Not Quite Right

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 6, now on sale at The Legendary Lead Company.  I have just a few hard copies left of the first printing, available here, and an ebook version in pdf format is available for download here.

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

Here’s a throwback from two cameras ago: I found this Waterman pencil at a show several years ago, and never got around to writing about it:

The clip gives this one away as a Waterman:

I’ve got a number of these in different colors, but at the time I didn’t recall having an example in plain ol’ black and pearl (or nacre, in Watermanese).  The 1933 catalog refers to these as the “Short Ninety Two,” but the pencils were Model 91v (the “v,” in Watermanese, was for vest pocket model, even though these had clips).

But there’s something that didn’t look quite right about this pencil, and the point is best illustrated by showing it alongside other 91v pencils:

The ones on the left have a two-part nose section with a hard rubber portion, reminiscent of other Waterman models such as the Patrician, introduced in 1929.  Since the 1933 catalog shows the 91v with a plain nose drive mechanism, I’m betting that the mechanism was simplified in the interests of cost-cutting as the Depression wore on.   Note that there’s three different styles: a thin long rubber section, a thin short one, and a stubby short one. 

And notice one other thing:

The 1933 catalog doesn’t show a nose with those ribs around the ferrule.

A Taste of Normal

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 6, now on sale at The Legendary Lead Company.  I have just a few hard copies left of the first printing, available here, and an ebook version in pdf format is available for download here.

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

In that recent article I published about the Waterman Patrician (https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2020/04/putting-that-first-year-designation-to.html), there was something in that first picture that bugged me.  If you are OCD like me, you already know what I’m talking about:

Yeah.  My banded turquoise has the same clip from the Waterman Number 7, rather than the traditional Patrician clip . . . and (cue fingernails on a chalkboard) it doesn’t match the clip on all the other banded Patrician pencils in that picture.

The reason has been my fascination with “closeout” Patricians made in the late 1930s, using leftover parts from the Patrician line blended with parts from later models.  I’ve written about those several times here – most recently at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/12/three-patricians-from-ohio-pen-show.html (if you’ve got the Leadhead’s books, the seminal article explaining these - “With Apologies to Mr. Nishimura,” is in Volume 2, starting at page 37).

Patrician pencils, especially in the more desirable colors like turquoise, are expensive.  Given a choice between a “normal” one and a closeout edition, I’ve found the latter more interesting; satisfied with what’s in my collection, I haven’t been going out of my way looking to drop a fair amount of change on something that feels . . . frankly, a little anticlimactic.

But with that picture sticking between my ears like a pebble in your shoe, I happened to stumble across normal, and at a reasonable price:

So there’s a nice range of Patrician pencils in turquoise, from bandless “first year” (not really), banded normal, banded but with a No. 7 clip as Patrician clips ran out, and at bottom, one made after Waterman’s supply of Patrician clips, bands and longer nose sections had all run dry:

Staging all those pencils from the first picture was a bit of a pain in the rear, and I’ve not gotten around to reshooting it.  Guess for now, I’ve just pulled that pebble out of one shoe and put it in my other one!

Rather than Curse the Darkness

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 6, now on sale at The Legendary Lead Company.  I have just a few hard copies left of the first printing, available here, and an ebook version in pdf format is available for download here.

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

April of 2020, the most hellish month most of us can remember, is over.  It seemed appropriate to light a pencil rather than curse the darkness, and there’s a few lighter pencils that have come my way recently that I’ve got to show you.

The first was this one:

This one came my way in a lot of junkers – my real target in buying the bunch was that bronze and black Gordon I wrote about a week ago.  I always carefully inspect everything that comes in the door, and this one was marked “Jugo” on the clip:

And since I also have to take everything apart that comes in the door, it wasn’t long before I found out it was a lighter pencil:

Complete with an unusual lighter assembly, built different from the usual cylindrical lighter unit that just slips down inside the barrel.  The lighter part just screws into the top end of the barrel, acting as a kind of cork on top of a barrel full of lighter fluid:

Trick pencils like this are something I enjoy, so I went to put it with the other lighter pencils in one of my drawers full of bad ideas.  That’s when I found something I forgot I had:

This wasn’t my first Jugo, and the other example is mint, boxed and with paperwork.  The silver one has a clip that’s actually built into the barrel rather than a washer clip:

The instruction sheet indicates that the Jugo Corporation was located at 600 West 52nd Street, New York:

While I was putting the new Jugo in its place alongside this one, I noticed another lighter pencil I had forgotten that I had. 

