A New Flavor

A few days ago, I mentioned that Paul Erano had sold me that last bag of John Holland pencils and parts. Now I’ll tell you why I was so eager to buy it. At the Raleigh Show a few months earlier, I bought a few other John Holland items from Paul, including this one:

That barrel looks like marbled celluloid at first, but I think it’s hard rubber that has been painted or stained to look that way - note at the nose end, the marbling stops where the material is stepped down:

As with many of the other items that came from Bob Johnson’s collection, this one has a nice price sticker indicating the original price was $3.50.

The barrel is stamped “John Holland” right above the clip, which has Holland’s tulip logo impressed into it:

Paul and I examined it together, and we agreed this one is a little off of the beaten path for a John Holland. I didn’t want to pay much for just part of a pencil, but Paul reassured me: he had a whole box filled with John Holland parts, and he would bring them to me in DC so I could finish putting this one together.

He forgot to bring them along to DC, but at the Ohio Show in November all those parts went from box to bag to Jon. There were a lot of great stuff in there . . . unfortunately, the pieces I needed to finish putting this one together were not among them. That left me trolling through my parts bins at home trying to find what I needed to complete it.  

I started with my stash of Rex Manufacturing Company parts, thinking perhaps it might be one of these with a different style cap and clip:

Nope, those parts don’t work at all. Rex patent pencils have noses that screw onto the end of a threaded barrel rather than slip over the end of an unthreaded one. I settled for taking the preceding pictures and filing it away. The answer will come to me at some point, I hoped.

It did – only because I finally got around to rearranging things at the museum. The addition of two printers’ cabinets gave me the chance to finally get all of my John Holland stuff spread out but in one place . . . it had previously been scattered – er . . . carefully grouped – in three areas, with the Victorian stuff in one place, the Rex patent pencils with the other Rex stuff, and the “everything else” part crowded onto the wall o’ pencils. As things went into the drawer, I noticed that I did have an intact John Holland pencil along these lines.

There’s that same cap and clip, and I know the pencil I got from Paul had a two-stage smooth tip – assuming, of course, that all John Holland pencils like this looked the same, but I think that’s a fair assumption. I started pulling things off the shelves in other areas of the museum, looking for things to compare.

Here’s the John Holland next to a maroon Grieshaber pencil at center, and a LeBoeuf “Unbreakable” parts pencil I picked up for peanuts at the Don Scott show because it is . . . well, it’s broken. Note that both of these have a very similar two-stage tip, and there is a reason for that: both the Grieshaber and the LeBoeuf were built around mechanisms supplied by Cross and used on the Cross Alwrite line of oversized pencils.

I was really hoping that LeBoeuf would be able to breathe its last making my John Holland whole, but when I attempted to transplant the nose I ran into a problem.

The tip unscrewed easily and fits like a glove on the threaded end of the John Holland, but I wasn’t able to wrestle the gold filled section from the LeBoeuf barrel. I was able to get it budge just a little, enough to see that the diameter of the stepped down section on the barrel is narrower than my John Holland. Even should I resort to barbaric means of parts removal, it wouldn’t fit my Holland.

I really didn’t want to scavenge a perfectly good Grieshaber, but I wondered if that might be the same nose . . . 

Nope.  Grieshaber sections screw into the barrel. No worries for now; most of my John Holland will reside comfortably in the museum, awaiting the day that the front half of the right pencil comes along . . . 

. . . or Paul finds another bag of parts.

Gabriel's Lot

In yesterday’s installment, I intended to tell you about all of the boxed pencils that Gabriel Galecia Goldsmith parted with:

The back story and the added discussion about Dunn Pen and Pencil, Inc. was more involved than I thought it was going to be when I sat down to write the article, so I decided to take a break and revisit the rest of them in a second installment. Each of these has significant “charm,” as Dr. Isaacson likes to say, starting with a brand near and dear to the good Doctor’s heart:

The lettering on the box lid is significantly worn, but I don’t care: “Sharp Point Pencil,” it reads, accompanied by a picture of a hand holding a pen.

The Sharp Point was the first pencil offered by the W.A. Sheaffer Pen Company, as detailed in Chapter One of my 2023 book, A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils. The Sharp Point was introduced in 1917 and the name was phased out in 1921. Due to mechanical problems with the pencil, Sheaffer offered to take back Sharp Point pencils in exchange for a free propel-repel-expel pencil in 1924, leaving precious few of these out there.

