Accessions and Deaccessions

My reputation as a Parker hater isn’t really accurate, even though I’ve poked the wounded bear a few times here by suggesting Parker made some regrettable lower-quality things for other companies. Maybe this article will redeem me – I have several items in the Parker wing of the museum that I haven’t written about, many of which are truly one of a kind.

A few years ago, Larry Liebman told me he would like to rehome some Parker prototype pencils, and he thought the museum might be a good place for them to enjoy their retirement.

At top is a “Reporter,” a weird Parker subbrand that I haven’t thought about much since the first volume here at the blog; I haven’t seen one for years, so there hasn’t been an occasion to circle back around to them.

These are rarely found in working order, since the material had a tendency to shrink and freeze the mechanism in place. This one works, and the overall shape and proportions are slightly different from what I’ve seen before. Usually these are marked “Reporter” on the clip, but that blue one at bottom is marked “Parco.”

In “Harder Than It Had To Be” (April 10, 2012: Volume 1, page 169), I had concluded that these were a Canadian product, thanks to George Kovalenko’s contribution of an advertisement by Eaton’s, a Canadian retailer. I no longer believe these were exclusively for the Canadian market, though – a current search of newspapers turns up more American advertisements than Canadian, beginning in fall, 1930. This one (abridged here) was in the Great Falls (Montana) Leader on September 12, 1930:

These may have worked as well when they were new as they do today – Reporter Pencils were being blown out at clearance prices by mid-1930, and the last advertisement I found was published in December, 1931.  

That second example, in coral, sports an ill-fitting washer clip sandwiched between the top and bottom sections. 

Years ago I saw another example just like this, including the ill-fitting clip – I believe Joe Nemecek had it. It seems like too much of a coincidence that the only two of these I’ve seen have that same poorly fitted clip, and besides: even if the clip isn’t right, the rest of the pencil is so weird that if it was supposed to have something else, I have no idea what that might be.

The two ringtop pencils are fairly straightforward, except for the banding.

These are typically one solid color, sometimes tipped at the ends with black. The black used on these, however, is not that same material – on closer examination, it has shrunk a bit.

Speaking of weird gold-capped Duofolds, Eric Magnuson brought this one by for a photo session a few years ago: 

This one looks almost like a reproduction: those green veins are something very atypical for Parker, and it isn’t hard to make these Duofold barrels out of modern materials since there’s nothing more to them than threading opposite ends of a straight tube. Eric’s example is the real deal, though, fully marked with a Duofold imprint.

Larry’s red vest pocket pencil (some call them “golf pencils,” but we’ll get to that tomorrow) is unusual because of that added black band. Also . . . now that I think of it, when I find these in red they have a longer, less streamlined top than these. More on that tomorrow, too . . .

The rest of Larry’s deaccessions in this batch were in Parker’s “Pearl and Ebony” (as described in Parker’s 1928 and 1929 catalogs), renamed “Moderne Black-and-Pearl” in Parker’s 1930 catalog; none of these, however, were in any of Parker’s catalogs.

That weird vest pocket-ish pencil isn’t anything found in regular production. As mentioned earlier, vest pocket pencils had long tapered or short streamlined tops, but nothing so rounded as to be perilously close to Walter Sheaffer’s design patent for the Balance line’s golf pencil.

On these, my working theory has always been that the example at top is earlier, and the more streamlined, shorter caps are later – but I don’t think that’s right. More on that tomorrow.

Next are a couple shop pieces, showing how Parker’s design department was playing around with different designs:

The one with a “tip” is a dummy – there’s nothing there to write with.

At bottom is a “pregnant” Duofold, to borrow the term from the collector’s nickname for earlier Parker fountain pens with bulbous barrels. It is unusual not only for its girth but also because there are no black ends; the 1928 and 1929 catalogs showing the Pearl and Ebony flattop Duofold pencils only show those with black ends.

And speaking of black . . .

These also came from Larry, but at some other time. They are along the lines of the pastel Duofolds shown in Parker’s 1929 and 1930 catalogs – I owed it to you to show you a spread of these to explain yesterday’s reference to George Parker and the Easter Bunny.