I vaguely remember buying this years ago, and it has a lot in common with those Osborne overlays I was showing off recently (see “Customer Number 600 at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2020/04/customer-number-600.html). 

What surprised me the most was that I apparently had never disturbed those tissue-thin instructions to see what was inside them.  At some point I must have put it away intending to get around to doing that, but for whatever reason I never did. 

Better late than never:

The instructions for the “Literpencil” are just wonderful, with nice comic book like illustrations, a great logo, and . . . wait a tick . . .

I’ll be darned.  I guess I already knew these were Osborne products, after all!  And it’s even dated, to 1934:

I’ve got one more lighter pencil to show you - I teased the audience on Facebook with it, along with a suggestion that it might make a Waterman fan’s head explode:

The clip is unmistakably the same one found on the Waterman Patrician - here it is alongside the Patrician from yesterday’s article, and flanked on the other side by a “Sta-Rite” pencil:

I’d written about the mystery surrounding how a Waterman Patrician clip wound up on a third-tier Sta-Rite in October, 2018 (see https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2018/10/two-puzzling-details.html):

Did Waterman make a lighter pencil?  That is a tantalizing thought . . . especially given some sharp gasps heard when I shared a picture of this pencil without any explanation.  However, this one isn’t marked . . . and now that I’ve found both this and a Sta-Rite with that same clip, I’m less likely to think this is authentic Waterman; more likely is that Waterman sold off leftover clips, as unlikely as that sounds given Waterman’s propensity to use up old parts on closeout models.

The way this one is put together might provide a clue as to whom Waterman sold these clips.

 You’ve seen that here before, a long, long time ago:

Back in 2013, I wrote about this pencil (the article is in the books, in The Leadhead’s Pencil Blog Volume 2, page 18).  That one was marked A.M.W., an acronym for Art Metal Works, makers of the ubiquitous Penciliter.  Included in the article was the patent associated with this pencil, awarded to Louis Aronson (whose name formed the basis for the trade name he adopted - "Ronson") on June 8, 1920 as number 1,342,838.

And. . . Aronson did adapt this early design to something very similar to today’s mystery pencil – the “Lite-O-Rite” (see The Leadhead’s Pencil Blog Vol. 1, page 142):

But there’s something that doesn’t make sense here.  Every Art Metal Works product was marked to the hilt like an Egyptian obelisk.  I’m convinced if the company had stayed in business any longer they would have made the pencils an inch bigger to accommodate all the latest patent numbers!

So we have a completely unmarked pencil, with a Waterman patented clip and an Art Metal Works patented lighter unit.  Did one license to the other, did both of them license to some third party or did neither of them license to some huckster who pirated both of their designs?

Maybe.

Putting that "First Year" Designation to the Test

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 6, now on sale at The Legendary Lead Company.  I have just a few hard copies left of the first printing, available here, and an ebook version in pdf format is available for download here.

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

It’s been a while since I’ve written about Waterman Patricians:

The Patrician was introduced in 1929 with great fanfare . . . and just before the stock market crash signaled the onset of the Great Depression.  Most of the articles I’ve written here have been about the weird “closeout Patrician” models from the late 1930s, which used up parts and mixed and matched different elements.

Today, I’m going to examine the other end of the Patrician timeline and some assumptions I made when I wrote The Catalogue.  The Patrician appears on page 163 of the book, along with a discussion of so-called “first year” Patrician pencils – those which lack a center band:

“Pencils without bands are referred to as "first year" models, and there is some evidence to support this. First, the moss agate color was not introduced until 1932, and no bandless examples are known to exist. Additionally, note that the bandless examples all have a clip that is slightly wider: the patent application for the original clip was filed by Gabriel Larsen on October 22, 1929 (and received patent number 1,808,779 on June 9, 1931); Larsen applied for a patent for an improved clip on May 8, 1930, receiving patent number 1,923,269 on August 22, 1933.”

