. And it continues . . . 

That was happy accident number one from Rob’s freebie pile. Here’s number two:

I like these later Moore “Mastercraft” pencils, and I figured since I probably already had one, I wouldn’t mind carrying this one around as an everyday doodler (and besides, I told myself, it’s “free”).

And then I checked my photo archive . . .

I couldn’t have called a better shot.

That blue “Hiriter” is another one I wouldn’t have thought twice about if there was more money to be paid. Hiriter was a David Kahn brand (Kahn is best known as maker of the Wearever), although I don’t know if the Hiriter was for Kahn’s own account or whether it was supplied to some retailer. It wasn’t a high quality affair, but still – I liked the clip and the color, and when I got it home:

Now I have one that has all of its parts.

As for the last one in this group, it is a Dur-O-Lite and one of the earliest ones, at that. The company was founded in 1926, and that square bolt securing the clip to the barrel was only used until 1928. It isn’t the earliest, but it’s pretty early – that longer nose was adopted in early 1927.

I was sure I had one, but I’m a sucker for these and if I run across one that needs a clip or a good nose, I figured it would be handy to have. Besides . . . its free . . . and yes, I did have one.

But the one I have didn’t have this written on the side, which I didn’t notice when I plucked it from the pile to bring home:

I’m confident that if I had actually spent additional money on these things, I would never have batted four for four!

Worth a Second Look

In yesterday’s installment, I introduced a fountain pen marked “Worth” with a nib marked “Keystone.” It was the first of several dominoes to fall connecting different producers.

That tied nicely into a discussion about who made pens and pencils marked “Keystone,” but with an underlying assumption that the nib is original to the pen. I agree that sometimes people put too much weight on what nib is in a particular pen, since nibs can be and often were switched out by repairmen over the last century.

In this case, I fully believe the nib is original. First, this Worth pen appears to have been made by the Eagle Pencil Company, given its similarity to other known Eagle pens:

Second, the word “Keystone” was a registered trademark owned by the Blaisdell Pencil Company. Blaisdell, by the time the trademark was applied for, was controlled by the Berolzheimer family, which also owned the Eagle Pencil Company.

All roads leading from Worth and Blaisdell point to Eagle. As I mentioned earlier, when I bought that Worth pen I didn’t even check to see if there was a nib in it – it was cheap, and the fact that I suspected it was Eagle-made without even removing the cap was all that I needed to add some fascinating context to one of our most celebrated pen history. A Keystone/Blaisdell/Eagle connection adds even more fuel to that fire. 

The Worth Featherweight Pen Company is best known today for being the loser in Walter Sheaffer’s landmark patent infringement case over Sheaffer’s design patents for the Sheaffer Balance. Daniel Kirchheimer wrote an excellent article on the litigation titled “Featherweight vs. Heavyweight” (posted here). The case is notable for the information in trial transcripts detailing the development and history of the Sheaffer Balance. 

Here at the blog, the Worth Featherweight Pen Company last made an appearance in “Worth Something” (July 24, 2021: Volume 7, page 282). In that piece, the evidence was presented that Nathaniel Worth, who tried to secretly sell his shares in New Diamond Point Pen Company to Marx Finstone’s Eclipse Pen Company, was the man behind the Worth Featherweight Pen Company. Both were represented by the same attorney, Charles Greenwald.

“One could argue that it’s a coincidence that there were two guys named Worth [Nathaniel and his brother], and a pen company called the ‘Worth Featherweight Pen Company,’” I wrote. “Slimmer still is the possibility that all were in New York City, and that Nathaniel Worth had been recently relieved of his duties at another pen company shortly before this one emerges.

“But could it still be a coincidence now that we know the same New York lawyer was representing both Nathaniel Worth and the Worth Featherweight Pen Company, in two complex cases, both of which would likely consume nearly all of his time? No, I believe this eliminates all reasonable doubt.” 

OK, so now we have Diamond Point, Eclipse, Keystone, Eagle, Blaisdell, and Worth in the mix. Hang in there . . . it sorts itself out.

I took a more significant dive into Sheaffer’s litigation to protect its design patents for the Balance in A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils (2023). “Worth was an ideal defendant for Sheaffer to attack,” I wrote on page 40, “since it was a small concern with limited resources with which to defend itself. Worth’s conduct was also intentional and flagrant: the company even marketed its pens as the ‘Safer Fountain Pen,’ and one of Sheaffer’s undercover operatives reported that Worth’s president admitted the name was chosen because the name sounded like ‘Sheaffer.’ Predictably, Sheaffer outgunned this tiny adversary, resulting in a decision upholding the validity of Sheaffer’s design patents.”

Once that judgment was secured, Sheaffer set his sights on the Eagle Pencil Company, whose products had been introduced in evidence during the Worth litigation for the proposition that Eagle had been making streamlined writing instruments like the Balance since Walter Sheaffer was in diapers. In this instance, though, Eagle was one of the more blatant of the copycats, offering metal pencils and pens painted in a faux black and pearl, shaped exactly the same as the Balance. A couple examples turned up in Susan Wirth’s belongings, in this tray of “Susie’s Eagles” with which John Martenson parted:

The Balance-like offerings in this tray filled out what I already had in the collection nicely:

The Court was quick to mete out justice against Eagle: the Court issued a preliminary injunction against Eagle as well, in a published decision filed on December 3, 1931 (W.A. Sheaffer Pen Co. v. Eagle Pencil Co., 55 F.2d 420 (S.D.N.Y. 1931)). As a result, Eagle was forced to modify the shape of some of its products and add a disclaimer to the company’s 1931-1932 catalog:

Now let’s take a step back for a second and take a breath. Yes, it makes sense that Sheaffer would first target a weaker opponent to get a favorable precedent set that his Balance patents were valid. Yes, it also makes sense that Eagle would be in Sheaffer’s sights, since Eagle was one of the more blatant copycats.

With the additional insight that Eagle was supplying the Worth Featherweight Pen Company with at least some of the company’s products, it makes even more sense. After all, if Eagle was supplying one competitor with Balance-shaped products, taking down Eagle would knock out both a direct competitor as well as a supplier.

Which got me to thinking . . . in the Field Guide I brought up another competitor who was restrained by the Courts: the Pick Pen Company of Cincinnati, against whom Sheaffer won a preliminary injunction on December 2, 1931 – the day before the injunction was issued against Eagle.

I wrote up the history of the Pick Pen Company in great detail in Volume 7 (see “Nobody’s Luck Is That Band” on May 5, 2021: Volume 7, page 88). Now that we know that Worth might have been targeted by Sheaffer because Worth was a customer of the Eagle Pencil Company, I wonder: does that suggest Eagle actually made this Pick pen?

Maybe . . . it does share the general lines of Eagle products, and Pick didn’t do much with streamlining. It is an interesting hypothesis. With my head about to explode with adding yet another company into this story, I’ll wait to circle back on that point until I have more evidence.

Now to bring this long, complicated story full circle. This all started with a discussion of James Kelley’s Keystone Banker. In those earlier articles I included this image of three combination pens and pencils, all fitted with Gordon’s “fanged” clips:

These clips are marked “Banker,” “Safer,” and “Gordon.” Gordon is easy to explain: the fanged clips were patented by William Gordon of Union, New Jersey. There were three patented versions of the clip (all three patents were discussed in “Always a Crowd Pleaser” on March 17, 2015: Volume 3, page 263). I’ve never seen the earliest version of Gordon’s clip in the flesh, and I’ve only found one example of the third. All of the other examples I have found are the second incarnation, the patent application for which was filed April 3, 1930 and granted as patent number 1,834,151 on December 1, 1931. 

As for the Banker, these combos were produced (not manufactured) by our friend James Kelley. But what of the “Safer?” Was that meant to comfort the public into believing a writing instrument with built-in spikes wouldn’t harm your shirt pocket? Perhaps . . . but I doubt it.

In Daniel Kirchheimer’s “Featherweight vs. Heavyweight” article, he discussed how Walter Sheaffer’s undercover detectives had learned that the Worth Featherweight Pen Company sold pens under the name “Safer” – not because they were less dangerous, but because “Safer” sounded a lot like “Sheaffer.” Daniel included this image of a Worth box, which was introduced at evidence during the trial:

I’m not sure how all of this fits together, and the only thing of which I am certain is that James Kelley and Nathaniel Worth both sourced these combination writing instruments with Gordon patent clips from the same supplier. Was that supplier Eagle? Maybe. Were Nathaniel Worth and James Kelley involved in some way other than buying stock from the same supplier? Maybe.

Good journalists, I was taught forty years ago, do not tell you what to think – they tell you what to think about. 

Wild Like Only One Other

This article has been included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 7, now available here.

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

I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again now: I jump at every chance I get to circle back around to the Gordon, with those “fanged” clips.  In “Return of the Crowdpleaser,” I rounded up all of the Gordons at the museum for updated family photos in the last Volume (see Volume 6, page 61).

There have been a couple developments in the short time since.  Speaking of short:

These little pipsqueaks, with their funny little telephone dialer-like tops paired with those disproportionately large Gordon clips, make me smile whenever they turn up.  

