Diamonds . . . But Not In the Rough

Diamond Medal was the top-of-the-line store brand name used by Sears, Roebuck & Co., which also acquired the Webster brand name from the Rex Manufacturing Company, and Gold Medal. Sears didn’t actually make any of the pens and pencils it offered for sale under any of these names, but rather sourced them from several different manufacturers.

At least as far as mechanical pencils went, Sears is known to have sourced fountain pens in the mid-1920s from C.E. Barrett & Co. in Chicago, which in turn sourced mechanical pencils from the Rex Manufacturing Company – or at least, Barrett sourced the mechanisms from Rex. Outfitting a Rex to match a Barrett-supplied fountain pen involved nothing more than threading two ends of a celluloid tube, which might have been done by Barrett in-house. The extent to which Barrett actually made anything, including fountain pens, is unknown.

I don’t know of any Diamond Medal-branded pencils that were clearly attributable to Rex, although Rex-made Gold Medal and Webster pencils are easy to find. These two examples were likely sourced from C.E. Barrett:

The jade example at bottom is the closest you’ll find to a Rex-made product branded for Diamond Medal, but I can’t connect the dots conclusively back to Rex; if I could, that would be groundbreaking, since identical pencils were supplied to many other manufacturers.

That black and pearl example is almost identical to another Diamond Medal in my collection . . . and I dwell in the celebration of all things “almost.”  

The flattop version was Diamond Medal’s “Standard Pencil,” and with a pointy end they became the “Diplomat,” the uberest of ubermodels at Sears. These next two examples might be a little earlier, with their stodgier bell tops:

I know that cream-colored one came from the late Tom Heath by way of his daughter Jennifer, who has been to a number of shows liquidating Tom’s collection. Tom used these half-circle tags to identify where and when he bought things; unfortunately, to my knowledge he didn’t leave behind a key to his system.

I didn’t want to highlight the imprint, but both are the same: Diamond Medal / Diplomat Pencil. These tie in well with what I last posted about the Diamond Medal, in “The Middle Children” (August 10, 2016: Volume 4, page 121). In that article, I shared this image of a trio of pencils: from top, these are the full-sized Diamond Medal Diplomat in that same cream-colored celluloid, a pencil marked Sheaffer on the clip, and a burgundy and black faceted example with Parker works inside (the material is also likely from Parker).

I’ll circle back to Parker in a minute. Bear with me.

In “The Middle Children,” I presented the evidence that the W.A. Sheaffer Pen Company supplied C.E. Barrett, or Sears directly, with writing instruments for a short time. Here is another image from that article, comparing that Sheaffer-marked example to a Gold Medal in that same, distinctive plastic:

Now lets think about that large Diplomat with its bullet-shaped top. I haven’t been able to wrestle it apart, but I bet I know what is inside:

These are Sheaffer flattop pencils, and this image was included in “Most’s Influence on Sheaffer” (September 9, 2016: Volume 4, page 161). Lucifer Most, inventor of the Salz ‘Salrite, developed this mechanism for Sheaffer, and it was used from the flattop era of the 1920s through the earliest Sheaffer Balance pencils, through 1932 or so. Note that the thinner bell-top pencil at top bears a striking resemblance to those ringtop Diplomat pencils . . . 

But wait: there’s more. Some of the most attractive Art Deco pencils ever made were this series of Diamond Medals, and I bet I know what’s going on inside these, too . . .

All of these Sheaffer-derived Diamond Medal pencils appeared around the time the Rex Manufacturing Company fades away at the end of the 1920s, likely as a result of Parker’s patent infringement case against Rex over the washer clip. Sears was apparently shopping around for other suppliers, and The Wahl Company also got a foot in the door. The Diplomat made a fleeting appearance in Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry. On page 164 in Eversharp, I shared images of an Eversharp Dollar Pencil from around 1930. The clip, however, is marked “Diplomat” in the same script found on the Diamond Medal above, rather than Eversharp:

This is the only example I have found of a Wahl-made product supplied to Sears; it isn’t surprising, since Wahl supplied Montgomery Ward with rebadged Doric pens and pencils. In the end, though, it was the Parker Pen Company that won the Sears writing instrument contracts, including Diamond Medal branded pens and pencils, such as these:

That top one came from Dmitry Grinberg at the Ohio Show a few years back – most of you know him on eBay as “Rare Pen” with the California license plate in his listings. It is a rebadged Parker Challenger, perhaps made at the same time Parker offered these around 1934 or so, or maybe a bit later using obsolete parts.

