The Corona Pen Company

Pencils marked for the Corona Pen Company in yesterday’s article (posted here) had me thinking about our collector’s lore, which teaches us that there was some unspecified relationship between Corona and the Parker Pen Company. 

Similar rumors had surrounded the Century Pen Company – fortunately, in the case of Century there were detailed shareholder records which detailed fully Parker’s involvement with Century (that was explored here at the blog in a three-part series beginning with “In the Footsteps of Giants,” June 9, 2020: Volume 6, page 163). I did not find a comparable treasure trove of corporate records with respect to Corona, but I did find enough to piece together a reasonably complete history of the brand.

The Corona Pen Company was named for Samuel V. Corona, an Austrian born on December 25, 1884 who immigrated to the United States in 1907, settling in Illinois. His granddaughter, Grace Willems, published this photograph of Samuel online:

Samuel entered into a partnership with James Pitt called the called the Janesville Tool Company “several years” before Samuel became involved in the penmaking industry, according to the Janesville Daily Gazette on August 28, 1922. The article credited Corona with designing parts for the Woodstock Typewriter Company; that detail caught my attention, since I also have a small collection of antique typewriters. Here’s my example of the Woodstock:

That detail sent me briefly down a rabbit hole of a tangent, since the name “Corona” associated with typewriters begs the question whether Samuel was involved with the Corona Typewriter Company, which merged with L.C. Smith & Bros. in 1926 to form Smith-Corona. As a general rule I do not believe in coincidences, but in this case I believe it was. The Corona Typewriter Company was originally organized as the Standard Typewriter Company in 1909 – in New York City, only two years after Samuel V. Corona had settled in the Midwest and without any indication that Samuel relocated to the east coast. In 1914, Standard’s name was changed to the Corona Typewriter Company . . . just because it was a cool name.

On July 15, 1921, Corona applied for a patent for a fountain pen, which was granted as number 1,540,763 on June 9, 1925. I described the patent as a “compound lever” fountain pen in American Writing Instrument Patents Vol. 2: 1911-1945, because turning the knob on the end of the barrel pushes down on an internal lever to compress the ink sac:

Samuel V. Corona filed a trademark registration application on behalf of the Corona Pen Company on December 26, 1922, in which Samuel claimed to have used the mark in commerce since February 25, 1922. 

The company may have been formed several months after Samuel began marketing his Corona pens: the announcement that Samuel Corona had formed the Corona Pen Company, was published in the Janesville Daily Gazette on August 28, 1922. Samuel was the president and Herman Stubbendick was the secretary; the “principal shareholder” in the new organization was Dr. E.H. Damrow, a prominent Janesville chiropractor:

According to a follow up article on October 14, the company settled into the Picknell Building at 22 North Academy Street, Janesville. The article repeats one important line . . . “No plans are being made to move away from here, Mr. Corona said.” Piecing the context together, it appears that the company’s prospects were so promising that Corona received three offers to relocate to other locations.

From the outset, Samuel’s interests were not limited to fountain pens. At the same time his Corona Pen Company was ramping up production, he also incorporated the Janesville Refrigerator & Pump Company, according to an announcement in Iron Trade on October 26, 1922:

By June of 1923, the company’s capital stock was doubled to raise capital for increased production. Three new directors were added to the board; while Samuel was still the president, new officers would be elected “in a few days,” according to the Janesville Daily Gazette on June 1, 2023:

Perhaps Samuel’s outside interests prevented him from focusing all of his energy on the Corona Pen Company. On August 10, 1923, Corona visited DeKalb, Illinois for a meeting with local inventor Clyde Morse, who had invented a new sash lock to be manufactured in Wisconsin – presumably by Corona’s partnership in the Janesville Tool Company:

Corona was replaced as president of the Corona Pen Company by Dr. Damrow, although he was re-elected to the board of directors, according to the Weekly Gazette on August 31, 1923:

By October 1923, the Corona Pen Company had absorbed the business of the Janesville Tool Company, advertising general toolmaking and light manufacturing services in the pen company’s name. This advertisement appeared in the Janesville Weekly Gazette on October 16, 1923:

Despite the company’s early promise, its diversification into general light manufacturing suggests that its fountain pens might not have been as profitable as news reports at the time suggested. Samuel may have been having financial difficulties: on November 10, 1923 the Janesville Weekly Gazette reported that one F.I. Wilbur had sued Corona and obtained a judgment for groceries:

On November 9, 1925 the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin announced the formation of a new Corona Pen Co., with Dr. Damrow as one of its incorporators, along with W.W. Dale and A.H. Pember were also named. Dale was President of the Janesville Business College who also had a side job selling rebuilt typewriters; Pember was an opthamologist in Janesville. 