What makes these two unusual is the trim: the deluxe trim, with that wider center band, was first cataloged in the green pearl Duofolds in 1932. This is “reverse trim,” meaning it is the opposite color from what one would expect to see – these typically had gold filled trim. As for the other, that extra-wide gold filled band is to my knowledge uncataloged. I don’t have any evidence to tell me whether this is factory or a jeweler’s modification.

I mentioned my photo shoot with Eric Magnuson earlier, and Eric had a couple other things to share. First is this streamlined Duofold pencil:

It is close to, but not quite the same as, the color of my gray Parker Zaner Bloser pencil:

Like his yellow pencil with green veins, this one is also fully marked with a Duofold imprint:

Eric also brought his examples of those weird “Parco” pencils – not along the Reporter lines as shown earlier, but those with black plastic caps. We got our respective collections together for a group shot:

Finally, Eric brought his weird Challenger/Duofold hybrid in mandarin yellow, shown here alongside my larger (and a little messed up) example and at bottom, a “normal” Mandarin Duofold:

Those top two are ordinary nose drive pencils, while the bottom one has a typical rear-drive Duofold mechanism.

Both of these Challenger/Duofold hybrids have Duofold imprints:

While my larger example doesn’t have any markings on the cap, Eric has two of the smaller ones – both have advertising imprints, suggesting these mules were put together from leftover parts and sold however they could be sold.

My last news on the weird Parker front – for now – is this one, courtesy of Fred Copsey-Pearce:

Parker fans will immediately recognize this one as one of Parker’s special-order pencils for the Zaner-Bloser Company of Columbus, Ohio, with Zaner-Bloser’s typical contoured grip. As with other pencils made by Parker for Zaner-Bloser, it is imprinted on the cap; however, it lacks the “Made by Parker Pen Company” part you’ll usually see:

The last time I saw a Parker Zaner-Bloser pencil in lapis was when a pen and pencil set turned up in the Chicago Pen Show auction a few years ago. It sold for more than you’d pay for a used Volkswagon, more than I could afford – I approached the buyer after the auction to see if he’d sell the pencil, but he wanted to keep the set together. I can’t say I blame him.

Fred’s example is missing the top piece and the clip, and I’m still waiting for the right parts to make that happen; the diameter of the opening at the top is larger than any normal Duofold, and someone crudely wedged a now-fossilized eraser in its place after it went missing.

Fred says that he ran across this one in an online auction, and everybody missed it – myself included. But wait . . . there’s more. Fred says it was part of a lot that included some other odd things . . . 

These are dummy pens rather than functioning models, so I’m saying the following with caution: look at that cap . . .

If these were finished, production pens, I’d say that top is a dead giveaway that these were made by the Pick Pen Company in Cincinnati – that might make sense that another Ohio company wanted to make pens for a Columbus firm. It might also explain – if these were made by Pick – why the typical Parker Pen Co. mention is absent on the cap of the lapis pencil, and also why a normal Duofold end plug isn’t the right size.

But these are conceptual dummies, not finished products, so it’s just as likely that whoever made this just didn’t finish the lathe work on the cap. Besides, there are some similarities between these and Larry’s pencil barrels.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to know . . . when the artifacts themselves are the only available evidence, the information vacuum leaves a few holes in the story. 

Trained Well

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When this one showed up in (yet another) online auction – damn, I miss telling you something interesting about how these things have been coming my way – I knew to bid on it.

At least how I knew to bid on it is something interesting.  Dan Zazove, Parker aficionado and expert, as well as co-author of landmark books on the Parker Duofold and Parker Vacumatic, cornered me at the Ohio Show several years ago with a pencil that he said was special, and he said I needed to buy it.  I did, although with a bit of a blind spot for Parker (I’ve admitted I can appreciate them, not that I’m an expert with them), I did so on faith:

That stubbier cap on the clip model Dan sold me is that quasi-“streamline” model of 1929 – see Volume 4, page 329.  I call it quasi-streamline because, as documented in that previous article, the top end treatment was changed when Parker introduced the slightly rounded (but still flat on the top) “streamline” Duofolds during that year.  

