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.

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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.

The Long Way Around The Barn

When I wrote the articles on the Tri-Pen Manufacturing Company and the Triangle Pen Company, the one thing I didn’t have on hand to show you was the V-Mail pencil that started it all. I came close to getting one when another example popped up in an online auction a couple weeks before the article was going to publish – excitedly, I bid crazy money on the lot of four pencils to ensure that I would get it, so my article would be complete . .
.
And I lost. Outbid in the final few seconds.

I knew I was partly responsible. I listed these as "Triads" in The Catalogue, and with more-than-usual hubbub at the Philly show about these, it’s easy to see how a small feeding frenzy over these would happen.

But the funny ending to this story comes at the Baltimore show, when Jim Carpenito says he’s got some things to show me:

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.

Death and Transfiguration Part II: The Transfiguration of Triad

When we left off yesterday (see https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/02/death-and-transfiguration-part-i-death.html), the Tri-Pen Manufacturing Company of Providence, Rhode Island, vanished without a trace in 1932, leaving the Improved Pencil Company to take over its space at 581 Pawtucket, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. What happened next is sketchy.

One possibility is that the Improved Pencil Co. began turning out pencils just like whatever Tri-Pen was making when it shut down, using existing materials and machinery that Tri-Pen left behind.

I don’t think so, for one simple reason – the clip:

As I was writing this article, I was racking my brain trying to remember where else I’d seen that clip before. I finally remembered:

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.