On November 17, the Platteville (Wisconsin) Journal and Grant County News reported that the company had invested in new machinery and was planning to move into new, larger quarters. “Many of Janesville’s most prominent professional men are interested in the company,” the article concludes:

That last statement may be the source of the theory that there was some connection between the Parker Pen Company and the Corona Pen Company, since it is difficult to imagine a group of “prominent professional men” in Janesville that did not include George S. Parker or anyone else affiliated with the Parker Pen Company. However, as of this writing I know of no shareholder records or other documentation to support that theory, so it is only speculation that there was any connection between the two companies other than their coincidental location in the same tiny Midwestern town.

That is not to say that there might not have been overlap between the Corona and Parker orbits. Two improvements to the Corona Pen’s basic design were patented by George Washington Gilman, both of which were applied for on November 27, 1926: number 1704,470 was granted on March 5, 1929 and number 1,726,432 was issued on August 27, 1929. Both patents were assigned to the Corona Pen Company:

Gilman’s name has come up before here at the blog: in “Checking Off the Boxes” (April 16, 2021: Volume 7, page 49) I explored Gilman’s patents for what would become the Parker Lucky Lock pencil, the earliest of which was applied for on November 7, 1921. Gilman’s patent for the Lucky Lock was assigned, “by mesne assignments” (that is, first to one company and then ultimately to another) to the Parker Pen Company; his later patents for a price band and the Lucky Lock’s clip, however, were assigned to American Metals Company, which had abruptly relocated from Attleboro, Massachusetts to – you guessed it – Janesville, Wisconsin in early 1922.

Was Gilman a Parker employee by 1926? I don’t think so. The later assignments of Gilman’s patents to American Metals Company suggest that American Metals remained his employer and continued to have an independent existence after the move to Janesville.

But, as always, there is more.

After the Corona Pen Company’s reorganization in late 1925, its principals decided to build a larger new factory in Antioch, Illinois. Plans were announced in the Waukegan News-Sun on July 8, 1927, in which the article states that the newly organized company was under the “leadership” of C.K. Anderson, described as an “Antioch financier.” Again, there is no mention of the Parker Pen Company.  On October 22, 1927, the Waukegan News-Sun reported that some of the Corona Pen Company’s equipment had been installed in the new factory.

Tragedy struck just a few month later. On February 20, 1928, fire broke out at the new factory in the celluloid curing room. Superintendent W.G. Baker immediately recognized the danger and ordered everyone to evacuate: without a moment to spare, employees rushed into the office area, which was sheltered from the factory by a brick wall. A few seconds later, the stored celluloid and guncotton exploded and completely destroyed the building. Miraculously, nobody was killed or seriously injured, but the loss reported was $50,000 – twice the $25,000 that it cost to build the factory just a few months earlier. The following account of the incident was published in the Libertyville (Illinois) Independent on February 21, 1928:

If that seems suspicious, things began to smell downright awful in the days after the explosion. On March 1, 1928, the McHenry Plaindealer reported that the total loss was covered by insurance and that a new factory would be built just as soon as the claim was settled with the insurance company. Vice President Walter R. Borman further stated that he already had architect’s plans for the new factory and had received “many bids” on the reconstruction:

Only eight days after the catastrophe, Corona Pen Company was publicly announcing it was doubling its money with the destruction of its new factory – miraculously, with no serious injuries – and that it already had architects and contractors lined up to spend the expected insurance payout. If that did not trigger the insurer’s fraud alerts, I don’t think anything would.

One good thing that came out of the explosion was that in response to the disaster, the Libertyville Independent reported on September 6, 1928 that the City of Antioch had enacted its first building code.