This one is as pristine as they come, complete with intact gold infill to accentuate the imprint:

The clip is the same, other than the substitution of that neat Diamond Medal logo substituted for the Parker name:

As for that second one down, with its faceted barrel and typical Parker Duofold burgundy and black, is a match for one I shared in “A Nice Blend” (July 31, 2017: Volume 5, page 64).

As for those other three, those striped plastics were not typically used on Parker products. Not typically, anyway . . .

The top example shown here has all of the typical Diamond Medal badging, from the clip to the barrel imprint.

The other one came to me via Eric Magnuson, who prevailed on me to take it off his hands during a visit to the museum a few years ago. It lacks a barrel imprint and is currently equipped with an ill-fitting, split-arrow Parker Vacumatic clip.

The clip isn’t correct – I checked in with David Isaacson, who said that yes, there are precious few pens and pencils made in plastics generally reserved for rebadges such as Diamond Medal, but with Parker trim. This one should have a blade-style Parker clip, like the one on that burgundy and black Parker Royal Challenger shown at bottom in the image with Dmitry’s example above. I haven’t replaced it yet - as I recall, that clip doesn’t quite fit on this one.

Speaking of unusual Diamond Medal plastics with Parker-marked counterparts . . . 

The upper example came from Gabriel Galecia Goldsmith in that bunch of stuff I acquired a few months ago. The bottom example is the Parker version, another find that came from Eric Magnuson which appeared in “Sooooo Close” (May 30, 2020: Volume 6, page 140). When that original article ran, I did not know this plastic was intended primarily for use on Diamond Medal pens and pencils; David Isaacson immediately recognized it as such, so at the end of Volume 6 I included a brief update concerning these Parker “De-Re-Badged” or “un-rebadged” pens and pencils, as David calls them (Volume 6, pages 242-243).  

David shared with me several images for use in the book of his fountain pens, including an advertisement for Diamond Medal pens in these plastics, which were offered in brown as shown, as well as grey and green.

The Criterion Criteria

My friend Jim Mamoulides, when he is not accomplishing superhuman feats as editor of The Pennant, is accomplishing superhuman feats posting articles about obscure brands at his website, Penhero.com. He beat me to the punch with a nice writeup of the Criterion line of pens and pencils with a 2024 article he posted here.

I’ve had a Criterion set just like the one Jim featured in his article photographed for some time.

Jim ably ran down all the newspaper advertisements and other information that was available about the Criterion, all of which suggest these were offered by retailers including the Rexall Drug Stores between 1923 and 1926, all of which share an infuriating lack of detail concerning who made them. Jim also relied on my previous article, even though I wasn’t able to offer much more . . . other than a suggestion that maybe the Rex Manufacturing Company had something to do with these. See “How I Know” (July 1, 2015: Volume 3, page 278) and “Two Cans of Worms” (July 2, 2015: Volume 3, page 279).

In retrospect, there’s flawed logic in my association of the Criterion brand with Rex. That theory was based primarily on the similarity of the warranty papers that came with my Criterion set, which is identical to the papers included with sets clearly marked with the Rex Manufacturing Company name. In the years since, I’ve seen warranty papers identical to what came with my Criterion set stuffed in boxes containing sets that clearly had nothing to do with Rex.

So maybe Rex, maybe not. Jim suggests a Rexall connection in his article, which would point more convincingly towards DeWitt-LaFrance, which made the “Signet” line for Rexall.

What I believe will be the key to unraveling who manufactured the Criterion is going to be figuring out who designed the clip found on the pens:

In “Two Cans of Worms” I discussed that possibility, and I noted that this same clip is also found on pencils bearing various names, including Ever Last, Parrott, Postal, and Thompson.

The identify of that jobber, unfortunately, remains a mystery.