This example has what I call a “bowler clip” due to its shape, the second clip used on Sharp Point pencils introduced in 1918 and replaced by the familiar “Sheaffer’s” ball clip in 1919. Most with a bell cap have  Walter Sheaffer’s patent date of November 5, 1918 imprinted on them, as this one does:

As rare as Sharp Point pencils are, that wasn’t what had me jazzed about this example: after all, I have several examples with the combination of “bowler clips” and bell tops, as shown on page 9 of the book. I was grateful for the opportunity to catch up with Pat Mohan a bit:

Pat was a member of my “dream team” of advisers who helped me with the Sheaffer book; since I did not have a 14k Sharp Point, he was kind to contribute an image of his examples, which appear at the bottom of page 11. Early Sharp Point model designations were a two-letter code: A for silver plated, B for sterling, C for gold filled, and D for solid gold. The second letter denoted the pattern, with the letter A denoting a plain barrel. That makes this a model DA Sharp Point made in 1918 or early 1919, identical to Pat’s example as shown in the book.

Yeah, I always say I’m just as happy to have a picture as I am owning an example. Sometimes I lie a little.

The next example in this group is a very mint Moore hard rubber pencil:

This is a really pristine example of Moore’s 1925 patent pencils, and the price tag identifying it as Model 190, retailing for $1.50, sent me straight to the Pen Collectors of America’s online library:

The PCA has Moore’s 1925 catalog available, in which there is a page dedicated to the company’s hard rubber pencils.

On the left is model 190, with a price tag of $1.50 – just like my pencil – but notice that my example has groups of vertical lines (Eversharp referred to that pattern as “ribbon,” but Moore probably called it something else) while the catalog illustrates a wavy design Waterman called “rickrack” (again, Moore probably called it something else).  Judging from the catalog, Moore referred to any pencil lacking trim bands along these lines as a Model 190 “Varsity” (Model 290 in ringtop configuration), while everything else was the “Colonial” (not to be confused with Eversharp’s “Colonial” pattern which, of course, Moore called something else).

I’ll circle back to Moore soon - there’s a lot more to delve into on the subject.

Next is something I had to have, just because I’ve never seen a box for one:

I can’t rule out the possibility that maybe one flew right past my head at some point, because it is very difficult to read the printing with that blue background. It is a LeBoeuf “Unbreakable” ringtop pencil, and if you know what that box lid is supposed to say, you can find the words:

“Unbreakable” surrounded by “LeBoeuf Fountain Pen Company, Springfield Massachusetts.” On the end of the box is an interesting sticker marked “NY.” I don’t know if it means this was part of a lot destined for sale in New York, or if it was a model designation, or if it was something else:

I fibbed a bit earlier - there were two reasons I had to have it. While I do have another example (it was pictured here in “The Silent Cue” alongside a Keeran Pencil on August 9), if you look closely at the image of that one you’ll see the cracking that is fairly common on these.

Unbreakable, my butt. This new example, however, is clean. I’m not sure that string is a factory addition, but I see no harm in leaving it intact for now.

Sigh . . . this always happens. Yesterday I thought I would be doing a brief show and tell, introducing some neat new old stock pencils in their original boxes. Today, I thought I’d finish the job, but there’s one last one in this group to tell you about. It opens so many cans of worms that I’ll be back tomorrow to unpack all the information it provides.

Another LeBoeuf Footnote

I attended the Commonwealth Pen Show in Boston for the first time in the fall of 2022. None of us knew at the time that it would be the last show at the Bunker Hill Holiday Inn; the 2023 show was canceled after the hotel backed out of hosting the show, and after an impromptu smaller 2023 event, the show returned for 2024 in new hands and at a new location. 

Janet went with me, and while it was wonderful to have her along, the company doubled my expenses with two plane tickets, double the food, and I couldn’t share the hotel room. Never mind . . . I went to this show for the first time primarily to “spread the gospel” about the great things I’ve been doing with my new Legendary Pencil Company.

Besides, as I’ve often said, I’ve had financially disastrous pen shows - but I’ve never had a bad one.

While I took a bath financially on the whole affair (including a missed connecting flight home which added a last-minute, hideously expensive overnight stay at the only hotel that had a room available), the show did not disappoint as far as buying opportunities were concerned. The Boston pen community typically doesn’t venture far from home, and there were many vendors I had never met in person who had boxes of stuff I had never pawed through before.