There is no report detailing when the new factory was finished and production was resumed, which is odd given the detailed coverage of Corona Pen’s activities prior to the disaster. The company did eventually rebuild, but apparently without insurance money: the Corona Pen Company was forced to secure a $40,780 loan from investment firm Runyard & Behanna on September 17, 1928.  The loan was payable in full by September 27, 1930, but by then Corona Pen might already have been gone. The McHenry Plaindealer reported on September 3, 1931, that the “abandoned Corona pen factory” had been looted, and a “large part” of the equipment and stock were taken.

Yeah, I smell a rat . . . again. Random thieves breaking into a pen factory filled with large equipment, tools, pens . . . everything one might need to start another pen company . . . when the pen company’s mortgage was nearly a year delinquent and its creditors were closing in . . . 

On January 28, 1932, the Waukegan News-Sun reported that a foreclosure decree had been rendered against the Corona Pen Company.

The notice of sheriff’s sale published in the Waukegan News-Sun on February 12, 1932 indicates that the Corona Pen Company’s factory was sold at auction on March 7, 1932. With that, whatever remained of the Corona Pen Company was gone. There is no evidence that the company's namesake, Samuel V. Corona, was involved with the company after the 1925 reorganization; he passed away on October 10, 1948.

So how do the examples of pencils offered by the Corona Pen Company from yesterday’s article fit into the story? All of the examples I have found were clearly made after the company was reorganized in late 1925: the Rex Manufacturing Company-made models all bear the 1926 patent dates, and those marked with the Antioch, Illinois location were made after the company relocated to Antioch in late 1927 - perhaps in those brief months before the explosion, or perhaps between the time the company reopened and when the company folded, likely in 1930 or 1931.

Perhaps both were sourced at the same time, and the Rex-made pencils may even have been sourced later than the Antioch-marked ones. Perhaps also the Antioch-marked examples were actually made by Rex, after Parker won its patent infringement case against Rex.

Was Corona related to Parker, other than their close proximity in Janesville for a few years? There is not enough evidence to support or refute that theory. On the one hand, if there was a relationship between the two, one might suspect that the Corona Pen Company would source rebadged pencils from Parker rather than from other companies. Rex would seem to be the unlikeliest supplier, given that Parker sued Rex for patent infringement in 1929 over the washer clip, and after that litigation many of Rex’s customers wound up with Parker-supplied rebadges . . . except . . . 

In the case of the Century Pen Company, another pen company that our collectors’ lore indicated was somehow related with Parker, internal corporate records proved that Century was clearly controlled by Parker (see “The Second Century,” June 10, 2020: Volume 6, page 166). Notwithstanding Parker’s documented control, Century also procured pencils from Rex and National Pen Products.

More documentation must be out there to answer these questions . . . 

As the Primordial Ooze Turns

 An online auction yielded this mostly ordinary-looking pencil:

These were sourced from some unknown jobber, who produced them for several pen companies, marked only with a name on the bell cap – similar pencils are marked for Weidlich, Ajax, and the Radium Point Pen Company. These are marked for the Weidlich Pen Company of Cincinnati, Ohio:

This one is a little unusual, with its elongated metal nose and secondary tip. More unusual is what is printed on the cap:

“Corona / Antioch Ill.” it reads. After I took these shots and went to file it away, I noticed that I had forgotten about a second example I had found like this one, but missing the end of the two-stage tip:

These were not the first Corona-marked pencils I had turned up. As a Rex Manufacturing Company fanatic, I was well aware that the Corona Pen Company offered pencils. I have a few Rex-made examples:

Including one in a distinctive tortoiseshell plastic I haven’t seen on any other Rex product:

All of the Rex-made examples I have found bear all four of the Rex Manufacturing Company patents, dating them to no earlier than 1926:

Since the later incarnations of Rex-made pencils have similar two-stage tips, I wondered if the new addition might also be made by Rex – looping other brands such as Weidlich, Ajax and Radium Point into the Rex Manufacturing Company’s orbit would solve the longstanding mystery as to who actually made all of them. I took apart the jade Corona and compared it to a Rex pencil . . .

Close, but not close enough to say absofrickinglutely. The threading at the nose is different, and the clip and clip assembly on Rex pencils is entirely absent from the Corona, on which the cap is simply pressed onto the end of the mechanism. 