Here’s what’s interesting: these black rubber barrels have groups of lines on them, which to my knowledge streamlined Duofold pens never had:

Dan’s pencil has a label which reads simply “Duofold Junior Pencil $3.50":

The ringtop is denominated model 91, with a $3.00 price tag:

Unfortunately, the PCA’s library is sparse on Parker catalogs from the 1920s.  The 1923 catalog shows only Parker’s new metal “Lucky Lock” pencils, while a 1929 pamphlet illustrates the introduction of streamlined pencils, so production of pencils like these fall somewhere in between.  The only other catalog there is dated 1927, and the page showing black and red pencils illustrates smooth barrels only.  The ringtop is black is model 82, not model 91:

Note that these pencils are “to match the pens,” referring to Parker Duofold pens on the preceding page.  

On a later page, fountain pens are illustrated with black lined barrels matching my pencils – but unlike all the other colors of writing instruments Parker offered that year, no matching pencils are listed:

In addition, the pens shown on this page do not have Duofold imprints, and they are not referred to as such – they were just Parker Black and Gold Pens.

I circled back around to Dan as I was writing this article, to make sure exactly what was so rare about these – the black lined barrels, the lined barrels in combination with the “Duofold” imprint on them, or the price tags . . . or a combination of all three.  Dan confirmed that it was the name “Duofold” on the black lined barrels that is unusual.

But the price tags don’t hurt!

Gumdrop Pilgrimage

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Eric Magnuson makes a pilgrimage to pencil central every so often, since we live within twenty miles of each other and from time to time we have things to swap back and forth.  Whenever I see him, he usually has a new addition to his collection of experimental Parker colors, and his recent sojourn was no exception:

This is to my knowledge the only of one of these oddball colors that is prevalent enough to have picked up a collectors’ nickname: “gumdrop.”   At least, that’s the name that swirls around in conneciton with these, and I don’t know of any official designation for the color by Parker.

Eric acquired all three of the top pieces from Warren Granek after much weeping and gnashing of teeth over the price.  My contribution to this picture is the ringtop at the bottom, which was bequeathed to me by Lee Anderson.   As is the case with most of these experimental plastics, examples in gumdrop are exceedingly fragile and unstable – in fact, part of the lower barrel of my example disintigrated in my hands when Lee first showed it to me (“Don’t worry,” he said - “it was coming your way anyway”).

Note the “deluxe” bands with the slightly wider middle one, and there’s something else a bit unusual about this one: the tip is much shorter – not Vacumatic shorter mind you, but it doesn’t look like a Parker tip:

Eric had one other experimental Parker to show me.  I had seen this one before – Pearce Jarvis and Brian McQueen had partnered to purchase it in a recent auction in Janesville, Wisconsin of a hoard from the estate of a former Parker employee.

Joe and I both took a pass on this one - not that we doubted the legitimacy of it, since it’s fully marked with a Duofold imprint and has direct provenance back to the Parker factory.

The level of commitment required to pick this one up was more than a general pencil collector than I could manage, and even more than a Parker pencil specialist like Joe was able to muster – it took a specialist within a specialty like Eric, who collects Parker pencils in experimental plastics, to bring Brian and Pearce’s pencil into the fold.

Before Streamlined Meant Round

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I recently asked Joe Nemecek if he had any requests for articles I should write at my blog.  Without hesitation, he emailed me a picture of a few of his Parker Duofolds:

You’ve seen this picture before - it was in The Catalogue at page 112.  In the caption, in addition to crediting Joe with the picture and ownership of the pencils, I noted that a few of the pencils in the picture had slightly shorter and less ornate bell tops:

“[Joe] believes these to be the earliest Duofold Streamline pencils, before Parker redesigned them to more closely match the pens,” I said.  After years of searching, Joe still craved chapter and verse on the subject, and if there was a more definitive answer to be found, he said he’d like to see it.

