Another LeBoeuf Footnote

I attended the Commonwealth Pen Show in Boston for the first time in the fall of 2022. None of us knew at the time that it would be the last show at the Bunker Hill Holiday Inn; the 2023 show was canceled after the hotel backed out of hosting the show, and after an impromptu smaller 2023 event, the show returned for 2024 in new hands and at a new location. 

Janet went with me, and while it was wonderful to have her along, the company doubled my expenses with two plane tickets, double the food, and I couldn’t share the hotel room. Never mind . . . I went to this show for the first time primarily to “spread the gospel” about the great things I’ve been doing with my new Legendary Pencil Company.

Besides, as I’ve often said, I’ve had financially disastrous pen shows - but I’ve never had a bad one.

While I took a bath financially on the whole affair (including a missed connecting flight home which added a last-minute, hideously expensive overnight stay at the only hotel that had a room available), the show did not disappoint as far as buying opportunities were concerned. The Boston pen community typically doesn’t venture far from home, and there were many vendors I had never met in person who had boxes of stuff I had never pawed through before.

One of these vendors was Jeffrey Krasner, with whom I have shared an on again, off again friendship on Facebook. Nothing negative has ever happened . . . I think Jeff is one of those people who occasionally culls his friends list and for whatever reason, a couple times I didn’t make the cut.

On the first day of the show I was browsing through the things on Jeff’s table, and he mentioned that he had a whole box of pencils at home. Since he’s local to the Boston area, he offered to bring them for me to look at.

I did more than look. I bought the whole box, and it made my trip. Here are two of the things that were in there:

Neither is marked and had they not been together, I’m not sure I would have caught what they were. That green and black is the same celluloid Moore sometimes used (in addition to numerous other manufacturers), but that little rib at the middle joint, coupled with the trim band just a wee bit farther than what looks natural are the giveaways.

The clip on the other example makes that one much easier to identify as a later LeBoeuf, made after the original incarnation of the LeBoeuf Pen Company filed for bankruptcy in 1933 and was reformed as the LeBoeuf-Pilgrim Pen Company, Inc. Here are the new additions, shown alongside the two I wrote about in “A Tale of Two Clips” (May 8, 2020: Volume 6, page 98):

It is unfortunate that the new addition with the clip is oriented so that the “dark side” faces forward. Viewed from the side, that telltale LeBoeuf glow is more apparent:

I’ll be writing about many more things that came from Jeff’s box o’wonders . . . mostly variations of things represented at the museum but in different colors . . . but there were a few other surprises to report.

Jeff and I are again Facebook buddies, probably permanently this time (assuming I can keep my mouth shut during the upcoming election season). Those of us in a drinking state of mind frequented the Irish-themed “Tavern at the End of the World” on a daily basis that weekend; it was the only watering hole within walking distance from the hotel. Jeff joined our crew that last day to help us solve the world’s problems, and that provided us with the opportunity for us to get to know each other better.

“Get Thee to a Pen Show,” as David Isaacson often remarks. I wound up that weekend with a couple nice LeBoeufs, the rest of a boxful to write about, and a solid friendship. Sure, the wallet was a bit lighter, but what the heck . . . money is overrated.

The Silent Cue

 Here’s a shot of one of the other trays I acquired from Jon Martenson at the “catch up” Chicago show in September 2021:

Finding examples of The Keeran Pencil in any condition is cause for celebration, as rare as they are. In this tray are two examples, shown on the right . . . the others we’ll get to tomorrow.  

Finding two examples of the Keeran which neatly fill in one detail in the history of the American pencil industry, however . . . now that is cause to sing praises to the universe that you were in the right place at the right time.