I have theorized that Parker’s patent infringement case against Rex over Parker’s washer clip patent abruptly ended production of the “four horsemen” patent pencils by Rex, and at the least forced Rex to redesign its pencils to avoid infringement of Parker’s patents. See “My Working Theory” (December 24, 2016: Volume 4, page 298).

These odd Corona pencils suggest that Rex might have hastily redesigned its pencils after Parker’s infringement action, then went on to supply other companies such as Weidlich. However, I don’t think it is conclusive . . . just a tidbit to tuck away and revisit when stronger evidence either way surfaces.  

The pencils themselves begged several questions, but their imprints begged several more. I have crawled out of the same pool of primordial knowledge ooze from which all of us enthusiasts have emerged: our collector’s lore, which teaches us that Corona had some shadowy, unspecified connection with the Parker Pen Company.

That ooze didn’t smell right. I suppose if it did, I would have called it “special sauce” or “nectar of the Gods” rather than “ooze.”

If Corona was somehow connected with Parker, and if Parker was at odds with Rex, why would Corona have ever sourced its pencils from Rex in the first place? Why wouldn’t Corona use rebadged Parker Duofolds, especially after Parker’s infringement action resulted in Rex redesigning its pencils? Where the heck is Antioch, Illinois, and why wouldn’t Corona be located in Janesville, Wisconsin if it was affiliated with Parker? 

Most great adventures begin with “why.” I was off to the races, to learn about the Corona Pen Company . . .

Note: the story continues here.

No Names of Significance

A “No Name” pen or pencil, in our collectors’ vernacular, is one which does not have a desirable manufacturer’s name. It does not mean that an item is entirely unmarked. “No Name of Significance” is more accurate.

I get a huge kick out of picking up these “No Name” brands. Sometimes one will turn out to be a subbrand of a well-known manufacturer. Other times there’s a neat back story about how or why they were made, or an interesting charlatan at work. 

Then there are those that just provide a good laugh. I don’t have much to say about the pencils in this article, other than I’ve enjoyed adding them to the museum.

This is a typical cheap, Welsh-style mechanism pencil, with “Old Fogey” on the clip.

If this next one is to be believed, I’m surprised I had not heard of it before:

There’s something strange going on at the nose - that mechanism had to be press fit in place from the front, since there’s no access from the rear. It either never made it all the way in or has worked itself back out. If it is indeed as “Famous” as advertised, you’d think I’d know the answer:

Here is the “Alwasrite,” with a cap reminiscent of the Eclipse-made Keene pencils, but a decidedly cheaper clip:

Is that a riff on “Always Right,” or was it “All Was Right” before this one came along?

This next one showed up in the online auctions with an opening bid of one cent and five dollars shipping.

I didn’t want to pay much, so I bid two cents . . . and I won for half that much, so I was $5.01 all in with shipping. I paid too much.

“Consolidated,” it says on the clip. Usually, people consolidate their strengths, but in this case, I think every bad design idea was consolidated into one pencil. Maybe the notion was to get all the bad ideas off the market in one fell swoop, from the crappy barrel material, cheap wartime plastic clip (or perhaps, one left over after the war), and lousy trim plating. 

Next up is a cigar figural novelty pencil. Louis F. Dow made these in large numbers, but they were made of wood; this one is plastic:

I don’t have any evidence to suggest that Dow was behind this one, but whoever was shared Louis’ campy sense of humor. This is the “El Pencillo”:

I’ve found two examples of this next “No Name,” although there are enough differences between the two that I can’t confirm the same characters were behind both of them:

Maybe the pens had a “Reservoir,” but the pencils at least had the name on the clip:

I have a couple clues to suggest these were made by Eclipse – nothing definitive, but suggestive. The same clips were used on some Eclipse pencils. 

And one example in my collection uses a cursive script that is very similar to one of the Reservoirs.

I also have a pretty good idea who might have been responsible for the “Supreme”:

I have two of these - the model that was already in my collection was missing that mysterious “B” in a circle above the name, and it has a tag from its previous owner indicating he (or she) had found it at a flea market in Rockville, Maryland in 1981. Good collector’s history there.

