Observe and Report

Step one: observe. Step two: compare what you observe to what you know. Step three: draw reasonable conclusions that flow from the first two steps. 

When step two is a big fat goose egg, my reasonable conclusion is that all I can do is throw out there what I have observed in the hopes that someone – maybe next week, maybe in ten years or so – can help me connect the dots.  Most of these images are several years old and have been sitting in the dead letter office, because I'm stuck.

This Victorian pencil is marked “J.A.B. & Co.” Unfortunately, the pencil is generic and is not marked with any patents that might be helpful.

This next one was my only purchase when Janet and I stopped in Lebanon, Ohio on our way back from that big Eagle Pencil Company purchase. It was two dollars:

The lettering on the side interested me – “Guys Dropper Lamp” didn’t ring a bell, but the Shanklin Manufacturing Company did.

The name Shanklin on a pencil reminded me of this Shanklin Sure Sharp pencil, which appeared on page 19 in A Century of Autopoint.

The Shanklin Sure Sharp was invented by George Bergen, an early inventive collaborator with Charles Keeran as Keeran developed the earliest versions of the Autopoint. Alas, the Shanklin behind Guys Dropper Lamps was a different Shanklin. Wrong city, wrong industry. The only marking on this pencil that resembles some sort of model or manufacturer’s name is above the clip – “Poor,” I think it reads, in script lettering? 

The best clue that might unravel this one is that distinctive cap. We’ve seen it before:

Here is our mystery pencil in the company of pencils marked “Thatpencil.”

That connection is only slightly helpful, though, because not much is known about the “Thatpencil” either - all I knew about it went into a very early article here, “No Really . . . ‘That Pencil’” (February 24, 2012: Volume 1, page 126), and I haven’t learned anything new about them in the years since. 

Up next is something that I had to buy in an online auction just to get my paws on it to see what was going on. 

The pencil is nested in that ringtop case.

Around one side of the cap are those tantalizing words, “Pat. Apld. For”:

However, the only other clue is on the other side - H.F.B.

I have been unable to track down any patent that was ultimately issued to someone with those initials. This one looks a lot like something Bates & Bacon might have made, but none of the principals in that organization had the initials H.F., either.

This next one might not be American, but it might have an American connection. 

The clip is a standard issue 1915 patent accommodation clip marked for the Eagle Pencil Company - while it looks like it has been there for some time, since it is a clip that just slides on, I’m confident but not certain that it came with this pencil.

An Eagle clip would be consistent with what is written around the cap: “D.R.P.” stands for Deutsches Reichspatent, meaning German patent. “Made in Germany” in English suggests that it was made for the American market. Eagle also sometimes stamped early Eagle Stop Gauge pencils with the German patent number. 

The cap pulls off, and underneath it is an odd mix of word salad: “Depose” suggests a French connection, as in “registered,” and there’s a specific German patent - number 331474, I think it reads.

I’ve tried to look up a German patent number 331,474, but all roads lead to some random Norwegian patent having nothing to do with pencils. There have been a few other examples of these pencils that have surfaced in recent years online, and in each case people have marveled about their weird mechanisms. Under that cap is a hole, maybe just a place for spare leads or maybe they were intended to feed automatically.

And on the top, both on and under the cap, the word “JACO.”

I’m sharing this next one as a second cry for help - one every seven years or so, I suppose:

It’s marked “L Pen Co.” on the clip, and it joins another example that turned up back in 2018 - see “The L Pen” (April 22, 2018: Volume 5, page 240). I fingered at the time that Diamond Point was the likeliest suspect to have made it. 

I didn’t know anything about the “L Pen Co.” then, and I haven’t figured anything else out about it in the years since.

Hard rubber pencils like this next one look European, and my eyes tend to glaze over when I see them.

This one, however, had a very faint but interesting imprint on the barrel:

“The Rosemady That’s For Remembrance” it reads - there’s a lot of excess China Marker on here, because every time I tried to clean off the extra white stuff it all came off and you couldn’t read it. I have no idea who or what “Rosemady” is.

Along those same lines is this “Rufford”:

That’s a very British-sounding name, and this one fooled me when I found it on Rob Bader’s table in Chicago a few years ago. It’s not even a pencil, I learned during shooting . . . it’s a stylographic pen. What the heck - it’s my blog and I’ll share a stylo if I want to. Besides, I’d like to know more about who made the “Rufford.”

Matt McColm pointed this next one out to me when it showed up in an online auction:

“Statter Bros. / Buffalo” reads the imprint. I did find one reference to Statter Brothers as a manufacturer of numbering machines in the July 1931 edition of the Rand McNally Bankers Directory, but I don’t know whether the company also sourced pencils to offer under their name as another line of business. 

I had this one photographed, but the images didn’t turn out very well the first time:

After a trip to the buffing wheel, the second photo session was more fruitful . . .