The Pen Collectors of America’s online library contains two Parker catalogs of interest on the subject.  The 1927 catalog shows, without exception, flattop pens accompanied with “normal” bell top pencils:

Note that the ringtop at the right has a cap with two ribs - it's just shown with the cap end pushed down flush with the end of the plastic barrel.  A shorter catalog bearing a print date of March, 1929 shows the same models - the only change on the comparable page is the switch of the color name from “Chinese Yellow” to “Imperial Mandarin Yellow.”

There’s another catalog in the PCA Library attributed to 1929 (we’ll get to that later), which shows, without exception, streamlined pens accompanied by newly redesigned streamlined pencils:

The most tangible lead Joe had turned up was a page from the October, 1929 issue of the Parkergram, Parker’s in-house company magazine.  Joe says he got this from Dan Zazove two or three years ago:

Yes, this page shows both bell top pencils - with the shortened caps - and streamlined pencils.  But it falls short of establishing that the short-capped pencils were intended to accompany the first streamlined pens.  In fact, the lower left corner shows Duette sets, one with each style of pencil . . . but both with flattop pens, not streamlined ones:

When I went to the PCA library to scour the rest of that October, 1929 Parkergram, I found that issue isn’t (yet) included in the library – sigh.  However, I did find a couple of other things which answered the question.

The library contains a pamphlet titled “Graphology: Reading Character from Handwriting” by DeWitt B. Lucas, printed and distributed, according to the subtitle on the cover, “Compliments of the Parker Pen Company.”   The document is loaded with advertisements from only one advertiser (you don’t need to guess which one), and has a publication date at the end of June, 1929 – just a couple short months after the March 1929 catalog was published.  And look at this two page spread:

This is the earliest documentation I’ve seen of the shortened cap treatment, but they are already being referred to as the old-fashioned STANDARD Parker Duofold pencils here . . . “if you prefer the present style.” The headline, however, for “The New Parker Duofold Streamline Pencil that 72% picked at sight in first sales showings,” clearly indicates that the introduction of the Streamline pencil was intended to be an out with the old, in with the new . . .

While Parker’s entire dealership network had likely just stocked the redesigned old models with shorter caps.  Dealers likely complained about such swift planned obsolescence, and what Parker printed in the August, 1929 issue of the Parkergram (that issue is in the PCA library) appears likely to have been a response to such complaints:

In this piece, Parker indicated that both pencils would be offered (and note that the old-style pencil is shown with the earlier, pre-June, 1929 cap) to accompany the new streamlined pens.  “Now a CHOICE of Parker Duofold Pencils!  — the flashing Standard Gold-Capped Model, or Parker’s new Streamline Duofold to match the Pen!” this announcement proclaims.  “For customers who like the heft and looks of the Gold Cap models, Parker will advertise and push them as heavily as ever.  Both models will be featured heavily this fall.”

So there’s the answer.  No, the shorter cap bell-top pencils were never referred to as streamline pencils, but the “Standard Gold Cap Duofold” was offered to those customers who preferred it.  And as for the color catalog in the PCA Library dated 1929?  Nowhere on the document itself is there a publication date.  Does the PCA Library have the date wrong?  Maybe . . . unless Parker had it printed around June of 1929, while the company was printing its “72% prefer the new model” advertisements in Mr. Lucas’ pamphlet and was intending to entirely discontinue gold cap models in favor of the new streamlined ones.

I think Parker suffered some backlash from its dealers after the Lucas pamphlet was out and the new 1929 catalogs were printed in June, 1929, In response, I believe Parker tried to placate them in August with that bit in the Parkergram – promising to “advertise and push” the two models equally in the fall of 1929 – so that dealers would feel better about their chances of moving their recent stock of short Gold Cap models.

Did Parker keep its promise to equally “advertise and push” these short cap Duofold pencils?  The pencils are rare, and more than 85 years later it took some digging – to find proof only in a magazine distributed to dealers, not to the general public.  No, I think it’s fair to say Parker did not.