Back to that warranty paperwork, because I need to clarify something that Jim wrote as he mused. My paperwork is identical to what Jim shows, including references on the back to “De Luxe” and “Premo” pens and pencils.

Jim questioned whether one of these names was for a pen and the other was for the pencil. That is a reasonable assumption in a vacuum, since many manufacturers used different brand names for pens and pencils – the Wahl Pen and Eversharp Pencil, for example. In this case, however, I can answer Jim's question: there are both De Luxe and Premo pencils. They are identical other than the name on the clip, and I have no reason to doubt that both were offered with a similarly marked, similarly un-deluxe and un-premo fountain pens.

While I am on the subject of the Criterion, I have one more update. In my last articles, I showed an oversized fountain pen marked Criterion and owned by Nathaniel Cerf, and I theorized their might be a matching pencil out there I had yet to find. I didn’t find one in jade, but I did find something that would be more in keeping with consumer tastes as bright colors overtook metal as a preferred medium in the mid-1920s:

There’s something noteworthy here, because this very same thing recently came up in connection with the “Collegian” in “Nearly a Waste of Time” (September 5, 2025). Note the nose on the Collegian in that article – it’s the same nose that’s on this Criterion. This image from that earlier article shows the Collegian compared to Eclipse-made pencils. 

Maybe my earlier wild goose chase trying to figure out whether my Collegian was made by Diamond Point or Eclipse has now borne more fruit. After all, Eclipse’s distinctive 1923 patent clip would look exactly like that banded clip on a Criterion pen, or a Parrott, a Postal, or a host of other makers – with the clip secured by a band across the top rather than concealed underneath.

Stay Bilt Well, My Friend . . . and Sta Rite

Dan Schenkein reached out to me in July after he stumbled across a little hoard of new old stock Biltwell pencils, most of which were still wrapped in tissue paper that was printed as instruction sheets.

He didn’t need all of them, he told me, and he wondered if I could use any of them. Sure, I said . . . one to keep preserved as it is, and a second one that I could unfurl the delicate paper to see if there was any information worth noting printed on them.

It was delicate work since the paper is in such poor condition. Eventually, I was able to get it flattened out enough to at least make out the words:

I was really hoping there would be a manufacturer’s name or address, but no such luck – in fact, I already knew more than this paper told me from when I stumbled across the Biltwell trademark registration in the course of writing American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953.

Edmund R. Rodriguez, a Mexican national doing business as the Biltwell Pencil Company in New York City, applied to register the Biltwell name on August 30, 1928 and he was granted registration number 260,408 on August 20, 1929. Rodriguez’s address was 1201 Broadway, New York, and he claimed that he first used the Biltwell name in May, 1928. 

The Biltwell is enigmatic; so many have survived that you would expect to find a wealth of information concerning where and when they were sold, but I found only one solitary reference in newspapers, advertising “The 1931 Biltwell Pencil” in the Lincoln (Nebraska) Journal Star on August 31, 1931, without any helpful artwork or other information.

Other than a few directory listings between 1928 and 1933, I haven’t found out anything else about the company. Pencils were lower quality, with a “Welsh style” nose drive mechanism pushed into the open end of the barrel. Clips are ordinary z-clips, lead size is a normal 1.1mm-ish lead, and there’s enough slop in the mechanism that there’s always a bit of wobble.

Still, they occur in a wide variety of pretty colors and many of us had fun chasing them down when we were new to the hobby, myself included. I always keep the pencils I acquire for archival purposes, so I can show you a nice range of the Biltwell pencils that are out there.

The first image shows Biltwell pencils with the nose cone that slips over the stepped-down end of the barrel, while in the second image the nose is butted up against the end of the barrel. In my experience, the latter seems to be more common, but I don’t know which is earlier. The latter group also has the word Biltwell spelled out in the script matching the trademark registration.

This next group of Biltwell-marked pencils do not appear to beAmerican-made. The top three have a German look to them, and the example at bottom is made from a “howling souls” sort of plastic normally found on Japanese novelty pencils.

This next group is a little later. Rounded tops became fashionable after the popularity of the Sheaffer Balance took off in the late 1920s, so these might date to 1930 or a bit later.