I’ve seen a few of these “M Co.” pencils over the years. My best guess is that M is for Morrison . . . except Morrison was never bashful about emblazoning its full name on its products. Was Morrison being uncharacteristically understated, or is this something else?

Myk Daigle bequeathed me this next one a couple years ago. I think it was keeping him awake at night, and he figured better me than him:

It looks a little bit European, but the imprint is partially in English:

“Skopeographe / Pat Applied For Bte S.G.D. . . .” something. Looks like it might end with another G. I hoped that I might learn more by taking it apart, but alas . . . 

Hmm. Looks like a continuity tester, sort of like the Kastar . . . although I’m not sure how you’d know if there was continuity without any window in the barrel. 

My internet searches were at the same time refreshing and infuriating. When I typed “Skopeographe” into a Google search, there were no best guesses, no random suggested result; only results akin to “Did you mean ‘waterbeds?’ Here’s a zillion people who might sell you one of those.” Just . . . nothing. Google Books yielded the same result. It’s rare that no intelligence, human or artificial, even hazards a guess, and I have fared no better.

This last mystery pencil – for now – is one of those that has me taking out my loupe to over and over. It’s such a high quality pencil that it should be marked somewhere.

Geez . . . it even has a “Pat. Applied For” imprint which will be impossible to track down without breaking a solder weld or two to tear it apart.

My best guesses, based solely on a flimsy comparison of external similarities, had me posing this one in between a Century at top, and a Henber at bottom.

“Dorothea” is the only name on it – if it’s a personalization, it’s the most elaborate, hand engraved personalization I’ve ever seen. 

Maybe like John Foley’s “Madeleine” pencils, it’s more than just the owner’s name. All I know is that it wasn't my mother-in-law’s -- that’s the only other Dorothea I’ve met.

Rib Night at the Museum

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There’s something I want you to notice about that “sterling”(ish) Morrison ringtop from yesterday’s article: that little ring just beneath the cap:

A “tell,” I call it . . . a distinctive little feature that suggests connection with other brands.  The diamonds around the crown are another one.  I’ve come to believe that the Rex Manufacturing Company was quietly working behind the scenes making all of these, shortly before McNary’s patent launched the company onto its trajectory into “stardom,” in my little world.

Recently, a couple other ribbed pencils came my way.  The first is this one:

The name on this one is “Wilrite” – another one that I thought had made the blog before, but I don’t see it. 

 I know I took pictures of one at the Baltimore Show, back when it was at the Tremont Grand.   I don’t remember who had it, but it’s the full-size set along the same lines:

Inside the box lid, there’s a neat logo with “Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.” beneath it:

That’s a cue to check trademarks registered with the Patent Office, and the Wilrite trademark is included in American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953:

Gustave Rappeport, as Secretary and Treasurer of the Wilrite Fountain Pen Corporation, claimed that the company had used the mark since January, 1922, and the company’s address was 312-314 Lafayette Street, New York City as of the date of the application, January 23, 1925.

The trademark application must have been filed while the company was in the process of moving.  A Wilrite  advertisement for sales representatives in the Chicago Tribune on March 22, 1925 identified the company’s address as 1493 Broadway:

Morrison, according to the trademark filing in yesterday’s article, was offering pencils with that same little rib near the top just a few doors down, at 1547 Broadway.  In fact, New York seems to be the common denominator for a lot of these:

The first two beneath the Wilrite have that same rib, but the top ends and crowns are different.  You’ve seen them before: the “Bonnwear” (Volume 3, page 33 and most recently in Volume 6, page 25):

And the Ever-Rite (Volume 3, page 71).  Note that the color of the cap is slightly different from the barrel, so I can’t say with certainty that it isn’t a replacement:

The Bonnwear and Ever-Rite have a Sheafferesque mechanism, which has led me back down that rabbit hole several times.  The others, however, have caps that just pull off just like the Wilrite.  From top to bottom, there’s a “Keene New York,” sporting a cap with diamonds around the crown, like the Morrison:

A “Just-Rite / P.S.M. Co” (see Volume 4, page 147), with those same diamonds:

A “Handy Pencil,” also with those diamonds:

And a “Newark Pen Co.,” with the same ribbing on the top as the Wilrite:

After these pictures were taken, another one surfaced in an online auction:

This one also has diamonds around the crown, and another shadowy imprint – “W.J.B.”:

I’m confident that the same firm made the ribbed pencils marked Morrison, Wilrite, Keene, Just-Rite, Handy Pencil, Newark Pen Co., and W.J.B.  It definitely wasn’t Keene, because he was a jeweler, not a manufacturer (see Volume 5, page 285).  I suspect it wasn’t Morrison or Newark Pen, since both were mainly in the pen business.  

That leaves open the P.S.M. Co., maker of the “Just-Rite,” whoever this W.J.B. was, and whoever made the “Handy Pencil.” 

Or someone else entirely.  I haven’t given up on Rex as a possibility, but as of this writing I don’t have enough information.