That wild green and white combination strongly resembles an example of the Nassau, which I believe was made by David Kahn (maker of the Wearever line) for that rascal James Kelley (see “All the King’s Horsemen Part 1, posted July 26, 2021: Volume 7, page 290). Kelley’s brands included letters within a circle above the name like this, and perhaps “B” is a throwback to the “Banker” line Kelley sold.  The celluloid also matches a Gordon that turned up recently.

Next in this parade of unknowns is the “Tokany”:

I have a notion about the source of this one, even if the meaning of the name eludes me. My example bears a striking resemblance to pencils marked “Monroe” (not the Eclipse ‘uberbrand,’ but the other one). It even has a knife inside like most Monroe pencils along these lines:

Last for today is the large red example in this next image. I think I shot it next to that great oversized Autopoint only because they were in the same lot, because there’s no connection between the two:

“York” is the name on the clip:

That is quite the English-sounding name, and I do believe this one was made in England. Inside, the mechanics are identical to the British “Lifelong” pencil:

Still, it is possible this is an Englishman’s American cousin . . . nowhere is this example marked as to country of origin:

Now that I have thrown out a bunch of new names on the backs of digital milk cartons, I am hoping this might yield additional evidence from the peanut gallery. I am confident that I’ll be circling back around to one or more of these as more information becomes available – maybe in a couple weeks, maybe in ten years . . .

Wrong in the Right Way

The only difference between fiction and nonfiction is accuracy. Statements in print that are later proven wrong can demote an entire work from a scholarly text to a pretty picture book.

“This is what I have observed, here is how it compares with what I know, and here is what that evidence leads me to believe,” is how I approach new conclusions. In those terms, new evidence does not prove anything I said wrong, since all I’ve provided is a snapshot of what I thought I knew at the time. If anything, I’ve invited further study and the greater understanding it yields.

That being said, print publication is cruel. Once a book is printed, all the author can hope for is that it encapsulated as accurately and as completely as possible all of the knowledge that was rattling around upstairs as of the moment it was committed to print. If everybody waited until they know everything there is to know or that will ever be knowable to write a book, there would be no books. 

Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry thoroughly exhausted me. I poured into it everything I have learned about the brand over the last 25 years, and I believe it will remain a valuable reference long after I am gone with all the information it contains. However, I know nothing is complete, and I knew that I’d be circling around with updates and corrections.

Just not too many, I hoped. And not too soon.

This is my longwinded way of telling you that at the end of Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry, I posed a question that was unnecessary, because I had the answer right in front of me. That answer adds a little bit of context to the Eversharp story that, had I remembered it at the time, I might have added it into the book.

I am proud, however, to report that I was wrong in the right way.

On average, my books are “done” two or three months before the printed books are available. During that time I’ll make last minute tweaks, but it becomes more and more difficult as the production process moves forward until it’s time to call – literally – “pencils down.”

The Eversharp book had been picking up steam for months through 2024, with contributors offering me artifacts to photograph or acquire for the book. The law of inertia applies: new finds were continuing to arrive even as the printers were asking for proofs.

By the 2024 DC Show in August, the book was essentially complete, subject only to a final round of editing with the assistance of that most loyal knight Richard Keith. At the show, I picked up a few additional things to include in the book – no worries, since I do my own layout – reshooting and substituting images was still a simple matter.

Mostly.

Right before that show, an online auction yielded a solid gold early Heath-clip Ever Sharp, which I had referred to but had not shown in Chapter Three. By the time I had it in hand for photography, the layout was so tight that there was nowhere I could squeeze it in. I added one last page to the book: page 434, titled “Stop Press,” includes several images of that important find, and I was able to work a reference to page 434 into one of the captions in Chapter Three.

This article is not about that pencil. That “stop press” page, however, opened the door for what I’m going to tell you next.

At the DC Show, I reconnected with Myk Daigle – a fervent supporter of my research and the books I write. Myk had a couple parts on hand, and he gave them to me. “Maybe you can use these in your book,” he said.

I tucked them away to look at when I got home. If I can match these up with the metal Eversharp model to which they belong, I thought, I can swap these caps over and reshoot the images in which those models appear.

There was a problem.