Gorgeous colors, yes . . . especially that golden brown, which resembles tiger eye and absolutely glows as if it is a living thing. The colors are stunning both to look at and to think about, because they exist somewhere else:

The ringtops are pencils made by the LeBoeuf Pen Company of Boston . . . or at least the barrels are. The mechanisms were sourced from A.T. Cross, which used identical mechanisms on Cross “Alwrite” pencils. The red is an exact match; unfortunately I didn’t have a ringtop in that distinctive brown, but that pink has the same depth. As for the brown, I do have one from LeBoeuf’s later “Pilgrim” line of pencils, which featured in “A Tale of Two Clips” (May 20, 2020: Volume 6, page 98):

And then, consider this example: it also turned up at that Chicago Show, in the hands of Eric Fonville:

This one resides in the cancer ward at the museum, since the celluloid is well into the process of disintegration. The nasty gasses celluloid gives off when it breaks down corrodes metal trim and will affect other items stored nearby, so this Keeran only joins birds of a feather for the occasional photo shoot, such as this one, alongside three other LeBoeuf pencils:

We tend to become jaded as we gain experience in this hobby, dismissing theories connecting manufacturers on the basis of celluloid material. It is true that the same or similar plastics is not usually a reliable indication of a connection between two manufacturers or producer. After all, celluloid companies sold to the entire American industry, and there is frequent “cross-pollination” as the same celluloids were supplied to several makers.

But not this time. Although celluloid had been in use during the Nineteenth Century, LeBoeuf’s pioneering use of celluloid in the early 1920s is frequently credited as triggering the industry-wide shift from metal and hard rubber barrels to brightly colored plastics. Furthermore, LeBoeuf had negotiated an exclusive contract with DuPont for the celluloids it used.

I had long suspected, but could not prove, that there was some cooperation between Charles Keeran and LeBoeuf to supply some plastics, since Keeran pencils are found in celluloid and were made in the early 1920s, when LeBoeuf still had somewhat of a lock on the stuff. As detailed in A Century of Autopoint, for a brief period after Keeran’s departure from Autopoint he associated with the Dur-O-Lite Pencil Company. Dur-O-Lite’s first president, D.O. Fredrickson, left a partnership in Smith and Fredrickson, which distributed writing instruments for . . . wait for it . . . LeBoeuf.

In most of the world, there are seven degrees of separation. In the pencil world, there are usually two at best.

Finding examples of the Keeran Pencil in plastics known to be exclusive to LeBoeuf nudges me from suspecting a connection between Keeran and LeBoeuf to accepting it as fact, one which fits neatly into Keeran’s post-Autopoint activities. Even without primary evidence to indicate when the Keeran Pencil was made (such as an advertisement), I believe they were made in 1924 - just as LeBoeuf was shaking up the writing instrument world with its snazzy new celluloids.

And then . . . clearing my throat for dramatic effect . . . should you still remain unconvinced, these images are from an online auction that closed shortly after I wrote the first draft of this article. I am still kicking myself that I had saved it in my watch list, then diligently forgot to bid on it.

Here is a Keeran Pencil, in yet another exclusive LeBoeuf celluloid, in the company of a LeBoeuf pen in the same material, all together in a LeBoeuf-marked box. The Keeran Pencil was marketed in sets alongside LeBoeuf pens, at least for a short time.

Yes, the LeBoeuf Pen Company popularized the use of attractive celluloids in pens and pencils in 1924 . . . and so did Charles Keeran and his Keeran Pencil.

A Beautiful Mystery

 At the Chicago show a couple years ago – I think it was the post-pandemic “catch up” Chicago Show in 2021, when there was a second Chicago show in September – Jon Martenson had piles of things from the late Susan Wirth’s collection on hand. Most of it was likely stuff that Susan herself didn’t know she had.

Deals were made by the box, not by the item, and I bought several. One such box included this gem:

The similarities to Charles Keeran’s Eversharp are overwhelming, particularly with that floral crown top. However, it has no identifying markings - not even a stamp to denote that the fittings and overlay are sterling silver, which they appear to be. It bears a strong resemblance to other pencils of the 1920s, all of which have one thing in common: a connection to Keeran:

From the top, there’s our mystery pencil, a Heath-made Ever Sharp (two words at the time) made between 1914 and 1916. Next are two examples of “The Keeran Pencil,” produced by Keeran after his departure from Eversharp in 1917 and likely after Keeran was ousted from Autopoint for the second time in 1924. The clipless example is a shame, but I include it to show that Keeran also used that same or very similar red celluloid.

At bottom are two Swanberg pencils. After Keeran struck out on his own, he briefly associated with Julius Swanberg, inventor of the “Shur-Rite” pencil. Earlier celluloid Swanbergs were rebadged Keeran pencils, but later examples like the example at bottom were more streamlined.

