Uniface award medals

Early pen and pencil makers proudly boasted of their medals won at the national and international exhibitions of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Not many examples survive, though it is possible some are being held by collectors of medals, unknown to collectors and historians of writing instruments (a medal awarded to Livermore in 1879 can be seen here).

Pen collectors hold a number of Waterman medals, but nearly all are electrotypes -- near-exact electroformed replicas, consisting of a plated copper shell over a lead alloy core. This was discussed in a past post on a Waterman medal from the 1893 Columbian Exposition, the gist being that we know that Waterman had electrotypes made so that they could exhibit their awards in multiple locations, but that we have no idea how many were made, nor how typical this might have been for other medal winners.

The situation is further complicated by the existence of uniface replicas -- that is, medals with blank backs, their faces copying just the obverse or reverse of the original. These are often found with threaded posts on their backs, indicating that they were made to be mounted on a board or plaque for display. Were these privately commissioned by award recipients, though, or were they given out alongside the original medals?

I've not had much luck searching for information online, but on a recent visit to the Corning Museum of Glass I stumbled across the display shown above. Hawkes was a major manufacturer of cut glass, and the topmost plaque beautifully illustrates how these uniface pairs were used. It is still not clear, however, if this plaque was presented by the Exposition Universelle, or if Hawkes had it made. Perhaps the Corning Museum will be able to add some information; perhaps there are other similar plaques in their collection, not on display, and there might be a label on the plaque's back.

Waterman's "Safety Pockets"

Browsing in old fountain pen catalogs, one often runs across items that just don't seem to turn up in real life.  The leather pen carriers sold by Waterman and others provide a good example: they appear regularly in Waterman catalogs from around the turn of the century up through the 'teens, listed as "Safety Pockets" or "Vest and Chatelaine Pockets", yet many advanced collectors have never seen actual surviving examples.

I've owned these two for quite a few years. Both are vest pocket versions, as opposed to the chatelaine versions which have an inverted V-shaped suspension system, allowing the pocket to hang from a woman's belt.

Don't snap that box!

One thing that I learned young about the handling of Old and Delicate Things was how to close a box with a spring-loaded latch. Press the release button down -- don't snap the box closed.

This beautiful and uncommon fitted Waterman box shows why. Snapping a box closed not only puts a lot of pressure on the latch plate, but also subjects it to the impact of the falling catch -- which itself can break from the repeated shocks. In this case, it was the latch plate that gave way. Subsequent snap closures did further damage, gouging away the leatherette and wood at the latch point.

Good old boxes are becoming harder to find, and the wooden parts of hundred-year-old boxes are typically dry and fragile. So please, hold that button down, and don't snap that box.

Waterman's cigar cutter

Not long ago, online research resources allowed us to pin down the story of how Waterman's legendary Prohibition Pen came to be. And now we have written documentation of another well-known Waterman rarity: the celluloid cigar cutter, shown above. The mention is in Geyer's Stationer (vol. 58, Mar 4, 1915, p. 15), citing the Seattle Rotary Club's February 22 Weekly Bulletin:

"Rotarian Frank D. Waterman, a member of the New York Rotary Club, contributed a very useful souvenir to those present, this being a combination envelope opener, cigar cutter and fingernail cleaner."

At first glance, I wasn't entirely certain about this reference. The cigar cutter's blade doesn't seem a very effective letter opener, nor much of a manicure tool.

Fortunately, there is one surviving example that retains its original box. And there is its official description: "Envelope opener, cigar cutter, nail cleaner" -- along with the personal imprint of Frank D. Waterman himself.

The Seattle Rotary meeting report allows us to place the Waterman cigar cutter, but likely as not the cutters were also given out at other times and at other events. Frank D. Waterman was an active Rotarian who traveled extensively; although Waterman cigar cutters are now rare, this may be a reflection of a low survival rate for an item that was both fragile and utilitarian. On the other hand, the slogan found on all known examples, "The Handiest Thing in the World", was not widely used in Waterman advertising, appearing in only a few ads and only in 1915.

Kut-No-Chek, the manufacturer, made similar promotional cutters for other clients. The company is listed at 1 Madison Avenue in New York City in Polk's New York Copartnership and Corporation Directory for 1915.

Figural novelty pencils, then and now

Is there a collector who doesn't long for a time machine when looking at old catalogs? Some now-iconic rarities were expensive luxuries when new, but many were not. Studying old catalogs highlights how what is valued now wasn't necessarily what was valued then. Nowadays collectors generally value silver pens far more highly than their gold filled equivalents, for example, but their respective valuation was the exact reverse when they were new.