I turned to pages 64 through 67 in the book, which provide a four-page table detailing every cataloged pattern of metal Eversharp pencil, together with the years in which each was cataloged and their model numbers.

Wahl’s catalogs did include a Model 22; it was the barleycorn pattern listed only in 1921, but it was only offered in gold-filled – nothing in silver plated or sterling.  Model 034 similarly made no sense, because Wahl did not use any model numbers with a leading zero and besides, Wahl’s model conventions provided that ringtop model designations ended with the suffix “SW,” for “short with ring.”

These were the first square-peg model designations that did not fit neatly into the round holes I had already documented in the book. I had to acknowledge it, so I used the last couple inches at the bottom of the “Stop Press” page 434.

Here’s the part where I got it wrong in the right way.

I said only what I knew. I explained how Model 22 and 034 did not fit into what I had compiled with respect to Wahl’s model designations, and the book ends with this statement: “Perhaps these were for Heath’s clutch pencils or Heath-made pencils marked for the Carey Pen Company, both of which used these same caps (see pages 42-44). Perhaps also there is something more to learn about these, still out there and waiting to be discovered.”

Observation, evidence, and a guess based on that evidence. Ending with an unanswered question like that is a valuable acknowledgment that any book exists in a continuum, as a statement of what was known at the time in a universe that will inevitably expand. Some day, I hoped, someone would come forward with the answer.

I didn’t know it would be me.

And I didn’t know I already had it.

While I was writing the Sheaffer and Eversharp books, I continued to add other things to my collection - but to keep my work table clear and stay focused, I was diligent about photographing new additions and putting them away to keep them out of sight and out of my easily distracted peripheral vision.

One of the things I had turned up along the way, back in February 2023, was a group of pens and pencils made by the DeWitt-LaFrance Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts – best known as the makers of the “Superite” brand of pens and pencils. The lot had surfaced in an online auction:

Yes, I do pick up fountain pens when the occasion calls for it – and when it comes to a cult brand of which I am a rabid devotee – the occasion calls for it. I had not seen a Superite fountain pen with a price band:

I shot these images in March, 2023, just as the Sheaffer book was being released and nearly a year before work began on the Eversharp book. If or when the blog restarts, I thought to myself, I’ll write something about these.

This was not what I had planned to write.

After the dust settled with the Eversharp book, and page 434 along with all its other pages were irrevocably committed to print, I dusted off that file folder of pictures, and I noticed that the top two pencils in that group shot had price bands that strongly resembled those found on early Ever Sharp pencils. I wondered . . . 

The example second from top is marked Model 10-B, printed in the same font as Myk’s Model 034 ringtop cap.

Which leads me to the coup de grace:

There it is: the Model 22 cap that Myk Daigle gave to me came from a Superite. Oh, I was so close . . . I had suggested Myk’s caps might be from a Heath-made pencil, and while that guess was wrong, it is fascinating that Superite pencils have caps that are identical to those on an Eversharp.

George W. Heath & Co. made the earliest Ever Sharp pencils, using modified and repurposed barrels from their clutch pencils (and which were also rebranded for the Carey Pen Company). When Wahl took over production of Keeran’s Ever Sharp in October 1915, it was because Keeran was frustrated that Heath could not keep up with his orders. Given Heath’s apparent refusal to allow Wahl to use his patent pending clip (as evidenced by Keeran’s hastily designed spade clip and John Wahl’s tombstone clip), Heath apparently did not take kindly to the transition.

It would be unreasonable to think that Heath would dig in its heels on the use of Heath’s clip, but would nevertheless willingly cooperate in supplying caps or the tooling used to make them . . . Wahl likely copied them, since the basic crown-shaped design was not the subject of any design patent or trademark and was in the public domain.

That would leave George W.  Heath & Co. with idle tooling and perhaps a supply of parts in late 1915 . . . and DeWitt-LaFrance burst onto the scene out of nowhere in 1918. I now believe that Heath either supplied caps or sold tooling to the fledgling DeWitt-LaFrance Company so that Superite pencils would sport caps so similar to those on an Eversharp that a couple of them erroneously wound up in a book about Eversharps.

