The Proud Rexist

These days it is fashionable to put labels on people ending with the suffix “ist,” and most of the time it’s not a positive thing. However, sometimes labels ending in “ist” are merely descriptive: in my early years I was a cellist, which wasn’t a bad thing. These days I suppose you might call me a “writist” should you be so inclined. Or a “historyist.”

One “ist” that I own unapologetically is that of being a “Rexist.” I am a huge fan of the Rex Manufacturing Company, and if I had to choose whether to spend my last hard earned dollar on a Rex pencil or something else, that something else wouldn’t stand a chance.

Rex has come up twice here in the last couple weeks, but I didn’t want to open the floodgates all the way at the moment – I have a boatload of updates to report to you. We’ll start with the oldest of my new finds:

It was very satisfying to find this one, since I already had the ringtop:

Both of these are marked “Compliments of the Season / Rex Mfg. Co. Prov. R.I.” That season was likely around 1922 or 1923, before McNary’s 1924 patent was a twinkle in the inventor’s eye.

This next one also sits on the early end of the Rex spectrum:

If you compare this to the 1924 McNary patent Franklin pencils from yesterday’s article, this one shares the same basic lines, except of course for that exquisite engraving on the nose and top piece:

The stamp near the top reads “Victor”:

This Victor is unusual, but I have seen this sort of nice metal work before; normally, though, it appears on pencils marked for the Artcraft Pen Company. Here’s my Rex-made Victor and Artcraft pencils together:

And, speaking of Artcraft . . . 

I shot these two together in preparation for a “Rexes Gone Wild” sort of piece, but the Corona at bottom was later included in the series of articles posted here recently concerning the history of the Corona Pen Company (see “As the Primordial Ooze Turns” on August 18, 2025). 

Today’s focus is that top pencil, which turned up in a junk box at the Chicago Show a few years ago. While it is unmarked as to the manufacturer, there’s no doubt in my mind that the Artcraft Pen Company was behind it. I’ve just shown you the proof that Artcraft sourced those black hard rubber pencils from Rex, and Artcraft used this same blue and bronze celluloid on some of its fountain pens – in fact, Artcraft is I believe the only company that did.

This Rex-made ringtop is from the “four horsemen” era, but the two patents relating to the clip have been omitted from the stamp:

This next pair came in one lot in an online auction, and they are both the earlier 1924 McNary patent Rex pencils:

The cap on the red one is marked “Supremacy,” a brand name used by the Supremacy Ink Company - for the background on the Supremacy name, see “We’ve Had It All Wrong” (April 13, 2018: Volume 5, page 230). 

I love these older, paneled Rex barrels. I’ve found the orange (or red) paneled ringtops made for others as well: here are the Supremacy at top, followed by a Webster and one marked “Y & H”:

That woodgrain paneled one, missing its cap, is later. The 1924 patent pencils had a single piece cap, but “four horsemen” era pencils had a two-part cap. Finding one to replace what is missing will be a tall order indeed; here it is shown with that great teal Supremacy from “Widest Range in the Narrowest Market” (May 22, 2020: Volume 6, page 124). 

Those slim, paneled barrels are also found in full-length Rex pencils, although they are much more rare. This next one added to the Rex patent family, marked “Whitney” on the clip:

This one has all four of the Rex patents on the clip, which I find unusual: by the time Rex really hit its stride and was marking pencils with all four patents, I thought that the slim paneled barrels had been discontinued.

I’ve only found one other pencil of any sort marked Whitney. It is shown at top in this next image, with a typical John Holland Rex-made pencil at bottom.

I also found a second “four horsemen” Rex pencil with a slim, paneled barrel. I clearly remember this one coming from an online auction, since for weeks I sat on pins and needles waiting for it to arrive while the post office repeatedly returned it from Columbus to whatever zip code they mistook the sender’s handwriting to read.

This one is marked for the Edison Pen Company, and it now sits proudly alongside the other examples in my Edison collection (see “A Pesky Brand” - June 7, 2021: Volume 7, page 174).

The other two in that earlier image just happened to be laying about when the Edison arrived, and they add a couple footnotes to the Rex story. The jade example is a Webster, and it is very unusual to find one with a price band.

As for the other, it is unmarked . . . but I’ve never seen that barrel color on a Rex before.

Speaking of the worthy and unmarked, here’s another great unmarked Rex pencil, shown here next to one marked “Ye Wm. Penn”:

In addition to that great woodgrain and paneled hard rubber, this one is like those earlier ringtops, marked only with McNary’s 1924 patent date, a feature shared with the Ye Wm. Penn:

I’ll circle back to Ye Wm. Penn in a second, after I show you another 1924 McNary patent pencil that answered a question I raised more than ten years ago. This one has a round barrel and is marked “Krest” on the clip.

