The Royal Family and an Unlikely Knight

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 Order of the Leadheads started as a private club for those who supported the publication of this blog in printed form.  I numbered the original run of Volume 1 -- just 50 copies -- and those who bought them became the original 50 Loyal Knights of the Order.  

The Order has proliferated in the years since, but  Knighthood has always been bestowed on the basis of buying books.  I suppose that means demonstrating the requisite exemplary service to justify admission to the Order has been . . . well, simple bribery. 

I paused to reconsider my admission standards a few months ago, when William Stryker made me a proposition.  There was this pen that he wanted, he told me, but it came as a set with a pesky matching pencil, and a price tag higher than mere mortals could stomach.  Perhaps, he thought, the person who taught him what he knew about the brand (through the articles I've posted here) might be willing to reduce his investment by taking the pencil off of his hands . . .

Yep - the object of his affection was a gorgeous Triad pen and pencil set.  I knew who owned it, and I’ve known pencil collectors have tried without success to get the seller to split the set.  William and I negotiated a bit about how much I would contribute for the privilege of owning the pencil; the set’s price reflected the even-more-than-usual outstanding color and condition of the pen.  While the pencil’s color was equally outstanding, that is not as unusual since the pencils don’t typically discolor over time (offgassing from the rubber ink sacs is what darkens celluloid).  

Negotiations were swift - yes, I contributed a bit more than I proposed, but my usual mantra doesn’t work.  “Pencils are like buses, you can catch the next one” isn’t helpful advice when it may be years before the next opportunity to hop aboard comes along.  When the William advised me the pencil was on its way, I told him I’d be setting up my lawn chair next to the mailbox.

“I see rain, a golf umbrella, and you smoking a cigar. I want a selfie of that included in the blog post,” he said.  I am a man of my word . . . at least, he got rain and a cigar anyway . . . the weather was so crappy on the day it arrived that no one in their right mind would have been stalking my mailbox, so I dispensed with the lawn chair.  As for the umbrella, it wouldn’t have been much use.

This Triad pencil is as pristine as you can imagine:

I don’t have anything to add concerning the history of the Triad, which rose from the ashes of the Rex Manufacturing Company (see in particular Volume 2, pages 72-73 and 100-106).  However, I'm overdue to include a better picture to illustrate the difference between two variations I’ve found.  Some have a flat top with ribs around the edge, while others have a cap with a top beveled to the shape of a triangle:

Countless people have been good to me over the years, but bringing a member of pencildom’s “Royal Family” of Triads to my doorstep? William now has the distinction of being the first Loyal Knight admitted to the Order for exemplary service not involving bribery!

Note:  if you are an established good egg and feel slighted, just drop me a line and I'll knight thee.

When I refer to Triads as a “Royal Family,” I mean there are good ones and bad ones, but even the bad ones have greater value than their peers solely by virtue of their name.  The pencil I received from William wasn’t the only green Triad that came my way recently, but this one is the Meghan, Duchess of Sussex of Triads:

If any other name were on the clip, this would be an unremarkable nose drive pencil that wouldn’t see the light of day outside of a junk box.  But it does carry the royal title and therefore, cost me more than I wanted to pay in an online auction:

And it doesn’t even have a triangular barrel.

Rekindled and Settled Once and for All

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.

Some five years ago, there was significant controversy and debate (by tempest in a teapot standards) concerning whether triangular pencils such as these are Triads:

The stakes are high.  Triads – the originals made by the Tri-Pen Manufacturing Company – are grail finds for pencil collectors.  Here’s the ones I’ve been able to find, augmented by the four that were part of a collection I purchased from Alan Hirsch in Raleigh:

These Triads are made in spectacular celluloids, with a nice imprint and a great clip marked “Triad.”