One of these vendors was Jeffrey Krasner, with whom I have shared an on again, off again friendship on Facebook. Nothing negative has ever happened . . . I think Jeff is one of those people who occasionally culls his friends list and for whatever reason, a couple times I didn’t make the cut.

On the first day of the show I was browsing through the things on Jeff’s table, and he mentioned that he had a whole box of pencils at home. Since he’s local to the Boston area, he offered to bring them for me to look at.

I did more than look. I bought the whole box, and it made my trip. Here are two of the things that were in there:

Neither is marked and had they not been together, I’m not sure I would have caught what they were. That green and black is the same celluloid Moore sometimes used (in addition to numerous other manufacturers), but that little rib at the middle joint, coupled with the trim band just a wee bit farther than what looks natural are the giveaways.

The clip on the other example makes that one much easier to identify as a later LeBoeuf, made after the original incarnation of the LeBoeuf Pen Company filed for bankruptcy in 1933 and was reformed as the LeBoeuf-Pilgrim Pen Company, Inc. Here are the new additions, shown alongside the two I wrote about in “A Tale of Two Clips” (May 8, 2020: Volume 6, page 98):

It is unfortunate that the new addition with the clip is oriented so that the “dark side” faces forward. Viewed from the side, that telltale LeBoeuf glow is more apparent:

I’ll be writing about many more things that came from Jeff’s box o’wonders . . . mostly variations of things represented at the museum but in different colors . . . but there were a few other surprises to report.

Jeff and I are again Facebook buddies, probably permanently this time (assuming I can keep my mouth shut during the upcoming election season). Those of us in a drinking state of mind frequented the Irish-themed “Tavern at the End of the World” on a daily basis that weekend; it was the only watering hole within walking distance from the hotel. Jeff joined our crew that last day to help us solve the world’s problems, and that provided us with the opportunity for us to get to know each other better.

“Get Thee to a Pen Show,” as David Isaacson often remarks. I wound up that weekend with a couple nice LeBoeufs, the rest of a boxful to write about, and a solid friendship. Sure, the wallet was a bit lighter, but what the heck . . . money is overrated.

The Silent Cue

 Here’s a shot of one of the other trays I acquired from Jon Martenson at the “catch up” Chicago show in September 2021:

Finding examples of The Keeran Pencil in any condition is cause for celebration, as rare as they are. In this tray are two examples, shown on the right . . . the others we’ll get to tomorrow.  

Finding two examples of the Keeran which neatly fill in one detail in the history of the American pencil industry, however . . . now that is cause to sing praises to the universe that you were in the right place at the right time.

Gorgeous colors, yes . . . especially that golden brown, which resembles tiger eye and absolutely glows as if it is a living thing. The colors are stunning both to look at and to think about, because they exist somewhere else:

The ringtops are pencils made by the LeBoeuf Pen Company of Boston . . . or at least the barrels are. The mechanisms were sourced from A.T. Cross, which used identical mechanisms on Cross “Alwrite” pencils. The red is an exact match; unfortunately I didn’t have a ringtop in that distinctive brown, but that pink has the same depth. As for the brown, I do have one from LeBoeuf’s later “Pilgrim” line of pencils, which featured in “A Tale of Two Clips” (May 20, 2020: Volume 6, page 98):

And then, consider this example: it also turned up at that Chicago Show, in the hands of Eric Fonville:

This one resides in the cancer ward at the museum, since the celluloid is well into the process of disintegration. The nasty gasses celluloid gives off when it breaks down corrodes metal trim and will affect other items stored nearby, so this Keeran only joins birds of a feather for the occasional photo shoot, such as this one, alongside three other LeBoeuf pencils:

We tend to become jaded as we gain experience in this hobby, dismissing theories connecting manufacturers on the basis of celluloid material. It is true that the same or similar plastics is not usually a reliable indication of a connection between two manufacturers or producer. After all, celluloid companies sold to the entire American industry, and there is frequent “cross-pollination” as the same celluloids were supplied to several makers.

But not this time. Although celluloid had been in use during the Nineteenth Century, LeBoeuf’s pioneering use of celluloid in the early 1920s is frequently credited as triggering the industry-wide shift from metal and hard rubber barrels to brightly colored plastics. Furthermore, LeBoeuf had negotiated an exclusive contract with DuPont for the celluloids it used.