What is going on inside of our mystery pencil, however, doesn’t resemble any of these:

Starting at left, note that the later Swanberg and our mystery pencil share a similar ribbed metal washer: that’s a distinctive design feature one doesn’t see often outside of Swanberg pencils. However, the cap on our example unscrews to reveal spare leads - it is a nose drive pencil. That nose drive sets our pencil apart from the Eversharp to the right of our pencil. While both The Keeran Pencil and Swanbergs are both nose-drive pencils like this, both have caps which are friction fit over a straight top.

The quality of our mystery pencil is top notch; it is a shame more were not made and that this one is not marked. My best guess is that this is something Keeran had made during the time he was set adrift from Autopoint in 1921, although nothing says he might not have been tinkering with new designs before he left Autopoint. The timeline is tight, since he associated with the owners of the startup Realite Pencil Company almost immediately in 1921, but perhaps his agreement was not exclusive.

The use of celluloid in the barrel rules out the possibility that it was made earlier than 1924, and likely rules out the possibility that some other unknown maker turned this one out with design features that copy Keeran’s work . . . I’ll talk about that tomorrow.

So, for now, this one rests comfortably among my examples of The Keeran Pencil.

An Answer Courtesy of Dex

The 2023 Triangle Pen Show (aka the Raleigh Pen Show) was the first at its current venue – a “more Southern” sort of hotel, in Terry Mawhorter’s words – with a staff that was extraordinary by pen show standards. It was the first time I have asked a hotel restaurant employee what time the bar opened – 3 o’clock, he said, but then he offered to get me something from the bar.

It was 11:00 a.m. More Southern, indeed.

Other than the unusually gracious hospitality, one other thing made the show this year unusual. At the end of the weekend, as I packed up and headed home, I had added only two pencils to my collection. This was one of them:

It came to me within ten minutes of my arrival from Dexter (“Dex”) Mills, who was set up just a few yards from my display. I had rolled my hand truck overloaded with stuff into the ballroom, and I hadn’t even started to unpack before Dex flagged me down to show me something.

There’s three things I know when Dex says he has something to show me: first, Dex has a really good eye for pencils. Second, as a Loyal Knight he avidly reads the blog, both online and in the copies of my books he’s picked up. When Dex shows me something, he already knows it is a missing piece of some puzzle over which I have been puzzling.

Third, Dex is a collector first and foremost – if he bought a pencil, it was something he has acquired because he wants to keep it. 

At the preceding Ohio Show in November 2022, as I was taking my final swings at acquiring missing examples of Sheaffer pencils to include in A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils. Dex came to my table during preshow trading  to excitedly show me a brown Sheaffer utility pencil fitted with the rare “clicker type” repeating mechanism, which he had just picked up for a song. 

Before my Sheaffer book was published, few people even knew that these existed, since from all outward appearances they are identical to the much more common twist pencils with a fixed eraser. I had them in all colors, including a rare cutaway demonstrator . . . but I didn’t have a brown one. The draft text for that photo caption said that I’d never seen one, but there wasn’t any reason why one didn’t exist.

Now I knew one did . . . but Dex wasn’t about to part with it. “I’m just as happy with a picture as I am owning one” is my mantra, but I’m usually saying that to myself rather than to others, because I’m almost always lying. I made an obscene offer to Dex but I didn’t take a picture at the time, because I thought he might relent later in the show. He didn’t, so I scrambled around in the online auctions after the Ohio Show until I finally found another one. I had to pay an even more obscene price.

It was still worth it to me to have this image to include in A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils, on page 133:

Back to Raleigh Show, where I braced myself for Dex to show me something spectacular that I wouldn’t be able to pry away from him. This time I was in luck: yes, it was spectacular and yes, it was available because he had found two of them. 

And yes, it answered a question I have had since I wrote The Catalogue of American Mechanical Pencils in 2011. The mystery surrounds pencils marked “S.W.P. Co.,” but obviously made by the Pick Pen Company of Cincinnati, Ohio.

