Inside a Cross broker's pencil

This large gold filled pencil recently came in with the front end detached. I really shouldn't keep buying projects, but this seemed both straightforward and potentially interesting.

I could have cleaned and lubricated the mechanism in situ and just reattached the nose cone, but there were a couple of shallow dings to the barrel and I wanted to get a look inside. This is what everything looked like upon initial disassembly.

The lead measures a hefty 5.53 mm. The spring fingers of the holder make thickness less than critical, so modern 5.5 and 5.6 mm lead should fit with no problem. 

The mechanism propels and retracts the lead, using a simple track and helix design. Very sturdy with not much to go wrong.

Pencils of this sort were the subject of four related patents applied for and granted in 1882 to 1884: US263392, US296537, US296538, and US296539. Of these, the third most closely corresponds to our example. Cross pencils don't usually bear patent imprints, unlike Cross fountain pens and stylographics, and this pencil is no exception. 

Who made the Aztecs?

At the California pen show Chris Odgers came up to me to share a recent discovery: a sterling silver flat pencil holder with American Indian motifs in high relief. A beautiful and striking item in itself, but of broader importance in that the motifs are the very same as those on the celebrated Parker Awanyu Aztec.

The pencil holder is fully marked as a Mabie Todd product. I wasn't able to take a closeup photo, but from what I recall it bears the tiny "M" in square stamp. Mabie Todd, however, has never been identified as a supplier of overlays to other companies -- a reminder that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. While we have long known that Heath supplied overlays to Parker, we don't know how many other suppliers Parker might have used.  

The attribution of overlays is based upon relatively thin evidence. The pen companies did not publicize their sourcing, so we rely primarily on the existence of overlays found on various brands of pens that bear Heath markings. The problem is that only silver overlays appear to have been so marked, even where identical overlays were made in gold filled and solid gold, and that it appears that even those marks were eventually omitted -- not surprisingly, as penmakers had no wish to give the impression that their products were anything but wholly made in-house. 

Silver Aztecs are rare indeed. I don't have much hands-on experience with them, so had to make do with these images of a gold filled example from quite a few years ago. But I'm pretty sure that there aren't any silver Aztecs known with Heath marks. Chris didn't seem to know of any, and he's seen more than I have. A good number of Parker Snakes in silver bear the Heath mark, though, and there are Heath-marked magic pencils and dip pens with the same snake decoration. That seems to have led collectors to assume that the only other Parker figural overlay must share the same source.

Finally, we must consider the possibility that Heath was doing work for Mabie Todd, and that both the pencil and the Aztec overlays were actually Heath products. This seems unlikely, however, for several reasons. Mabie Todd had a long history of producing ornate pens and pencils of all sorts and of the highest quality quite on their own, and aside from the more basic patterns, their fountain pen overlays look nothing like anything offered by other pen companies. The same holds for their more elaborate magic pencils. I am unaware of any Heath-marked Mabie Todd products of any sort, and though I earlier inveighed against arguing from a negative, one must also give some weight to the absence of Heath-marked Aztecs given the prevalence of Heath-marked Snakes.

Thanks to Chris Odgers for sharing his discovery, and apologies for taking so long to get it posted. The photos of his pencil are his, and are used with his permission. Any errors and omissions are mine.

UPDATE: It turns out that Aztecs in silver are found with Heath marks. So what now to make of the pencil holder? Time for a closer comparison of details. A look at other makers's handling of American Indian motifs would also be helpful.