I had long suspected, but could not prove, that there was some cooperation between Charles Keeran and LeBoeuf to supply some plastics, since Keeran pencils are found in celluloid and were made in the early 1920s, when LeBoeuf still had somewhat of a lock on the stuff. As detailed in A Century of Autopoint, for a brief period after Keeran’s departure from Autopoint he associated with the Dur-O-Lite Pencil Company. Dur-O-Lite’s first president, D.O. Fredrickson, left a partnership in Smith and Fredrickson, which distributed writing instruments for . . . wait for it . . . LeBoeuf.

In most of the world, there are seven degrees of separation. In the pencil world, there are usually two at best.

Finding examples of the Keeran Pencil in plastics known to be exclusive to LeBoeuf nudges me from suspecting a connection between Keeran and LeBoeuf to accepting it as fact, one which fits neatly into Keeran’s post-Autopoint activities. Even without primary evidence to indicate when the Keeran Pencil was made (such as an advertisement), I believe they were made in 1924 - just as LeBoeuf was shaking up the writing instrument world with its snazzy new celluloids.

And then . . . clearing my throat for dramatic effect . . . should you still remain unconvinced, these images are from an online auction that closed shortly after I wrote the first draft of this article. I am still kicking myself that I had saved it in my watch list, then diligently forgot to bid on it.

Here is a Keeran Pencil, in yet another exclusive LeBoeuf celluloid, in the company of a LeBoeuf pen in the same material, all together in a LeBoeuf-marked box. The Keeran Pencil was marketed in sets alongside LeBoeuf pens, at least for a short time.

Yes, the LeBoeuf Pen Company popularized the use of attractive celluloids in pens and pencils in 1924 . . . and so did Charles Keeran and his Keeran Pencil.

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.

Back On Its Feet

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.

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

John Harrison and I got to talking at the DC Show - hard to tell how we got on the subject, but he’s a LeBoeuf fan, and he mentioned he had a LeBoeuf barrel laying about in need of repair.  Over scotch and cigars, he presented it to me for an opinion:

It didn’t need repair . . . it needed the entire insides.  Long story short, it made sense for me to buy the barrel rather than supply replacement innards.  Back at home, I went through my parts and didn’t find anything that would work: even though the LeBoeuf and Cross Alwrite are built on the same chassis (both by Cross), I didn’t have anything that could finish this one.  However, as nice as the color was, I went through my intact examples to see if I could live with parting any of them out.  I had two that are nearly identical to each other:

The color variation probably isn’t enough to suggest these were intended to be two different colors – the plainer of the two only looks so because the other is SOOOO spectacular.  I figured the plainer one could at least share custody of its innards, so with a simple twist of the tip . . .

The entire mechanism just pulls out from the back, and presto . . .

John’s pencil is complete and enjoying a comfortable retirement alongside its ringtop counterpart.

The LeBoeuf Post

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.

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

Looking back through all the pictures I’ve taken and haven’t posted yet, I was surprised when I ran across all my LeBoeuf pictures that I haven’t run an article on the company yet. The company, located in Springfield, Massachusetts, remains well-known (rightly or wrongly) for popularizing the use of brightly colored celluloids, which the company introduced in the early 1920s. 

LeBoeuf pencils suffer from what I call “matching pen syndrome,” by which I mean that the prices they usually command are influenced heavily by the high asking prices for the pens they accompanied.  Most of the LeBoeuf pencils I’ve seen – with the exception of the celluloid barrels – were made by Cross, which manufactured identical pencils under the Cross “Alwrite” brand.  Here’s a selection of the thinner side clip ones:

And here’s the ringtop version - note that the tip is a two-piece affair, and the tips are notorious for coming off and going missing:

A few months ago, I picked up three of the more scarce oversized models.  Even though these might be Cross rebadges, the sheer size and beauty of these pencils can’t help but cause me to stand up and take notice:

At the DC show last year – or was it the year before – Mike Bloom had these two on his table.   I’m equally certain these can be attributed to Cross, although judging from their construction and the barrel material used, I believe these were a little earlier:

The price stickers don’t hurt:

This next one I’m having difficulty attributing to Cross – it has a very C.E. Barrett look to it with that generously wide triple band, and the plastic looks almost like modern acrylic.

But the crown jewel in this pencil collector’s LeBoeuf section – or any LeBoeuf pencil collection – has to be this one:

This is one of the only examples of a magic pencil made with a celluloid barrel:

In fact, there’s only one other manufacturer who was manufacturing magic pencils into the mid-1920s, when these were probably made . . .

Yep.  That would be Cross: