The Leadhead's Pencil Blog

Monday, August 7, 2017

At the Intersection of My Two Obsessions

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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The most fun I have when it comes to writing this blog is the thrill of writing about things no one has written about before. I often feel like all of these clues and random facts are just laying on the ground all over the place, just waiting for someone to pick them up, organize them a bit and see the story which, in combination, they tell.

Nowhere is that more true than when it comes to two manufacturers I’ve been researching for years: the DeWitt-LaFrance Company of Boston, best known as the maker of the Superite, and the Rex Manufacturing Company of Providence, Rhode Island. Both of these companies had a profound influence on the American pencil industry during the late teens and the twenties ... and both were almost completely forgotten.

How two such prominent manufacturers could simply vanish has fascinated me to the point of obsession – you can’t do an online search on either of these two companies without running into a slew of posts here, and not much else. Joe Nemecek has often joked with me that by the time I’m done researching things, I will have concluded that everything was manufactured by either one or the other.

With that bit of background, imagine if my research led me to a connection between the two . . .

When this pencil surfaced in an online auction recently, it set off an alarm somewhere deep in my mind that even with a missing clip, this was a key piece of a much larger puzzle. It led me to retrace my steps and, with the benefit of a couple years’ worth of hindsight, to see things a bit more clearly.

The research I did involved the metal Eclipse “Never-Dull” pencils, beginning with a 2013 article titled “Never a Dull Moment” (http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/06/never-dull-moment.html). I noted three variations of the Eclipse Never-Dull: one with a clip similar to that found on a Morrison, one sporting a patented DeWitt-LaFrance clip, and one identical to a sterling “Rexhold” Never-Dull. I later confirmed “Rexhold” was a Rex Manufacturing Company trademark (http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-definitive-answer-and-more-distinct.html).

And, at the end of the article, I noted that there was another brand marketed as a “Never-Dull”: the Albert Howard, which I had conclusively identified as having been made by DeWitt-LaFrance based on the distinctive pattern found on the barrel:

At the time the article ran, all I had was a picture of an Albert Howard owned by Sue Hershey. Some time later, I prevailed upon Sue to part with the pencil, and at the DC Show Rick Krantz had a full-sized version in his junk box.

I didn’t think either of these developments were noteworthy enough for an article; there were no new revelations to be had from Sue’s pencil once I had it in hand, and Rick’s example wasn’t in the best shape, with kind of a boring imprint:

So three years ago, these slipped quietly into my collection and I had not thought of them since . . . until this new Albert Howard came along and got me to thinking about these with fresh eyes.

This recent acquisition is identical to an Eclipse Never-Dull, with the same pattern as found on the Rexhold Never-Dull:

Which leads me back to Rick’s example; I wondered whether it fit into the Rex-made pile like this one, or into the DeWitt-LaFrance pile, along with the other Albert Howard. When I looked at it, I saw something that I had not noticed before:

It has alternating panels of that same floral brocading and a three-row checkerboard pattern identical to the pattern on another of my Eclipse Never-Dull pencils:

But it’s which one of them that is fascinating:

This Albert Howard is the perfect love child of the clearly Rex-made Eclipse and the equally clearly DeWitt-LaFrance-made Eclipse.

Sunday, August 6, 2017

No Monopoly on Copycats

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In my post yesterday about the Foley’s pencil with a Watermanesque riveted clip, it wasn’t the clip so much that led me to wonder about what association might have existed with Waterman. It was the history of the Foley name in connection with Aikin Lambert decades earlier which pointed me in that direction.

Once the Ferris patent expired, riveted clips were fair game. The most prolific manufacturer to follow in Waterman’s footsteps was Marathon – but we’ll get to that one later. The point is that there were other companies without Waterman ties which used the Waterman riveted clip after the patent expired.

For example, there was this one, which Rob Bader brought to the Chicago Show for me a couple years ago:

This poor thing doesn’t have much going for it, aside from that clip:

“Inlico” it reads, at least as far as I can tell. I’ve got nothing on this one. There’s no Federal trademark filed for the name, and nothing extraordinary about the pencil which would have been patented.

Saturday, August 5, 2017

An Irresistible Association

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This one came along in an online auction, and it makes me think things that I know aren’t right. At least, I think they aren’t right:

It looks a lot like a Sheaffer Titan, with that bell cap and jade color, and it’s about the same size. But the clip is what has me scratching my head:

“Foley’s,” on a riveted clip that appears to be made using the Ferris patent assigned to L.E. Waterman. The pencil would have been made in the late 1920s, certainly after the Ferris patent expired.