The later ones, however, don’t have a Tri-Pen imprint – usually they have advertising imprints instead, and usually for Providence, Rhode Island area businesses.  While the clips are shaped the same, only rarely are these marked Triad:

In 2013, I suggested that these later pencils couldn’t possibly be legitimate Triads, since Tri-Pen was gone by 1933, replaced by an outfit called the “Improved Pencil Company,” (see Volume 2, page 70) and that later red, white and blue models like these, apparently made during World War II, were probably made by a “Triangle Pen Company” formed in March, 1940 (Volume 2, page 75):

In the years since, there has been an uneasy truce about this issue; Joe Nemecek and I have a ritual where he refers to these later pencils as Triads, I say “you mean those made by the Triangle Pen Company,” and we have generally settled on the term “Lesser Triads.”

I’m not settling anymore.  There was one more pencil in that collection Alan Hirsch sold me:

Clearly World War II vintage – not just from the patriotic colors, but also from the (admittedly crappy) plastic tip and the monoplanes on one of the three sides:

And on the other side, all the evidence one needs that the argument is over . . . “Lesser Triad,” my butt:

There is one last piece of the puzzle in this story.  I have suggested that those later red, white and blue pencils might actually have been made by Ritepoint Company of St. Louis, and one other example I’ve found seems to have settled that argument, too:

Same clip . . . same cap . . . the V for Victory . . . and on the back:

It’s a salesman’s sample for the Newton Manufacturing Company, an advertising specialty company.  In an earlier article, I had suggested that one example of Newton’s pencils might have been made by Quickpoint – unless Ritepoint also made Quickpoint (page 120).  But thanks to this case that turned up a while ago, we know that at least one of Newton’s suppliers – if not the only one – was Ritepoint.

Pre(ish) Rex

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.

Now that I’m on the subject of Rex, and in particular the early history of the company’s involvement in writing instruments, this one proved to be an important find:

The pen has a Webster logo which matches later Webster products made during the middle to late 1920s; the pencil, however, has a more understated imprint:

What had me excited about this set when I first saw it online was the Certificate of Guarantee carefully tucked behind the sash in the lid.  Certificates like these have helped me fill in important pieces of the Rex story: on two occasions, they have been counterstamped with the Rex name, such as this one:

See http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2014/11/help-with-cheese.html and http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/03/set-number-4555.html.  But these certificates were from hard rubber and celluloid sets.  I was excited at the prospect of finding an earlier metal set with a Certificate of Guarantee - would it have the Rex name on it, too?

No. It had something even better:

This certificate indicates this is set number 611 – significantly earlier than the earliest certificate I had seen before this – and printed at the bottom: “B. & G. Mfg. Co.,”

The name baffled me.  Obviously there was some connection with Rex here, but who B and G might be eluded me.  On facebook I posted a picture of the set and had a lengthy conversation with myself, musing over who made up B & G, when David Nishimura finally came to my rescue with a bit of what he described as “google-fu,” turning up a reference to the company from the February 26, 1919 issue of The Jewelers’ Circular:

Wow.  Harry M. Burt and Harry Garabedian, operating at 14 Blount Street - that’s the address of the Rex Manufacturing Company.  Of course, I thought.  Harry M. Burt was one of the original incorporators of Rex in 1911:

Burt surfaced later as Vice President of Tri-Pen Manufacturing Company, makers of the Triad (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/03/rex-manufacturing-company-father-of.html), which was the first bit of evidence I found to confirm that Tri-Pen was the successor to the Rex Manufacturing Company.

But the real prize in finding the B & G Manufacturing Company is establishing Burt’s association with Harry Garabedian in 1919, because Garabedian later plays the most important role of all in Tri-Pen:

He was the inventor of the Triad fountain pen.

And there’s more.  According to the announcement in the The Jewelers’ Circular, the B & G Manufacturing Company was established in 1919, which coincides with the earliest reference I found to the “Never-Dull” pencil, in this August, 1919 issue of Advertising & Selling:

And one final interesting point.  The last time I explored the connection between Rex and Webster, I shared this interesting excerpt from the 1922 edition of Trade-marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades:

In this excerpt, the entry for Rex has been inserted, out of alphabetical order, just before Webster.  Note that beneath the Webster name is the legend “no recent record.”   In the course of researching American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953, I located earlier editions of the book, including the one published in 1915 (the 1896, 1904, 1915 and 1922 editions are all reproduced in the Appendix at the end of the book).  Here’s what the listing for Webster looked like in 1904 and 1915:

The Webster Pen Company was located at 37-39 Maiden Lane in New York, and there’s no mention of the Rex Manufacturing Company, which had been incorporated in 1911.

These new discoveries have opened up quite a few details in the history of the Rex Manufacturing Company.  Based on what I know now, here is what I think:

1.  The Webster Pen Company was an independent pen concern as late as 1915.

2.  Harry M. Burt and others form the B. & G. Manufacturing Company as a writing instruments subsidiary to the Rex Manufacturing Company.

3.  At some point between 1919 and 1922, B. & G. may have begun manufacturing pens and pencils, either for the Webster Pen Company.  The company also manufactures and markets “Never-Dull” pencils under the Rex (and Rex-Hold), Eclipse and Albert Howard names.

4.  My best guess is that B. & G. or Rex either acquired the Webster Pen Company or started using the Webster name after the Webster Pen Company closed.  This might well have happened in 1921, when an economic downturn forced many companies out of business or into the hands of others.

5.  At some point between 1919 and 1922, by the time the updated edition of Trade-Marks of the Jewelry and Kindred Trades is published, B. & G. has been absorbed by Rex.

A Calendar . . . And An Ad

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.

This one took a really good book to figure out.  Even without the extra cool doohickie, I would have chased this one down.  It’s just got such a distinctive look to it, and I love that top:

Extra cool doohickies are a real weakness of mine, and this one has a whopper.  That metal rod on the side of the barrel pulls out and, like an old window shade, reveals what’s inside:

Why the last few months of the 1938 calendar are on one side of 1940, and all of 1939 is on the other, I don’t know.   Suffice to say it’s a fair bet this one was introduced in late 1938.  And what’s on the other side?

Sales tips for Buick salesman - ah, old cars!  Another specialty of mine!  I love that last line: “Never kill a prospect . . .” one sure step on the road to being salesman of the year, for sure!

Yet as good looks, a nifty calendar and thoughts of a 1938 Buick already had me swooning, there’s one last detail that put me over the moon on this one:

Ooooh, I love me a good patent mystery, and this is a particularly good one, because this is definitely NOT a living, breathing example of Patent Number 97,956.  That patent was awarded in 1869 for a fireplace stove.  Could it be a design patent?  Closer, but nope: that was for a belt buckle, granted in 1935.  I played around for a bit, transposing numbers and such, but nothing was turning up.

And then I remembered . . . there’s a great book on patents out there.  In fact, I wrote the damned thing.   I turned to the “patents by description” section in American Writing Instrument Patents Volume 2: 1911-1945, looked up “calendar,” and found an entry for patent number 2,111,362, for a “calendar attachment (scroll)”:

Joseph S. Fisher of New York, New York applied for this patent on August 26, 1936, and it was issued on March 15, 1938.  Am I sure this is the patent I was looking for?  Dead sure.  For starters, did you notice what’s written on the scroll in the drawings?

“CAL-AN-AD PENCIL.”  And the clincher is in the text of the patent:

Probably in a rush to put the pencil into production before the patent was actually issued, the manufacturer chose to print the Serial Number for his application, number 97,356.

But wait.  There’s one more detail here that’s interesting.  It has to do with the clip in the drawings, which doesn’t look much like the one on my pencil:

It does, however, look a lot like the clip on the only other example of this I’ve seen.  David Nishimura sent me these pictures about a year ago:

Although this one shows no connection to Joseph Fisher or the Cal-An-Ad Pencil Company, it does show a connection to something else: that clip is the same clip used by Tri-Pen - makers of the Triad.  The calendar on David's example includes all of 1937, suggesting that his is was made at the end of 1936 -- a year or two before mine.

Wow.  Cool looks, cool calendar, sweet Buick stuff, great patent mystery AND a lingering possibility of some connection to Triad?