In The Catalogue, I’d thrown out my one and only theory at the time – that “SWP” stood for Simpson Weidlich Pick, combining the names of three prominent Cincinnati companies. 

I didn’t have much more information by the time I wrote a comprehensive(ish) history of the Pick Pen Company for Volume 7 (“Lore Galore” on May 4, 2021 and “Nobody’s Luck is that Bad” on May 5, 2021: Volume 7, pages 85-94).  I found no connection between Pick and Weidlich or Simpson to explain the other two letters. My theory didn’t make any sense, and I abandoned the notion. Someday, I thought, the truth will surface.

With what Dex found, I believe the truth has finally surfaced.

“Southwest Publishing Company,” the fragile cellophane wrapper reads. I gently started to remove the pencil for closer examination, but Dex stopped me. “It’s never been out of there, and you can see what it is through the wrapper,” he said.

I could indeed:

"S.W.P. Co.” it reads on the barrel, at the top of which a flat round disk, typical for a Pick product, caps the rounded top end. If “SWP Co.” stood for a run of pencils made by Pick for the Southwestern Publishing Company, Dex’s pencil sorts out and resolves this mystery as neatly as one can ever expect. 

I suppose it is still possible but wildly improbable that “SWP” means something else entirely that remains to be discovered – assuming one believes in wildly improbable coincidences. I don’t, and I’m prepared to accept the explanation this wildly improbable survivor provides that wraps this question up neatly with a bow. Thank you, Dex, for finally scratching that decades-old itch in one of those dark recesses of my brain.

After I bought this first of the only two pencils I bought at that show, Dex opened up his folder of recent finds, and there was something else in there that I thought I couldn’t live without. Again, I made an obscene offer . . . again, he said he’d think about it, and I knew he wouldn’t.

Alas . . . until he has someone like my Janet sitting next to him to overhear such an offer and hiss “sell it” to him through gritted teeth, I’ll have to be content with a picture.

A picture which, of course, I again forgot to take.

The Craftsman Conundrum Solved

In 2014, I wrote an article titled “The Doomed Craftsman” (November 13, 2014: Volume 3, page 97), concerning the only example I had found of the Craftsman: 

The Craftsman was introduced in the stationers’ press in July 1922, and according to those announcements, what set these pencils apart was the material used to fashion their barrels - Redmanol.

That is what led me to describe the pencil as “doomed.” I knew that around that time the Redmanol Corporation lost a patent infringement case brought by Leo Baekeland and his Bakelite Corporation. I had assumed that any product made of Redmanol would have gone extinct once that material was no longer available. 

Realite pencils, introduced in the fall of 1922, were also made of Redmanol; I assumed that Realite only avoided a similar fate by substituting Bakelite for Redmanol, from which Realite and Autopoint pencils (after the two companies merged) would be made for decades to come.  I reasoned that the makers of the Craftsman were unable to negotiate a similar arrangement and therefore went the way of the dodo. 

I was close. Actually, I wasn’t really all that close, but at the time, this was a reasonable interpretation of what facts I knew. As I researched and wrote A Century of Autopoint, however, I learned a few more key facts that proved I was dead wrong.

Chapter Four in the book, “The Plastic War,” unveils the details of the Redmanol story.  Adolph Karpen, a furniture manufacturer by trade, was interested in the development of a more durable substitute for furniture varnish. Dr. Lawrence V. Redman developed a phenol-based substance he marketed as Redmanol, and he and Karpen established and owned the Redmanol Corporation.

Here’s the rub: yes, Leo Baekeland would sue Redmanol Corporation for patent infringement, and Baekeland would ultimately win. However, the judge’s decision against Redmanol was rendered in July 1921 – a full year before the Craftsman pencils with Redmanol barrels were introduced.

Contrary to what I believed back in 2014, Redmanol’s defeat in court was not a death knell. Redmanol was not the first competitor Baekeland had sued: the first was Condensite Corporation, which used a similar substance to make phonograph records for Thomas Edison. Condensite also lost, but after its defeat the company negotiated a license with Baekeland and continued in operation. Leo wanted royalties, not conquest.