And yet . . .

The only Foleys I’m aware of in connection with pens or pencils are John Foley and D.F. Foley, nineteenth-century gold pen (nib) manufacturers whose contributions to the field were decades earlier than this pencil. D.F., John’s son, worked for Aikin Lambert at one time (he left the firm in 1888), and he later found himself named as a defendant in L.E. Waterman’s lawsuit against A.A. Waterman. Waterman, of course, absorbed Aikin Lambert.

Like I said, I know none of this has anything to do with a pencil marked “Foley’s,” made decades later . . . even if it was made using an expired Waterman patent for the clip. But all this history swirling around Foley, Aikin Lambert and L.E. Waterman keeps me wondering about this one.

Friday, August 4, 2017

Lund in America?

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Not too long ago, I posted an article about the Lund, pencils which have an external spiral to propel the lead:

The pencils are attributed to William Lund of London due to the English patent awarded to him in 1856, although many examples are unmarked. In fact, of the three shown in that previous article, only one was marked:

Another example recently came up in an online auction, and I had to bite on it because it was just different enough from the others, and had just enough more design flair, that I thought it would look nice alongside the others:

The seller indicated in her acution listing that the pencil had some faint lettering on it, which she couldn’t quite make out. I spent a good bit of time with a loupe under a strong light to see what I could see, and eventually I began to discern a few letters and numbers. Of course, as hard as it was to make out on the pencil with a magnifier, it was next to impossible to catch a faint imprint on a black barrel with a camera. Here’s the closest I got:

You can barely make out “AUG” in this picture, which is the clearest of the letters. After a while, I was able to make out “PATENT AUG 10 __8 GD Y.”

Wait a minute, I thought. That’s not a British imprint . . . that’s American (note that the only other marked example I have says “Lund Patentee”). Since the only thing I was sure of was that we had an American patent from August 10, issued in a year probably ending in the number 8, there was only one resource I knew of that could help:

(P.S. – the book is still available at http://www.legendaryleadcompany.com/store/p14/American_Writing_Instrument_Patents_1799-1910.html).

I thumbed through the section organized by date and number. Since patents are only issued on Tuesdays in the United States, that narrowed my search and within a minute, I had found my answer. It’s a patent I’ve written about here before:

Austin G. Day’s patent for a method of making “caoutchouc,” or hard rubber, was issued on August 10, 1858 (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/09/that-third-interesting-holland.html for more on the Day story). The patent completes the puzzle nicely, and my “Lund” bears an imprint that reads “PATENT AUG 10 58 A.G.DAY.”

That’s one mystery solved, but another question raised. We know from the history of Austin G. Day’s invention that it was issued shortly after Nelson Goodyear’s 1851 patent was posthumously “reissued” in 1858 and that a flurry of litigation between Day and Goodyear’s estate quickly resulted in a court holding that Day’s innovation was actually covered under the umbrella of Goodyear’s 1851 patent.

That means this pencil was made sometime between late 1858 and 1860.

In America.

While William Lund was awarded an English patent in 1856.

Was there an American branch of the Lund operations? Was there any relationship between William Lund and Austin G. Day (or whoever commissioned this pencil to be made from his compound)? No patent appears to have been awarded in the United States for the Lund design:

I don’t know.

Yet.

Thursday, August 3, 2017

A Trio of Tri-Points

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It’s been awhile since I wrote about the Nichols Products Corporation’s line of Tri-Point pencils. I’ve had a real soft spot for the brand since I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to acquire Edgar B. Nichols’ personal stash of prototypes, shop models and experimental pieces (Nichols was the inventor of the pencil). Here’s two out of the three new ones that have come my way recently:

The black one is interesting, not only with that color mix with the “mother of toilet seat” top, but the absence of a metal tip: it’s the first I’ve seen in the wild. All the other examples I know of were in Edgar Nichols’ shop (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/06/they-didnt-only-make-one.html), and it is nice to see my suspicion confirmed that the marbled ones were in fact production pieces:

The gray marbled example is interesting in that it’s the only application I’ve seen of Edgar’s creepiest patent, design patent 97,203, which was applied for on August 7, 1935 and granted on October 15, 1935:

Here’s the top end of the Tri-Point:

Although it would appear that Nichols had a taste for the macabre, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation why someone would want an eyeball ornamenting their pencil. One of Nichols’ biggest customers was RCA Victor, which had the company make several variations of pencils promoting the company’s radio tubes (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2011/12/mono-point-wouldnt-have-sold-very-well.html). In 1932, Allen B. DuMont invented a new radio tube which had a disc mounted on the top which glowed brighter depending on the relative strength of the signal received or audio output. These green glowing tubes were put on the market in 1935 by RCA Victor as the “Magic Eye Tube” to assist with tuning into radio broadcasts:

So if you don’t mind a goofy eyeball staring back at you from your shirt pocket, this is an interesting bit of radio history.