There’s more evidence to support this theory: as I noted in “Wahl, Sheaffer, and the Race for Boston” (beginning on December 26, 2016: Volume 4, page 300), by 1921 the Wahl Company had noted it had hundreds of competitors who had copied the outward appearance of the venerable Eversharp. The Wahl Company only sued one of them: DeWitt-LaFrance (Volume 4, page 325).

I had previously thought Wahl singled out the makers of the Superite for litigation because DeWitt-LaFrance was one of the more successful companies offering writing instruments that looked like an Eversharp. Given what I have learned, I now theorize that the purpose of the litigation was to knock out a competitor that was producing parts that looked exactly like Eversharps - the very parts Wahl had copied in the first place.

Let’s add one last potential morsel to this theory. Here’s the nib from that fountain pen in the group:

Note the “H.” 

I asked David Nishimura whether that could designate “Heath,” but he does not recall any evidence that George W. Heath & Co. made its own nibs, and suggests it might stand for “Hicks” or something else.

And it starts again. Observation. Evidence. And a guess.

The Post that Launched 454 Pages

 I wrote the following article in February, 2024. After it was finished, I took a step back and thought to myself, “this is a really interesting detail about the Eversharp Skyline.” 

Off to the races went my brain . . . “oh hey, and I have a lot of other interesting details about the Skyline,” I continued . . .  “and then there’s all those other interesting details about all those other Wahl and Eversharp models.”

And so the internal monologue grew deafening, accompanied by the ever more deafening chorus of  reader requests, gently but persistently asking me when I was going to write the Eversharp book.

So I did.

The revelations that emanated from this article were included in Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry, on page 324. The back story, however, was outside the scope of a scholarly monograph. As I was dusting things off and getting ready to restart things around here, I ran across the draft of the article. 

The internal monologue began again. “But you already included most of this in the book,” I said. “But not all of your readers here have the book,” I replied. “Shut up and have fun,” my third inner voice piped up. 

It’s getting crowded in there, so I’m shutting down the conversation. Here is what I wrote. . .

- Jesse Wins a Beer -

“I’ll buy a beer at the next show for the first person to see what’s ‘wrong’ here…” I teased in the Fountain Pens group on Facebook.

A lively guessing game ensued, and every wrong guess merited a “no beer for you.” Those who said “they aren’t fountain pens” earned a “DEFINITELY no beer for you.” I should have told those in the latter category that they needed to buy me one. 

After a few missed swings from the peanut gallery, Jesse Tanenblatt commented that the trim bands on these three examples are not where they are “supposed” to be. 

I look forward to tipping a glass with Jesse next time I see him, likely in Baltimore. Here are the three oddballs shown alongside their regular counterparts:

Jesse is a very observant sort of guy, but I like to think I might have planted a subconscious seed with an article titled “All for the Paper” (June 16, 2021: Volume 7, page 201). The short green example was featured at the end of that article; since then, one of the others surfaced at the 2021 Raleigh Show (I don’t remember who had it), and Nik Pang had the other at the 2022 Philly show. 

I had included the earliest advertisements I had found for Eversharp’s new Skyline in that 2021 article, which were published in October, 1940 and showed only fountain pens, sometimes referred to as the Skyline, sometimes as the “Gold Seal Pen” and still other times, simply as the new Eversharp with a “Magic Feed.” An advertisement published in January, 1941 finally shows a pencil, and while the artwork is fuzzy, it appears to show the trim band right where one would expect to see it, on the border between the striped upper and solid lower sections of the barrel. 

Then came that advertisement in The Bloomington Pantagraph on February 13, 1941:

There is this same trim band placement, and the three examples that have surfaced prove this was no artistic license – a very small number were in fact manufactured in this configuration. In my own classification system for Skyline configurations, I refer to Skylines with striped upper barrels as the “Skyline Standard I”, with “Standard II” denoting a wider center band. Now that I’ve found three of these examples with the odd trim band placement, I’m inclined to refer to them as the “Standard Ia.”

I’ve been making this up as I go along for years, so I might as well keep making things up now.

We know these Standard Ia pencils were made very early in the Skyline’s production run, although that February 1941 advertisement was published a few months after the Skylines first appeared. The Skyline Standard Ia is in my opinion more true to the Skyline form. Cap bands on the matching pens weren’t right on the lip, so moving the band up a bit on the pencils makes these a better match for the pens they were meant to accompany. That raises the question: if these look better, why were they discontinued? 