By the beginning of the 1920s, Condensite’s fortunes looked bleak. Edison would only permit the production of records which suited his personal tastes in music – and Edison disapproved of that newfangled jazz that was taking the industry by storm, causing rapid losses in market share. While the patent litigation against Redmanol was pending, Adolph Karpen quietly bought up options to purchase Condensite’s shares from the company’s anxious shareholders.

As soon as the ink was dry on the judgment entry holding Redmanol liable for patent infringement, Karpen sprung his trap: he exercised his stock options and acquired a controlling interest in Condensite, so that what Karpen could not do through Redmanol he could continue to do as a Condensite licensee. Leo Baekeland was forced to the negotiating table, and in May 1922, the Bakelite Corporation was founded as a holding company which wholly owned the Redmanol Corporation and the Condensite Company. The three companies were formally merged in 1924.

The Craftsman pencil was introduced in July 1922, at a time when the Redmanol Corporation was operating with the full blessing of Leo Baekeland as a subsidiary of the Bakelite Corporation. The Craftsman pencil was in no way “doomed” by virtue of the material used in its construction. 

The Craftsman makes an appearance in A Century of Autopoint on page 45, but at the time the book was published I still was unsure how the pencil fit into this bigger picture. It would have been helpful to take apart my example of the Craftsman to see what was going on inside, but my only example had deteriorated so much that I feared any attempt to disassemble it might destroy it. 

The Craftsman looks Keeranesque, but I had ruled out Charles Keeran as a suspect since he had signed an exclusive contract with Realite on July 15, 1921 and the Craftsman did not debut until a year later. Therefore,  all I could say in A Century of Autopoint was that the Craftsman “bore more than a passing resemblance to Autopoint’s ‘50-cent’ number [invented by Keeran], but as of this writing no connection between the two is known.”

Again, I was close. Sooooo close . . . 

No, there is still no surviving direct evidence which connects Charles Keeran to the Craftsman Products Corporation. The 1922 Illinois Secretary of State’s Corporations lists the president as “H.K. Neinn” of Wilmette, Illinois, and the treasurer was P.W. Rice of Chicago. Both of these leads were dead ends. All trade announcements and the Illinois Secretary of State indicate the company was located at 668 Washington Boulevard, Chicago - another dead end, since that address has been wiped from the face of the Earth and is now in the middle of I-94. 

Now, the evidence I sought has finally come to light, tying together all the loose ends that have bugged me about the Craftsman as neatly as I could have ever hoped.

At the Chicago Show in 2023, Susan Wirth’s longtime companion John Martinson was liquidating much of what remained of Susan’s hoard. One of several boxes I purchased from John included was another example of the Craftsman. This one is in much better condition and has a slightly different top end:

Unlike my other example, this one disassembled easily, and what lies inside answers many questions. Here it is with the insides removed, shown along an early Autopoint “50-cent number”:

The Craftsman is an Autopoint 50-cent number wrapped in a Redmanol barrel. Now, laying out all the clues I’ve found in chronological order, we have a very different picture of what happened:

1.  Charles Keeran was ejected from the board of directors at Autopoint in April, 1921 (A Century of Autopoint, page 29).

2.  Keeran signed his exclusive contract with Realite through Michael M. Kaufmann, Frank C. Deli and John Lynn on July 15, 1921 (the contract was reproduced on page 34).

3.  On July 13, 1922 Keeran and “Kaufman” filed a patent infringement suit against Autopoint, according to a report published in The United States Patent Office Official Gazette on April 24, 1923.

“Kaufman” is almost certainly a mispelling of Michael M. Kaufmann, one of the original principals of Realite. The patents sued over were number 1,372,354, issued to Keeran on March 22, 1921 (just weeks before his ouster) and 1,400,362, issued to Keeran and Kaufmann on an application filed in 1919 (the mechanism inside the original Autopoints, including the 50-cent number).

Patent 1,400,362 was issued on December 13, 1921, after Keeran had been ousted from Autopoint and had joined Realite. I did not report the patent infringement suit in A Century of Autopoint, because I did not know how it fit into the story.

4.  The Craftsman is introduced in the stationers’ press in August, 1922 – one month after Kaufmann and Keeran filed suit, according to the notice in the Official Gazette.