The Krest made its one and only previous appearance here in “Another No-Name Heard From” (October 5, 2014: Volume 3, page 32), one of those articles that was destroyed by a Google mega-oopsie. The article introduced and discussed this nondescript pencil, interesting only for the Krest name on it:

In that earlier article, I was unable to pinpoint what retailer offered writing instruments under the “Krest” name, but the print version of the article contains a prophetic note at the end. “Note: since this article was written, I’ve also noticed that the diamond pattern on the crown appears frequently on Rex-made metal pencils.” 

So there. Move the Krest over from a suspected Rex production to the confirmed pile.

Now to return to “Ye Wm. Penn,” which you might recall from my earlier articles is the only brand name conclusively attributed to the Rex Manufacturing Company in connection with writing instruments Rex made on its own account (that is, made for Rex to sell for itself, rather than marked for and supplied to a third party). See “Ye Wm Penn” (May 19, 2020: Volume 6, page 118).

I have a footnote to add in that regard. This one showed up in another online auction:

It is another 1924 McNary patent ringtop, but in a fantastic paneled, robin’s egg blue barrel . . . and it includes a twist:

What else might one call the ladies’ version of a Ye Wm. Penn? Why, “Ye Ladye Penn,” of course! That find really made my day, giving me this nice shot of Ye Ladye amongst her brothers in the Penn clan:

I was well satisfied with what I found, until David Nishimura dropped this on me at the following Ohio Show in 2023:

Oh, my aching wallet . . . David knows I love these Rex pens and pencils, and he also knows that we are but two members in that exclusive club who appreciate how hard something like this is to find.

Nishimura got me again the following August in DC with this. I thought about including it in yesterday’s article, but I thought it made more sense to include it here:

There’s a lot more paneled, striated goodness with this earlier Rex set:

The lever on the fountain pen is marked “REX”:

The pencil, however, is marked with “Franklin,” further substantiating my theory yesterday that Franklin was an early brand name under which Rex offered pens and pencils for sale on its own account.

Last up for today is something that didn’t cost much because, after all, it is something only a true Rexist would appreciate:

A wood tube of pencil leads with a paper label for the Rex Manufacturing Company is icing on the cake in my collection. In my early articles here at the blog, I spent a lot of time and energy trying to conclusively establish that “Rexhold” was a trade name used by the Rex Manufacturing Company, and the final nail in the coffin did not arrive until 2021, and in a very circuitous manner - see “On Rex’s Own Account” (May 1, 2021: Volume 7, page 75). If only I had access to something like this when all that research started . . . 

Oh well. I went the long way around the barn to find the answer, but at least I wasn’t wrong.

On Rex's Own Account

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.

The Rex Manufacturing Company has been a long-running fascination of mine.  The company supplied so many pen manufacturers, and had its hand in so many unmarked pencils from the early 1920s, that I’ve never understood how the company remained virtually unknown until I started writing about it.  It’s like an elephant hiding behind a telephone pole.

Nearly everything the company made was marked only with the names of the customers for which they were made, and only one brand name – “Ye Wm. Penn” – belonged to Rex (see Volume 5, page 77).

That’s why I make an extra effort to bring home pencils that are actually marked with the Rex name.  Extra effort was definitely required in the case of this one:

It came to me by way of Loyal Knight Eric Magnuson, and it used to be much easier for Eric and me to swap things back in forth.  He used to live here in the Columbus area, so he’d stop by the museum every so often to chat a bit, play with some pencils and offload a few that I just had to have.  Now that Eric has graduated from Ohio State, he’s moved to the Chicago area for his new job, so it’s been some time since we’ve seen each other.

After he moved, Eric asked if I’d be interested in a big, bulky Eversharp store display, still fully stocked with 1940s-era leads.   I wryly noted that I was probably running a little low and could use some more leads (for those who don’t know, I run the Legendary Lead Company, with a stock of pencil leads that will last us all for decades), but the more pertinent question was how the heck he planned to get it to me if it was so big, bulky and heavy. 

No worries, he said.  His parents still lived in Columbus and would be visiting him shortly, and he’d happily volunteer them to schlepp this albatross back home with them, where I could pick it up locally.  And, while we were at it, a few pencils could ride along as stowaways.  

Eric is one of the good ones - he’s keenly attentive to the things he knows his friends like, and when he knows he’s got something a cult follower of a brand will love, he’s fair with them.  I’m fair with him, too.  The price I paid was more than most collectors would pay for this one, but not nearly as much as a ruthless extortionist would have pulled from my wallet with a gratuitous, evil “bwa-ha-ha-ha.”