Almost.  Nearly three years ago now, I wrote an article about that clip.  It was the subject of a design patent, not by Tri-Pen, but by Mabie Todd.  (Death and Transfiguration Part Two: The Transfiguration of Triad), at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/03/death-and-transfiguration-part-ii.html

The clip was found on a large, sterling pencil I ran across years ago, shown in this picture alongside a Mabie Todd and a couple of “lesser Triads”:

The top of the pencil was a hollow space, and the long slit along the side led me to believe it might be a Ross Memo sort of pencil, with an onboard roll of paper for writing notes:

Now I know it probably contained one of Joseph Fisher’s scrolling calendar attachments, and the probable maker of David’s pencil was not Tri-Pen, but Mabie Todd:

Whew . . . I need a drink of water.

Rex Manufacturing Company: Father of the Triad

As I was mentioning yesterday  (https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/03/prequel-lets-make-that-birth-death-and.html), my research into the history of the Tri-Pen Manufacturing Company, makers of the original Triad pens and pencils, was yielding unexpected evidence that there may be a connection between the Rex Manufacturing Company and Tri-Pen.

The first clue I found came from a book titled "Michnapert the Citadel: A History of Armenians in Rhode Island," by Varoujan Karentz (iUniverse, Inc. 2004). At page 190, Karentz presents a brief autobiographical sketch of one Harry (Movsesian) Burt, and states that Burt owned several prosperous companies in Providence, including "Rex Mfg.,Triad Pen and Royal Moulding."

Karentz’ sketch appears to be based on oral history and contains a couple of inaccuracies. There was no "Triad Pen" (there was a Tri-Pen Manufacturing Co. until 1932 and a Triangle Pen Co. after 1940). Also, while Harry Burt was a Vice President of Tri-Pen, Burt’s contributions to Tri-Pen and Rex appears to be overstated – apparently George Coby and Howard Sweet, the president/design patentee and sales manager of Tri-Pen, respectively, weren’t Armenian.

However, after I enlisted David Nishimura’s help in piecing together the Tri-pen puzzle, I was able to confirm more of a connection between the two companies. David’s study of the 1931-2 Providence directories revealed that Charles Okoomian, the secretary of Tri-Pen Manufacturing Company, was also the president of Rex Manufacturing Company; George Coby, president of Tri-Pen, was the treasurer of Rex.

Rex was located, according to the 1931-2 directory, at 69 Gordon in Providence. As was also the case with Tri-Pen, that was the last time Rex was listed.

The following year, 69 Gordon was occupied by Edgewood Pen and Royal Moulding, both in connection with none other than Harry Burt.

All of these clues put together a nice story, but what I really wanted to see was an artifact that would definitively connect the two companies. The good folks at Google, bless their hearts, led me straight to it.

The thumbnail picture which popped up in the "images of Triad Pencil" section of my Google search was described as a "Rex Triad pencil." Since it was just a thumbnail the picture was pretty grainy, but it appeared to show two views of a yellow pencil that looked like it had a Rex clip assembly. The picture linked me back to an online auction that had closed a few months earlier -- long enough ago that all it provided was a blank error message for that item number.

So I Googled the auction listing number, which led me straight to the feedback forum for the buyer and the seller.  That enabled me to send each of them a message asking for a better picture from the auction. The seller never responded, but the buyer did and his response and generosity bowled me over.

It turns out that wasn’t two views of the same pencil in that thumbnail picture – there were actually two identical pencils in that auction. Since they were identical, and one was missing the cap, the guy offered to send me one if I provided him my address. I jumped at the opportunity and, about a week later, I received a package from Puerto Rico. Here’s what was inside:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Prequel: Let's Make That Birth, Death and Transfiguration

While I was researching the Triad articles that posted here recently, I stumbled upon a little detail that I thought was just an interesting side note to the Triad saga.  I was suspecting that there may be a connection between the Tri-Pen Manufacturing Company and another Providence, Rhode Island company: the Rex Manufacturing Company.

For a long time, I have championed the Rex as the great-granddaddy of so many brands of pencils. The example I have pictured on page 125 of The Catalogue is pretty tired, but until recently it was the only one I had seen:

It’s kind of hard to tell from what’s left of this poor thing, but there’s a whole gaggle of pencils that were spawned from this design. Here’s just a few:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.