To make this a little easier, here’s Larsen’s patent 1,808,779:

And here’s number 1,923,269:

What is consistent in my straw poll is that bandless examples usually seem to have the gawkier 1929 design, while those with bands have the more polished 1930 design.  But there’s a lot of “ifs” built into any statement that a bandless Patrician pencil is a “first year” pencil.  If Waterman turned the calendar to 1930, and if at that time Larsen’s clip was ready to enter production, and if the company was willing to dispose of leftover 1929 clips rather than using them up . . . then we might have something concrete to go on.

Personally, I’ve never believed that the “first year”/bandless connection was particularly solid; the moniker, however, is a handy (not to mention lucrative) nickname.

There’s another problem: bandless Patricians which are obviously not made during the first year of production are out there, and they are out there a lot.  Onyx, the color at far left in the first picture above, wasn’t introduced until 1930, but bandless onyx pencils are (by Patrician standards) a common sight.  And moss agate, that green and bronze color, may not come in a banded form on the regular production line, but I did find and write about a closeout model in that configuration (https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/12/three-patricians-from-ohio-pen-show.html):

Last week, another Patrician turned up in an online auction which provided a unique opportunity to test my theory, and the price was extremely reasonable:

It was cheap because it bears an advertising imprint - normally, I’d agree that would be problematic on something like a Patrician, but this one suggested that it might provide a bit of historical context:

“Crane & Company / Printers, Binders, Stationers / Topeka, Kansas / 64 Years Young.”  This looks promising: an executive wouldn’t imprint something like “64 years young” on a pencil – especially an expensive, top-of-the-line flagship model like the Patrician – unless he was dead sure when his own company was founded.   So, when the pencil arrived, I started poking around to see if I could find out when Crane & Company in Topeka, Kansas was founded.

It didn’t take long.  The 1889 edition of Caspar’s Directory of the American Book, News and Stationary Trade and Kindred Branches lists Crane & Co.:

The listing is a bit difficult to read.  The George W. Crane Publishing Company, “the only complete Law Book Store West of Chicago and St. Louis,” had been succeeded by Crane & Co., and the company was established in 1868.

I add 64 to 1868 and get 1932 – three years after that first year of 1929, and my pencil is bandless.

Yes, it’s possible that leftover and obsolete products were used for advertisers like this.  Yes, it’s possible that the reason bandless and banded pencils are about equal in number is because demand sharply declined after the onset of the Depression.  Yes, it’s possible that after tooling up to make Larsen’s first clips, the company didn’t have much appetite to switch gears when he came up with a better version just a few months later.

But I believe at least this example of a “first year” bandless Patrician was sold three years after that first year.

Two Puzzling Details

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.

The Sta-Rite appears in The Catalogue on page 151.  At the time I only had turned up a few of the plastic models, and since I didn’t catch the hyphen in the name on the clip, I identified them as the “Starite.”  The metal examples I’ve stumbled across since the book was written:

Early metal ones have a nice script logo stamped on them:

While most plastic ones have the name in vertical block print, I have found one with that script imprint:

There’s two things that bug me about the Sta-Rite, one of which I’ve mostly figured out and the second . . . well, you’ll see about that.  The first is a tantalizing snippet view from the May 29, 1926 edition of Fourth Estate, which told me almost everything I want to know: the manufacturers of Sta-Rite pens and pencils were located at 158 Pine Street, Providence, Rhode Island . . . but it didn’t tell me who the manufacturer was.  The cut-off advertisement even suggests there’s a trademark filed, but none turned up in the course of researching American Writing Instrument Trademarks.

After far too much flailing around, I was finally able to generate a snippet which provided the preceding few words:  Improved Pencil Company.  Now that’s a company with which I’m familiar!  It was established in 1922, according to this announcement in the Jewelers’ Circular on January 11, 1922:

The company was on my radar for another reason entirely: in 1933, the Improved Pencil Company moved into the former facilities of The Tri-Pen Manufacturing Company, makers of Triad pens and pencils – see Volume 2, page 73. 

Now for the second head-scratcher concerning the Sta-Rite.  Recently, I brought this example home:

If that clip looks familiar, it should:

That’s a Waterman Patrician.

With the same clip, protected by Waterman’s design patents:

We know from the “closeout Patricians” that Waterman used up old Patrician parts until they were exhausted – the company didn’t sell them off to some jobber to stamp with a third-tier brand name!