Now it all makes sense. Keeran had invented the 50-cent number for Autopoint, and there was a dispute over who owned the rights to manufacture the pencil. A new company, the Craftsman Products Corporation, was established to make the disputed pencil . . . certainly not on behalf of Autopoint, but as a direct challenge to Autopoint’s claims.

Of course the Craftsman Products Corporation had no identifiable connection to Realite or Charles Keeran – had the maneuver failed, it would be Craftsman and not Realite or Charles Keeran that would take the fall.

Realite’s rapidly expanding business led it to seek out better manufacturing facilities by 1922, and there was no easier way than to take over Autopoint’s plant. Realite increased its capital dramatically in November, 1922, shortly after the Craftsman’s warning shot over Autopoint’s bow.

In April, 1923 the stationers’ press announced that Autopoint and Realite had merged; the surviving company was renamed the Autopoint Products Company, and its first president was Charles Keeran (A Century of Autopoint, page 50).

With the full story laid out, the Craftsman was indeed “doomed,” but not for the reasons I thought back in 2014. The Craftsman was doomed by its rapid success as a sacrificial pawn, forcing Autopoint into a merger. In 1923 and 1924, the Autopoint Products Company offered both rebadged Realite pencils and the original Keeran Autopoints (including 50-cent numbers), but there is no evidence that the Craftsman remained in production. With the introduction of the new Autopoint Model 1925, Keeran’s 50-cent number was discontinued.

The Pencil and the Tramp

 By January 2022, all of us in our cadre of enthusiasts were sick of worrying about the bug, and we were eager to get back on track with our pen shows. My good friend R. George Adams asked if I was going to make the Baltimore show in March, and he sent me pictures of a strange duck he’d found.

“Stylofede” is imprinted in script on the barrel; although I’d expect to find a trademark for the logo, I didn’t find one in the course of writing American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953:

Fortunately, the word “Stylofede” does turn up in American Writing Instrument Patents Vol. 2: 1911-1945. Design patent number 93,133 was applied for by Jesse J. Robbins of Hollywood, California on July 14, 1933. It was issued on August 21, 1934 and assigned to Stylofede Corporation.

This is obviously R. George’s pencil, although the narrowed upper section suggests some serious plastic shrinkage has taken place. R. George indicated that the pencil was all welded together and didn’t appear to work.  “Regardless . . . I have to have it,” I commented, and my first order of business when I arrived in Baltimore was to track R. George down and complete the transaction.

Jesse J. Robbins is mentioned three times in American Writing Instrument Patents Volume 2, and the second occurrence provided an intriguing clue as to what might be going on with R. George’s pencil. Patent number 2,010,466, applied for on December 28, 1932 and issued on August 6, 1935, was for an interesting disappearing clip:

Unfortunately, the drawings bear no resemblance to the little stub that protruded from the side of the Stylofede pencil:

But wait a tick . . . it pulls out . . . 

And snaps into place!

But wait . . . there’s more. Much, much, more.

Remember how R. George and I discussed how the mechanism appeared to be locked up? It isn’t – it just doesn’t work anything like what you might expect. Pressing the tip down on a hard surface causes the point to retract in a bit:

Releasing it causes it to spring forward, propelling out a bit of lead in the process. This is a tip-actuated mechanism, which appears consistent with Robbins’ third patent listed in American Writing Instrument Patents Volume 2:

I described patent number 2,056,143 in the book as a “gear drive” mechanism, because of the complicated cog located inside the barrel, but a closer examination reveals that the cog is engaged by pressing in the tip. 

It seems like a tidy ending . . . a design patent for what is obviously our pencil, a utility patent for a disappearing clip, and another utility patent for a tip-actuated mechanism. All three are embodied, sort of, in this example of a Stylofede. 

Sort of. It’s not the right clip and I don’t think it’s the right mechanism, either. Mr. Mustard may be our culprit, but he’s holding a rubber chicken in the dungeon. The game continues . . .

Another aspect of the Stylofede did not fit the evidence: it is fashioned from injection-molded plastic, a material that was not available in the mid-1930s, when these patents were issued. 