I recently ran across a particularly dramatic example of this in an Aikin Lambert catalog brochure from the 1880s (the title page features the company's exhibition award medals from Philadelphia [1876], Paris [1878], Sydney [1879], and Melbourne [1880], and D. F. Foley is listed as one of the firm's four principals, so the catalog predates his founding his own firm in Feb 1888). The last page lists a selection of figural novelty pencils -- now very rare and desirable -- and their prices.

A magic pencil in the form of a champagne bottle was only $1.25 in gold plate or celluloid, $2 in sterling silver. Other designs such as bullets, obelisks, bells, and telephones fell into the same range. This was cheap in both absolute and relative terms, as a look at other pages demonstrates.

In the same price range we find your basic small gold-nibbed dip pen in various forms, all of which are in plentiful supply today. For the price of a single run-of-the-mill boxed #1-size dip pen with gold filled holder and pearl taper, you could have had two figural novelty pencils!

Too late now, alas -- the exchange rate has changed rather dramatically in the last 130 years. The novelty pencils shown above are all American made, though not all are Aikin Lambert products.

ADDENDUM: The brochure was printed by the prominent New York firm of Mayer, Merkel & Ottmann, at 21-25 Warren Street (name and address in the bottom margin of the back cover). This helps narrow the date, as the two senior partners retired in 1885, the company continuing as the J. Ottmann Lithographing Company.

1942 Sugar Bowl pin

An ongoing project, eventually to be published in the PCA's magazine, The Pennant, has centered on a small number of early Parker 51s with smooth sterling caps and applied emblems for the 1942 Sugar Bowl. I'm not a football fan myself, but since I own one of these pens, I've picked up a few bits and pieces of related ephemera over the years. Recently I acquired a Missouri pin, complete with ribbons and attached stamped metal football. The football arrived rather squashed, probably because the pin had not been packed very well, and in straightening it out, I noticed something.

You may have to click on the detail above, but the football is clearly stamped, "JAPAN". The attack on Pearl Harbor had taken place just a bit over three weeks prior; this was probably one of the last such trinkets, at least for a good long time.

Some thoughts on original boxes

In many fields of collecting, an item in its original box is worth far more than one without -- so much so, that it is not uncommon for the box to be worth several times what it originally contained (a similar situation applies with modern first editions and their dust jackets). This has not been the case with pens and pencils, however, and though better boxes have come up in price a bit in recent years, even the best come nowhere near the value of their contents.

The box shown above is a rare one, only the second example I've seen. The pen that came inside is also rare: one of the earliest retracting-nib safety pens made, produced for only a few years in the mid-1890s. Since the box came up at auction, I had to give some thought to how much I would be willing to bid, which in turn got me thinking about the valuation of pen boxes in general. Why don't pen collectors value boxes so highly? Is it because so many collectors think of pens more as items to be used, than as historical artifacts to be preserved and studied? Is it because there are so many boxes available?

Certainly in comparison to many other collected items, the supply of original boxes is high. Perhaps because they were small and easily repurposed, many survive. And since cheaper pens and pencils were often sold in the same boxes as more desirable models, collectors who care about boxes usually have little trouble finding them. This has kept prices down both directly and indirectly, as general availability has shaped collectors' attitude towards what boxes should be worth. Even in those instances where the original box for a desirable pen is much rarer than the pen itself, few collectors are willing to pay more than a small fraction of the pen's value for its box.

It's hard to buck the tide. I was able to buy the Horton box for well under my maximum, yet that maximum was still a fraction of my maximum bid for the last Horton pen that came my way. I knew I was being cheap; at the same time, I was pretty certain no other collectors would be any less so. And though the box is unquestionably rare, so is the pen. No premium for rarity when the loss rate for each is comparable, I suppose.

Quink Concentrate

At just two inches (5 cm) high, this is one of Parker's smallest Quink ink bottles. The instructions on the side of the box state:

Pour the contents of the phial into a 4-OZ. bottle and fill with CLEAN COLD WATER.
In doing this BE SURE TO RINSE out the phial several times to make certain that ALL the content is used.

Quink Concentrate was a WW2-era product, marketed in the UK. The ad below explains more, noting that "the bottle shortage is greater than ever". The need to economize on shipping was a major concern during wartime; another response to this need was "V-mail", in which letters were copied to microfilm and re-printed at the letter's destination. Unused WW2-era V-mail ink is still commonly found in the USA.

Waterman 1893 Columbian Exposition medal

Pen makers proudly advertised the medals they had won at industrial fairs and international expositions. Waterman was awarded numerous medals of this sort -- so many, that they had replicas made so that a full panoply of awards could be exhibited in multiple locations.