Some of these are really nice, especially that burgundy and gold. At bottom, note the sample imprint for the Kemper Thomas Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. Kemper Thomas was primarily a calendar company that sourced rather than manufactured the pencils it offered - See “The Company I Misjudged” (November 29, 2014: Volume 3, page 120).

During the 1930s, the Biltwell evolved into something that strongly resembles a Parker Parkette or Parco.

Other than outward appearances, I don’t think there’s enough evidence that Parker was responsible for making these. Here is that bottom example of the Biltwell alongside a Parker Parkette and a Parco; the color is different, and note the absence of telltale Parker dimples around the nose cone. Also, what’s inside doesn’t match.

Who knows, though – maybe some evidence will surface later to implicate Parker in the manufacture of these later Biltwells. In the meantime, though, that green Biltwell provides a more solid lead: “Compliments of / Improved Pencil Co. / Providence, R.I.”

The Improved Pencil Company was an actual manufacturer, rather than a producer or reseller. In “”Two Puzzling Details” (October 20, 2018: Volume 5, page 279) I wrote about the Improved Pencil Company’s flagship production: the “Sta-Rite.” Earlier Sta-Rite pencils were metal crown-top affairs made to generally resemble an Eversharp, but in that earlier article I showed those as well as some slightly later plastic models – and those are so telling that I think they answer the question.

I think the Improved Pencil Company manufactured the Biltwell for the Biltwell Pencil Company. While the Improved Pencil Company is listed in a few manufacturer’s directories, the Biltwell Pencil Company is not. Improved clearly made the Sta-Rite, and those large, plastic Sta-Rite pencils are dead ringers for those earlier Biltwell pencils. I think that is enough evidence to reasonably draw this conclusion.

The Improved Pencil Company, as detailed in that previous article, was established in 1922. By 1926, the firm was located at 158 Pine Street in Providence, Rhode Island, and in 1933, the Improved Pencil Company moved into a factory at 581 Pawtucket in Pawtucket, Rhode Island – the former location of the Tri-Pen Manufacturing Company, makers of Triad pens and pencils.

In “Death and Transfiguration Part I: The Death of Triad” (February 28, 2013: Volume 2, page 70), I noted that when Improved moved in, Tri-Pen disappeared; the open question, however, was whether the Improved Pencil Company picked up the ball and made “lesser Triad” triangular pencils, like these:

Maybe . . . at some point between 1933 and 1940, when the “Triangle Pencil Company” was formed, announcements indicated that Triangle had been assigned all of the failed Tri-Pen Manufacturing Company’s patents, including Tri-Pen's design patent for its triangular pencils. That squares exactly with this patriotic World War II pencil in red, white, and blue marked with Triangle’s name – by then, both Tri-Pen and Improved were likely gone. See “Rekindled and Settled Once and For All” (October 15, 2018: Volume 5, page 269):

One last footnote in the Improved Pencil Company story: in 2018, I had to go through extensive gymnastics to piece together the information to be gleaned from snippet views of a 1926 advertisement for the Improved Pencil Company published in The Fourth Estate. That information is now in the public domain and I can share with you the full announcement:

What we had to deduce before, we can now see with our own eyes: the notice clearly identifies Improved as the manufacturer of the Sta-Rite. Although there wasn’t any other information about the Improved Pencil Company other than what I previously deduced, there was one curious other detail found on that same page in The Fourth Estate:

This is the only advertisement I have seen for the Rex Manufacturing Company – and it appears to advertise “four horsemen” Webster pencils for sale on its own account, before the Webster name was sold off to Sears, Roebuck & Co.

The only common denominator between this Rex advertisement and the Improved Pencil Company is the author’s freakish obsession with researching both of them. At least, that’s the only common denominator as of right now. 

It is worth dropping here, not just because I’m a “Rexist.” It is a tremendous coincidence that two Providence manufacturers of writing instruments happened to advertise on the same page in a national magazine, and I don’t generally believe in such coincidences. This might lead to further evidence of connections between the Rex Manufacturing Company and the Improved Pencil Company that I’m not yet prepared to suggest.