The third Tri-Point I’ve got to show you came my way through the auction at the Raleigh Pen Show . . . I was bidding on a larger lot of pencils, in which this one wasn’t what I was really going after. Brian McQueen was also in the bidding – and it was what he was chasing.

After the auction was over, Brian asked if I would part with it, and I said I needed to compare it to my stash first, and after I did so, I had to tell him that no, I couldn’t part with it. Not only did I not have that color:

I didn’t have one with that clip, either.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

The Big H

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I’ve got a couple reasons to circle back around to W.S. Hicks, the New York manufacturer about which I’ve written a few times. As I was organizing around the museum, there were a couple of examples I haven’t shown you that I’ve been meaning to. Here’s the first one:

The mechanism appears to be the Mabie 1853 patent, with a nose that advances by twisting the back half of the pencil, but this one is much later, which I know from the hallmark at the top of the pencil:

That big H, with a W above the crossbar and an S below it, is a Hicks mark I’m asked about frequently. I can now tell you, with the assistance of American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953, that it is a great help in dating the pencil:

William S. Hicks’ Sons registered the mark in 1914, and in the application, Edward D. Hicks claimed that it was first used by the firm on November 1, 1912; so much as we like to refer to pencils such as this one as “Victorians,” it is Victorian in style only . . . that mark reveals that it was made after Victoria died in 1901, and in fact after her successor died, as well . . . “Georgian” woudl be a more historically accurate name for one like this.

The ringtop looks freakishly large on this one, which gives you some idea how small this one is:

Here it is shown alongside that massive multicolor Hicks/Cartier I wrote about last year (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/10/hicks-family-oddities-ii.html).

There was one other W.S. Hicks pencil that turned up while I was reorganizing things that I wanted to show you:

This one also has the post-1912 mark on it, which isn’t at all surprising on this one (the mechanism, we know, was patented in 1918 – see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/10/hicks-family-oddities-i.html).

What’s interesting about this one is the machine work that went into the barrel . . . I can’t tell if this was pressed, stamped or acid etched. I don’t think it’s machine chased or engraved:

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Not Your Garden Variety Scripto

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A couple years ago, I bought this one from Michael Little . . . and promptly misplaced it, lost in a sea of ordinary metal Scripto pencils:

Ever since, I’ve been afraid to part with any metal Scripto, because I knew it probably had to be in there . . . somewhere. I was relieved when I reorganized things around the museum a few weeks ago to see it turn up.

It’s got the same Scripto metal hexagonal barrel, and the same faceted accommodation clip you’ll see on a Scripto, but the clip doesn’t say Scripto:

“G-M Inc.” And the top section, where you’ll normally find the familiar Scripto imprint?

“Rite-Ezee / Gettier-Montanye, Inc. / Baltimore MD”

Gettier-Montanye is a specialty advertising company, like Brown & Bigelow and Alexander. The company is still in business, although it doesn’t offer writing instruments anymore, claiming a founding date of 1922 on its website.

What is somewhat interesting for an ordinary specialty advertising firm is the adoption of a model name for a writing instrument: Rite-Ezee – but we know that’s exactly what they did, thanks to a great new book on the subject, American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953 (shameless plug ... the book is available at http://www.legendaryleadcompany.com/store/c2/Books_by_Jonathan_Veley.html):

United States Trademark number 343,631 was applied for on October 17, 1936 and registered on February 23, 1937.

Carlyle N. Montanye, the company’s president, claimed that the name was first used on or about June 1, 1935. We know Montanye’s first name was Carlyle because he spelled his name out when he refiled the Rite-Ezee trademark after the Lanham Act of 1946, as number 515,370.

In the case of this Scripto-made pencil, it was easy to associate Rite-Ezee with Gettier-Montanye . . . but that isn’t always the case. After I started this article, I scoped around online and found this one:

Unlike the Scripto-made example, this doesn’t have the Gettier-Montanye name on it – just “Rite-Ezee” on the clip:

I’ve always associated pencils like these, with shorter lower barrels and longer upper barrels, with the Joseph Lipic Company of St. Louis.