Remember that scope of my second patent book covers patents through 1945. While I started on a Volume 3 picking up in 1946, I never finished the project (see “The Embryotic Volume 3" on May 24, 2021: Volume 7, page 139). On a hunch, I checked my post-1945 list of patents, and Jesse J. Robbins appears twice. One is another patent for a disappearing clip . . . 

Not just any disappearing clip. Our clip exactly:

Patent number 2,507,816 wasn’t applied for by Robbins until September 22, 1945, and it was another five years before it would issue on May 16, 1950.   Robbins also took out another utility patent for his tip-actuated mechanism: on November 13, 1945, he applied for patent number 2,469,411, which was issued on May 10, 1949. 

Now it all makes sense: R. George’s Stylofede pencil was not made during Jesse Robbins’ first foray into pencil design in the 1930s, but during a second burst of activity after the end of the Second World War.

At least, it almost makes sense. These patents were assigned to Stylofede Corporation over a period of eighteen years, yet the only advertisement or trade announcement I could find was this one, published in Scientific American in March, 1934.

How can Robbins and his Stylofede Corporation have been around for that long without so much as a blip on this pencil fanatic’s radar until now? Robbins may have become distracted from pencil manufacturing shortly after the initial excitement. I found a letter dated October 9, 1935 from Albert Lasker, an advertising pioneer in New York, to Will H. Hays, who was at that time chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America – the organization that created the motion picture ratings system. The letter describes how Robbins failed to keep an appointment to discuss the Stylofede pencil, but Lasker’s office promised to “keep after” Robbins.

How did a pencil manufacturer get mixed up with a prominent member of the motion picture industry, and what exactly were they discussing? That I don’t know, but that detail ties in well with (putting on my best Paul Harvey voice) . . . the rest of the story.

While I found little concerning the Stylofede Corporation, I found a mountain of information concerning who Jesse J. Robbins was, and that’s where the “tramp” part of this article comes in.

In the interests of full disclosure, it is possible but improbable that there were two people named Jesse J. Robbins, both living in Hollywood, California during the early part of the last century. However, Robbins’ identification of “Hollywood” as his residence in his patent applications is telling: West Hollywood was not formally incorporated until 1984, prior to which Hollywood was simply an unincorporated neighborhood in Los Angeles County, which sprang up around the fledgling movie industry in the 1910s. The entire county’s population was 577,000 or so in 1920, and while that number grew to 1.2 million by the end of the 1920s, most of that growth was fueled by an influx of migrants from Mexico.

And it is in Hollywood that a Jesse J. Robbins exploded onto the scene as the General Producing Manager of the new Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, formed in 1907. Essanay set up shop in 1915 on the former Majestic Studio lot for the sole purpose of making short films starring none other than Charlie Chapin.

Chaplin had entered the film business in 1914 after achieving widespread fame as a vaudeville performer. His first contract was with Keystone Studios, for whom he made 36 short films in 1914. Chaplin’s early films turned him into an international star, and Essanay offered Chaplin a $10,000 signing bonus plus a weekly salary, which he accepted in December, 1914.

Chaplin wrote and directed 14 films during 1915 at Essanay, including The Tramp, which forever cemented his association with that role (although he had also played the part in some of his earlier Keystone films). According to an article published in The Moving Picture World on July 10, 1915, Jesse J. Robbins was “Chaplin’s right hand man.”

The association wouldn’t last as Chaplin’s popularity mushroomed, and in 1916 Chaplin was lured to join the Mutual Film Corporation, which offered him a staggering $10,000.00 per week. Essanay’s fortunes had been built solely on the success of Chaplin’s films, and after Chaplin’s departure Essanay did its best to milk whatever it could from Chaplin’s work during 1915. The last “true” Chaplin film made for Essanay was A Burlesque on Carmen, released as a typical two-reel film on December 18, 1915 . . . but Essanay wasn’t done with the film.

On April 22, 1916, after Chaplin’s departure, Essanay re-released the film as Charlie Chaplin’s Burlesque on Carmen, padding the original film with outtakes and additional footage drawn from other films – including scenes that Chaplin himself had rejected – to make a four-reel production that was at best disjointed and as one critic wryly noted, only “watered down the cream” of the original film.