This recently-acquired example is a an electrotype copy of the large bronze medal received by the Waterman company at Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Electrotypes were extremely precise copies made by plating a thick layer of copper into a mold of the original object. "Thick" is relative, however, as the copper shell was still thin enough to require backing, typically being filled with lead alloy to give support and weight.

 

That is the case with this medal; the construction method is easily visible in the seam running around the rim. There are some very deep dents to the rim as well, due to the softness of the lead core.

Although by definition not as rare as original award medals (each of which is, normally, unique), original electrotype copies are nonetheless extremely rare. It is likely that only a handful of copies were made of each medal, and in over 20 years of collecting, the number of surviving examples I have run across is few indeed.

Graphite samples

Dixon is one of the best-known names for both graphite and pencils. This group of graphite specimen jars once belonged to Harvard, and consists of samples of Dixon products in various forms and grades. I would guess that they date to the end of the 19th century or very early 20th century. Harvard appears to have pitched them back in the 1970s or '80s, along with loads of other old scientific samples and models. When they appeared at a local antique shop, they seemed the perfect pencil-related display.

Van Valkenburg's original clip

Once upon a time, fountain pens and mechanical pencils didn't have clips. Then, a number of inventors and entrepreneurs began to offer add-on clips, which became extremely popular -- so popular, that the pen and pencil makers took notice and soon began to offer permanently-attached clips, often first purchased from the independent clipmakers, but later invariably of the penmakers' own design.

One of the most notable of these clipmakers was Levi D. Van Valkenburg, whose sprung rocker-style "V. V." clip was adopted by Parker, Conklin, Moore, and others. The "V. V." clip is well known to collectors, in versions covered by US patents 844,061 and 886,095 of Feb. 12, 1907 and Apr. 28, 1908. Much less familiar is Van Valkenburg's first clip design, patented in 1896. Since the metal part of the clip was held on the pen or pencil by a thick rubber ring (which also provided the clip tension), there wouldn't be much left once the rubber inevitably hardened and rotted. Indeed, in a recent thread at Lion & Pen, George Kovalenko wondered if any even survived.

Well, fear not, George! This turn of the century Remex eyedropper recently showed up in the mail; the box is a bit stained and rough, but the pen is nearly pristine. It was used, but not much, and not for a very long time. And on the cap is a fully intact 1896-patent Van Valkenburg clip.

The rubber ring has long since hardened, so the fit on the cap is a bit loose. For some reason it was put on backwards (the thumb tab should be on the right, of course). I photographed the pen as I received it, yet it should be easy to slide the clip off and put it back on in the correct orientation.

The clip is marked with the May 26, 1896 patent date, though these clips continued to be advertised for a good 20 years afterwards and perhaps more.

PS The clip would still work mounted backwards, since a pocket's edge would readily slide under the smooth curve of what was intended to be the thumbpiece. Perhaps the original owner couldn't be bothered to push down on the thumbpiece to release the clip's grip each time the pen left or was returned to his pocket.

PPS Here is an ad for the clip from a 1908 issue of Geyer's Stationer:

Ghost gold pens ad

I've been doing a lot of digging into the history of the early gold pen makers of New York recently. So it was a pleasant surprise to run across this photo of an ancient and very faded painted advertisement somewhere on Nassau Street -- one of the centers of the trade in the 19th century.

I can't quite make out any of the words above "GOLD PENS", nor is there any further information in the original post (where you can view the full-sized version of the image above, along with a host of other ghost ads from times past).

PS From Google Maps, the building appears to be on the east side of Nassau Street between John and Fulton, with the photo taken from somewhere near the intersection with John Street, looking northeast down Nassau. Street View doesn't help much beyond this -- no idea of the exact address, or if the ad is still visible (the picture was posted in 2008).

Conklin blotter

When I first got this blotter it seemed unremarkable, though the use of the old ink blot disaster trope provided some amusement. It was only at second glance that I noticed the swastikas, used to highlight the slogan, "You Never Blot with a Conklin" (you'll have to click on the picture to see the larger version). The blotter may be dated to the 'teens, when the swastika was still an innocent symbol most closely associated with American Indian art and design.

Caw's trade card

The heyday of trade cards was the last couple of decades of the 19th century, so examples advertising fountain pens are rare. This one is a die-cut, but the "Caw's" seems to have been cut off!

For more on die-cut trade cards, see Burt Purmell's article here. Since this card lists the Caw's safety, it must have been printed no earlier than 1896.