In this case, the color really took my breath away – black with grey swirls, like whispy clouds on a winter night by a full moon:

That makes six of these little beasties I’ve found, and that was where this short little article would have ended:

But then another one surfaced . . . in another wild color:

It looks like an ordinary cracked eggshell near the clip:

But from the side, you can clearly see how blue this is:

I still had not made the connection, as I obliviously set up an updated shot of my full length Gordons:

Huh . . . cracked eggshell in black, blue and red.  Where else does that occur?  

Aside from the goofy dialer tops on the short models and the patented Gordon “fanged” clips, there isn’t much to differentiate Gordons from the nose drive Diamond Points.  In fact, as bell-top styling gave way to the Balance and all things round, Diamond Point redesigned the series to look very similar to the Gordon:

The kill shot would be a picture showing the caps swapped on these two pencils . . . but alas . . .

They aren’t compatible.  The Diamond point cap is a male-threaded cap that screws into the barrel, while the Gordons all have a metal bushing, with the cap female threaded.  

The eggshell plastics on Diamond Points and Gordons are pretty close, but not identical.  Finding a Diamond Point in black with wisps of gray might nudge my vague suspicion that Diamond Point played some part in making the Gordon closer to the finish line.

But then again, maybe the two companies just bought some really wild plastics from the same supplier.

Return of the Crowdpleaser

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.

People love these, and whenever I get the chance to circle back around to them I jump at the chance:

I was looking for something else when I ran across a junk box full of stuff on Etsy, and although the clip was facing away, it’s so freakishly huge on these short models that I knew what it was . . . a Gordon:

These short ones are great, with what might be a telephone dialer on top.  Maybe, maybe not . . . none of the ones I’ve found show any of the kind of wear you’d expect if these little guys were used to dial telephones:

What’s really unusual about the Gordons are the “fanged” clips, designed to keep your pencil in your pocket so you wouldn’t lose it:

Pushing down on the gawky bail at the top of the clip retracts the fangs so that it can be removed without shredding your shirt or suit pocket:

I’ve written about the Gordon here before.  The last time I wrote about them in 2015, I ran down the three patents for the Gordon “fanged” clip (the article is still live, at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/03/always-crowd-pleaser.html).  The first style clip I’ve never found, and the second style found on today’s pencil is the most prevalent.  I’ve got a few full-sized examples too - I think these are on the earlier end of the spectrum:

The top two pieces came from the estate of Edgar Nichols, inventor of the “Tri-Point” line of pencils.  That top thing might be a cigar holder, or maybe a wood pencil holder – it’s an empty cylinder with a top that screws off.  Along with these other three, these all have a different feel to them than ordinary celluloid - bakelite, maybe.

Then there are the regular full sized line, and I’m long overdue to give you an updated family photo:

The third incarnation of the Gordon clip had a tab at the top which pushed in towards the barrel rather than down towards the tip.  I’ve only found one pencil with that clip:

And it has a great imprint for the company, including its Union City, New Jersey address and the company’s telephone number:

Viewed from the side, you can see the principle is the same – only the execution is slightly different:

I mentioned in that last article that in addition to pencils, there are Gordon pens – and I have a few updates on that front, too.  Here’s three Gordon-clipped pens, two of which are combination fountain pens/pencils:

If you guessed that these look like “Banker” third-tier pens, you got one out of three right.  Although all three have the Gordon logo with two animals flanking the letter G at the bottom of the clips, They are marked “Banker,” “Safer,” and “Gordon”:

I’ve picked up a few other Gordon fountain pens since I last wrote about these that are worth showing you, too.

The nibs on these are your ordinary steel generic nib stuff.  Still, I’m loving that green veined plastic, and even more so, I’m loving the sticker on that syringe filler.  Chicago World’s Fair stuff is a real passion of mine:

This third-generation Gordon pen is something I’ve already shown you, but since my photography skills have improved since we last visited the subject, I feel like I owe you something better than what I gave you the last time around:

But the coup de grâce I’m eager to show you was something that turned up at the Baltimore Show.  Seems like some of the best stuff turns up late in the show and usually at the table right next door to me, since I spend more time chatting and less time shopping with my neighbors.  This year, Paul Ketchpaw was next to me, and during a break in the action as we were talking, this little thing caught my eye on his table:

It’s a stylographic pen, a bit outside my normal area of expertise, but the name . . . “Gordon’s Ink Pencil” . . . had me intrigued.  On closer inspection, no question it’s the same Gordon – complete with the logo!