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.

An Odd Name For This Sort of Thing

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; 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.

This one came my way online a year or so ago:

The name on the clip is “Bonded.”

Yes, it’s missing the cap, and while I have a suspicion what it looked like I’d rather wait until I’m positive.  That clip identifies it as a member of a series of flattop pencils which includes the Postal, Parrott, Thompson and Ever Last (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/07/two-cans-of-worms.html):

“Bonded” is a name frequently found in the world of pencils . . . but not the mechanical sort.  In the wood pencil arena, “bonded” refers to leads which are well secured (glued) inside their wooden cases.  Glue and mechanical pencils, though, don’t mix . . . although maybe it might have held that cap on.

Show of Sets

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.

If you haven’t been to the Thursday traders’ day at The Ohio Pen Show before, you should give it a shot next year.  In years past, all the action has been confined to the smaller of the two ballrooms, with dealers being allowed one half table each, first come first served.  That rule has relaxed quite a bit recently, and with the tables already set up in the hallway for the show proper, dealers and traders have gotten more comfortable, stretching out to occupy whole tables, and the activity spills out into the hallway.

Sure, we’ll spend the next three days wandering around and finding things we didn’t notice before, but I enjoy Thursdays the most.  This year was no exception.

Next to me was a long time collector who had several boxed sets on his table.  One of them REALLY caught my attention, so I asked what he wanted for it.  “You won’t believe what I’m asking for that set,” he said.  Oh no, I thought to myself.  There goes a much bigger proportion of my weekly allowance for this show than I wanted . . . in the first hour of the show.

But when he told me his price, I looked at the other sets he had differently.  “OK, then I’ll take this one . . . and this one . . . and this one . . . and this one . . “ And so it went until there were only two sets left and I paused a little two long.  “I’ll take those last two then,” the guy standing next to me chimed in.  I didn’t argue whether I was done – I’d been greedy enough.

They weren’t spectacular sets - mostly from lesser manufacturers - but they were all very clean and they fit perfectly into my collection.  There was this great Eagle set in bright yellow, with a Magnum Pointer pencil - these came in more than a dozen different colors, but I didn’t have this one:

A yellow Eclipse set, complete with all the paperwork.  I’ve got a few yellow Eclipses, but none in this configuration:

A Diamond Point set in black.  I didn’t have one in black and I do like black pencils:

A gorgeous Thompson set in bronze and black.  Thompson was a lower tier product, but this set was really clean, and I didn’t have one in this color.  I don’t think the box has anything to do with the set, but it looks nice in there:

Now this next one is pretty special, although it isn’t the one that started all this.  This Moore set is a demi set in some really unusual colors - grey and brown striped with grey ends.  I’ve always lumped these in as part of the “Mastercraft” series, but if there’s a different name for them I’m keen to learn what it was.  The great part about finding this set was that I had turned up the pencil in an online auction just a week earlier, and the seller had been . . . optimistic in describing it’s condition.  This one, however, is perfect:

Which brings us to that last set I acquired that Thursday morning, the one which first grabbed my attention.   As I suggested in yesterday’s post, it’s a Salz:

Note that the pencil has vertical lines on the cap, which was a feature fairly unique to Salz – I haven’t seen a cap like this that wasn’t gold filled.  Also, both pen an pencil sport the patented Salz “windowpane” clip:

The April 14, 1925 patent date is a reference to patent number 1,533,466, issued to Ignatz Salz himself:

There’s also a pocketknife included - and even the ta;ng of the blade is marked “Salz Bros. NY”:

But the best part of this set is the box, with that label inside the lid identifying this as a “Three Musketeers” set:

And if you look closely, you’ll see that the Musketeers aren’t wielding swords - they are carrying, respectively, a fountain pen, a pocket knife and a pencil!

Two Cans of Worms

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.

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

Note: this is the third installment in a series of articles.  To start from the beginning, see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/06/nailed-it-pretty-much.html.

One of the distinctive features common to these metal Rex pencils, be they Rexholds, E-Z Rites or Criterions, is the clip mounting.  They pierce through the barrel on either side at the tang:

This entire family of pencils was introduced in the early 1920s, just as market tastes were beginning to move away from metal pencils and towards larger pencils in flashy colored plastics.  It’s not surprising that the E-Z Rite can also be found in oversized plastic models:

Until I found the brown one with an E-Z Rite clip, I wasn’t so sure that the yellow one was another example of the brand – it’s marked only on that ringtop cap, and it’s a little unusual to see both a ringtop and a sideclip.

McNary’s patented innards have been abandoned for this series.  These are what I refer to as “Welsh style” pencils, with that large conical, press-fit screw drive mechanism most commonly associated with pencils along these lines made by the Welsh Manufacturing Company (which, like Rex, was located in Providence, Rhode Island).  However, a close examination of the clip mounting reveals that the side mounted clip design has been carried forward from the E-Z Rite’s all-metal ancestors in the most elegant way: the easiest way to adapt a metal pencil clip to a plastic pencil is to simply make a shorter metal barrel portion to which it is attached.

Pause here for a second and consider the following: if these plastic E-Z Rites were made by Rex, does that mean that so many other cheaply made pencils with that same clip assembly were also made by the company, such as the “Townsend”:

And this example of the “Ritzie”?

And think about how many other brands also use a similar mounting: Morrison, Marathon, Spors . . . that is the first can of worms this line of research opens.  Did Rex make all of these?  Did the company just supply the distinctive clip assemblies?  Did Welsh either copy or license the design?  Or, was the design widely licensed or copied by other manufacturers?  I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

There’s a second can of worms here.  It involves the Criterion:

The pen and pencil shown in yesterday’s post exhibit the usual plain, side mounted clips.  But Criterion pens are also found with another type of clip, sometimes found on the metal pens and also on large, plastic flattop pens like the one Nathaniel Cerf has pictured over at ThePenMarket.com (yes, this one is for sale!):

I’m sure there’s matching pencils are out there, but I haven’t found one . . . yet.  Note that these clips, like the E-Z Rite, mount on the sides, but these have a “belt” that wraps around the clip.  Was this a logical next step in the evolution of the Rexhold clip, a more well-suited application of the same idea for use with all-plastic barrels, without the need for the supporting metal band?

And if it was, what does it say about these?

From left, these are marked “Ever Last”:

“Parrott”:

“Postal”

and “Thompson”:

All the pencils with this clip that I’ve found so far have all been mechanically identical, and they all have a very Rexy look, although the tips are a bit longer and they don’t come apart like a Rex pencil.  Rifling through my own patent book in the “clips” section, I’m not finding either the E-Z Rite or Criterion clips, leaving open the possibility that an unpatented innovation could have been made by anyone.

Yet there is a consistency here that’s got me pausing for thought.

Note:  The story continues at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/07/what-about-boogeyman.html.