Chaplin, who had exercised strict creative control over his films at Essanay, was infuriated at the new production and sued Essanay among others, claiming that the film violated his contract rights and watered down his carefully manicured “Chaplin Brand.” In the end, Chaplin lost - the Court ruled that his contract provided that he was paid by the week to work for Essanay, and Essanay was free to do as it pleased with the resulting footage.

Emboldened by the ruling, Essanay went on to cobble together two more films using outtakes and recycled footage. The last, Triple Trouble, combined scenes from Police and an abandoned Chaplin Film, Life, and was released in August 1918. After Triple Trouble, Essanay ceased operations.

As for Jesse J. Robbins, who also went by “Jess Robbins,” an article posted at IMDb.com states he was born April 30, 1886 in Dayton, Ohio and died on March 11, 1973 in Los Angeles, California. He lived long enough to dabble in the pencil business, although I’ve not found a definitive connection between his two separate lives.

I am convinced that Jesse J. Robbins the film company manager and Jesse J. Robbins the pencil inventor were one and the same person. After all, more times than I can count I’ve answered the question, “is this Jonathan Veley the lawyer, or is this the pencil guy?”

The Long, Winding Road Home

Twice I’ve tried to get things started here again.

In 2022, I thought I would organize my Sheaffer Balance pencils, and I thought I was writing a follow-up article to “The Sheaffer Spotter’s Bible” (June 9, 2021: Volume 7, page 180).

I thought wrong.

That initial article was a blue mile longer than any reasonable blog article should be . . . however, I mused, it might be an excellent starting point for a chapter in a book dedicated to Sheaffer’s pencils . . . and thus began the grand diversion which resulted in A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils, released in March, 2023. 

We laughed, we cried . . . it was better than Cats. 

A few months after the Sheaffer book came out, I became restless to resume blogging again, so I wrote a nice article about the odd placement of trim bands on the earliest Eversharp Skylines. What better way to get back to my roots, I thought, than by restarting the blog with a few Eversharp updates?

I thought wrong again.

Back in 2017, I had posted “The World’s Largest Eversharp Collection - Organized at Last” (July 6, 2017: Volume 5, page 32). Although I wrote the article for purely selfish reasons, it wasn’t to show off: I wrote that article so when I was surfing online auctions or trawling vendor tables at pen shows, I would at least have some sense of what was already residing in the museum. 

By 2024, that article had become useless for that purpose; dozens of other Eversharps had found their way to me and I was right back where I started, inadvertently acquiring duplicate examples because that 2017 article didn’t reflect that I had already found one. 

Or two. 

Or three. Yeah, I now have three examples of one model that did not appear in that 2017 article. Making matters worse, I had so many new Eversharp additions that I couldn’t remember which one it was that I kept buying. It was only a matter of time before I bought a fourth.

Maybe, I thought, it is time I listen to all those who had asked me over the years when I was going to write “The Eversharp Book.”

I thought right.

Yes, Virginia . . . there was enough to fill a monster of a book. Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry is a deep, deep dive into the subject that wasn’t finished until late 2024. It was the most complicated project I had ever undertaken, consuming my every free moment for more than a year. When it was finished, I thought, I had penned the last, definitive word on the brand.

I really need to quit thinking. I was one for three going into that internal dialogue, and that bit of flawed logic made it one for four. If this were baseball, I’d be sent back to the minors.

The Eversharp book has backfired in the same way my 2017 article did: it laid out everything I had found by that point, which only brought into sharper focus what was missing. In the months since, I have added many more examples that are not included in the book. 

The same has also happened with my Sheaffer collection, and also with the Autopoints, supplementing what I have learned since I published A Century of Autopoint in 2019. All of this is in addition to the hundreds of examples of other brands that I have picked up along the way . . .

All these have arrived since March, and this photo was taken before that enormously productive Chicago show in May. I am now drowning in items yet to be photographed and an enormous folder of unpublished images, each of which represents a bit of knowledge I have acquired.

Knowledge is useless unless it is shared.

But where to start? This time, I’ve wised up . . . I’m not going to start with an article that might morph into another book-length monograph, and I have the perfect story for you. It all started before the Baltimore Show     . . . not this one, but the one in March, 2022 . . .