Eric’s the sort of guy who keeps this fun, so I have no qualms about calling this the “Eric Magnuson Memorial Family Portrait”:

For as few Rex metal pencils as are out there, it’s interesting how many different variations there are on the imprints the company used.  All but one of the ringtops I’ve found simply sport the word “Rex” in distinctive, arched lettering:

Since the company obviously knew the importance of registering trademarks (Exhibit A: “Ye Wm. Penn”), I would have expected a trademark to have been filed for this mark.  Perhaps one was: before Rex delved headlong into developing writing instruments, the company was a general metal specialties firm, so the mark may have been registered under some other category that would be nearly impossible to find in pre-1946 trademark indices (see the introduction to American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953).  Perhaps also it was used only locally, relying on state protection of the mark like many of the marks found in Trade-Marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades (see the appendix in American Writing Instrument Trademarks).

In retrospect, it seems silly that I questioned whether full-length pencils with clips, marked “Rexhold” in that same arched lettering, were attributable to Rex (Volume 2, page 166). 

I theorized when this one turned up that the “hold” part of the Rexhold name referred to the clip, but I was hesitant to state that as fact at the time – I love it when time proves me right, and I still rankle a bit when something I stated as fact proves to be wrong.  Time has proven me right on this one (Volume 3, page 276); the pencil I received from Eric is identical, with simply “Rex” in arched lettering, together with “Pat. Applied for”:

Note that the Rexhold-marked example includes another phrase: “Never Dull.”  The Never Dull name was later used heavily by Eclipse, which makes for a nice connection.  One of my other examples drops the “hold” but also has the Never Dull name:

Last but not least are my favorites in this grouping - more formal, elegant examples bearing the name of the biggest little company you never heard of:

One is marked Rex Mfg. Co - Providence, RI, and the other adds another layer of charm:

“Compliments of the Season.”

A Definitive Answer and a More Distinct Possibility

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 3; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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It never hurts to read the same thing twice.

Deep in the Pen Collectors of America’s online library . . . at the end, in the “Other documents” section, is a small, unobtrusive excerpt from a larger book of trademarks titled “Trade-Marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades,” dated 1922.  I’ve published excerpts of it here several times – when I tracked down the Perfect Point, Acme, Ever-Ready and Keen Point marks, for example.

Yesterday, someone pointed out that same book in an online forum, which caused me to browse through it.  Maybe a few weeks off working on other projects cleared my head a bit, but I saw something I didn’t remember seeing before.  This book conclusively answered a question I raised here some time ago.

Remember the “Rexhold,” which was a spitting image of an Eclipse “Never Dull,” right down to the clip and barrel pattern?

The article in which this pencil appeared was called “Never a Dull Moment” and was published almost two years ago (http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/06/never-dull-moment.html). At the time, I wrote, “Believe me, as a Rex Manufacturing Company devotee, I’ve thought about whether there might be a connection. But other than the word "Rex" used in the name, I don’t have anything else to establish a connection.”

Now, thanks to a quick browse through something I thought I had already read, I can now say with confidence that my suspicions were correct:

Yes, Virginia.  The Rex Manufacturing Company made the “Rex-hold,” and between this document and the existence of Eclipse lookalikes marked only with Lawrence T. McNary’s February 19, 1924 patent date, I think it is now established beyond any reasonable doubt that Rex also made Eclipse’s “Never Dull” pencils.

That’s the conclusive answer part.  At this point you might be wondering why I didn’t simply read this book two years ago and tell you this at the time.  Here’s the thing . . . I think I did – and I didn’t find it, with good reason.

That’s the “more distinct possibility part” of this story.

If I wasn’t sleeping at the switch when I wrote that article, and if I went back to that 1922 book to check, I’m sure I would have turned to the page with the Rs on it, found nothing, and moved on.  Notice anything about that excerpt from the book?  Rex and Rex-hold aren’t listed under “R.”  They are listed under “W,” and not just any “W” . . .  did you see what comes next?

A “Webster Pen Company” of New York.  Well isn’t that interesting, after I was so excited to find Webster sets with “Rex Manufacturing Company” notations on their paperwork in two articles (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2014/11/help-with-cheese.html and http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/03/set-number-4555.html).

The fact that Rex and the only trademark associated with it (Rex-hold) were listed out of order, alongside Webster, suggests that there was much more going on between the two than simply a supplier/customer relationship.  Yet the Webster listed in this 1922 directory states that this Webster is from New York, and the notation “no recent record” suggests that the company might have become inactive by 1922.

Yet by 1924, when set number 4,555 was made in my last article on the subject of Webster, the company was reborn, and located according to the paperwork which accompanied it, in Providence.

Lawrence McNary applied for his patent on October 11, 1921.  Obviously, something had happened by the time this book was published in 1922 for its authors to associate Rex so closely with the Webster name that Rex’s information was published, out of order, alongside it.  Perhaps the fledgling writing instruments division of Rex was looking for a pen to go with their pencil, finding it easier to purchase an existing operation than to form their own.  Perhaps a Webster Pen Company, on its last legs by 1922, was acquired by Rex or by some of its principals.

I know . . . perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.  But a little bit more likely now, I should think.