That question might be answered by another detail you might have noticed in that first image. . . J. Andrew Sonnemaker and Hugh Cordingley were quick to point it out, and I suppose runner-up beers are in order for each of them.

While the example from my last article has the typical “double check” cartouche at the top of the clip, J. Andrew and Hugh pointed out that two I have found since then do not.  Huh, I said to myself as I read Andrew and Hugh’s comments. I’ll admit that I didn’t notice that until they mentioned it, and the question opens an entirely  new can of worms (or beer).

Since the Skyline Standard Ia configuration appears in such an early advertisement, the first possibility to rule out is that perhaps the double check cartouche was added after the Skyline was introduced. Stationer’s newspaper advertisements frequently use fanciful artwork, and that is at least partially the case with that February 1941 advertisement. Note also that the cartouche as illustrated isn’t exactly what one would expect to see. It isn’t rectangular: the bottom is rounded, so it looks more like a shield.

Was this added to existing artwork that lacked a double check mark, drawn before Eversharp had finally settled on how it would look? Maybe, but I think that gives stationers too much credit.  

Retailers typically were not as quick as manufacturers to update the artwork they had on hand; perhaps that February 1941 advertisement used artwork Eversharp had supplied to retailers months earlier. If artwork showing that alternate trim band placement was outdated, it wasn’t outdated by much: it was still only a few months old at the time this ad was published.

Other evidence indicates (1) the shield-shaped cartouche was fanciful artwork, and (2) the regular cartouche was used on Skylines from the outset. That evidence comes from Jack Leone, who invited me down to his place some eight years or so ago to take pictures of some things for this blog. We ended up spending the day shooting his entire collection, and he had some things I wasn’t expecting to see, including some original drawings by Henry Dreyfuss, the designer of the Skyline. Here’s a concept drawing Dreyfuss made of a Skyline set dated January 15, 1940:

Note that the clips illustrated are entirely unmarked, and the pencil is shown with a “Streamliner” clip rather than the matching buttressed clips Eversharp eventually used.

Jack also had a couple fascinating Dreyfuss drawings showing the double check cartouche. The first, captioned drawing number 59, is dated June 6, 1940:

Eversharp apparently had concerns about how this would look when reduced to the width of the clips. Drawing 59-A, dated July 17, 1940, beefs up the tails of the checkmarks to make them more visible, and it shows the design reduced to the actual size:

The earliest Skyline advertisements, published in October 1940, show what appears to be this cartouche. A trademark registration for this design would be helpful, since it would provide a date on which Eversharp first used this mark in commerce. Unfortunately, if the company did so, I didn’t find it in the course of researching American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953 (although I found two earlier incarnations of the mark as reported in the book).  

However, I think the date shown on the Dreyfuss drawings, coupled with the October 1940 advertisements, are good enough to state that Dreyfuss’ double check cartouche was available and apparently in production on Skylines from the outset. No, I don’t think my two pencils lack the mark because they were sooper dooper early. There must be some other reason.

I think that reason is that Eversharp intentionally omitted the mark because the company did not want these pencils to be covered by the guarantee it denoted.

The upper and lower parts of these pencil barrels were glued together, and when they separate there’s no repairing them – broken once is broken forever. The  Skyline Standard Ia may be rare because most of the ones that were made broke, either when swaging the band above the joint or in use.

Moving the band to cover that joint provided an extra bit of reinforcement at the weakest part of a Skyline pencil barrel. I believe that in the case of the Standard Ia, structural integrity quickly trumped aesthetics. They looked nicer, but in the end it was more important that they be durable enough to warrant with a double-check guarantee than to be pretty.

Yes, I believe the Standard Ia is the earliest incarnation of Eversharp Skyline pencils with striped upper barrels. No, I don’t think lacking the double check is how “first year” Skyline Standard pencils (or pens, for that matter) are identified, because the vast majority of such “first year” Skylines have that seal. Yes – I think Eversharp was hesitant to warrant what they suspected would be a model more prone to failure. 

There I go, thinking again.

“Shut up and drink your beer,” I replied to myself.