Cyclingpencils has a very interesting post that shows a vintage Johann Faber pencil marked “Made in Japan”!
I hope some further information will come to light.
Eagle Mirado pencil
After mentioning the modern Mirado, I remembered that I had a vintage box of Eagle Mirados laying around.
Those with Eagle eyes will note that the original half-gross box appears to have an invited guest:
The pull out tab helps to access the pencils, yet I guess I never pulled it all the way.
It has a bonus!
No kidding – the Eagle Pencil Company offered handwriting analysis for ten cents. Their graphologist, Dorothy Sara, appears to have written a number of books on the subject.
Ten cents seems pretty good for getting to know “your inherent talents, your virtues, and also your faults.”
The box also tells us what a “True Medium” is. No doubt related!
The pencils, given their age, have very nice imprints:
Chikyu 8380 pencil
My thanks to isu for linking “Globe” with “Chikyu”. Here are some vintage Chikyu 8380 pencils. You can observe the globe logo. The pencils are bound in twine, and enclosed in a cardboard box.
Though 2H is too hard a grade for my typical pencil use, they were difficult to resist. I’m not going to find these at the local market!
I regret that I can’t say much about the manufacturer. Defunct? Merged?
IBM Electrographic lead
Along with the IBM Electrographic pencil, IBM also manufactured lead for mechanical pencils.
The box is inscribed on the side:
“For Electrical Mark Sensing
For Marking IBM Test Scoring Machine Answer Sheets and IBM Mark Sensed Cards”
The bottom contains these instructions:
“To Make Electrically Conductive Pencil Marks
Mark with firm pressure on a sharp point. Keep the point sharp by turning the pencil after each mark. This will produce dense black marks, in which the particles of graphite deposited by the lead are so firmly packed that electricity can pass from one end of the mark to the other.”
The box itself has a wooden frame, and appears quite sturdy. I’m lucky enough to now have a few 0.9mm mechanical pencils, but these leads are 1.18mm, and my sole pencil that can take this diameter is a Yard-O-Led.
Unfortunately, the Yard-O-Led requires a Master’s degree in pencilology to change the lead. (And some people complain about the inconvenience of sharpening woodcase pencils!) Still, past practice likely helped, and I succeeded in the challenge.
I don’t know what results a few decades spent in the box might have had, but just like the woodcase pencil’s lead, the line drawn is remarkably rich, smooth, and black. Not just a darker grade, as in 4B vs. HB, but more luminescent as well.
The combination is nice, and the thick lead and dark line just might cause me to start using the Yard-O-Led pencil on a regular basis.
A very nice historical item.
Eberhard Faber Marigold pencil
A brighter than average yellow pencil – the Eberhard Faber Marigold 240.
It was one of perhaps hundreds of brands once made by Eberhard Faber.
Ruwe Pencil Co. 205 No. 7S pencil
You never know what a small city art supply store will offer. Last weekend, I found some pencils for sale from a long defunct Connecticut pencil manufacturer.
Ruwe Pencil Co. was purchased by Dixon in 1988, and I had only heard of them from collecting sites like Brand Name Pencils, so it was surprising to see some Ruwe pencils for sale at retail.
This pencil, the 205 No. 7S, is a “Polyester Drafting Film” pencil. For those of us (including myself) who don’t regularly work with specialty architectural and drafting films, this is a type of matte surface film with a number of properties that support drawing. You can see it for sale at Dick Blick for example. Staedtler and others do mention that their pencils work on drafting film.
The pencil also has markings from Keuffel and Esser, an engineering and drafting supplies firm. Perhaps the pencil was made for them.
A page at the Smithsonian website suggests K&E’s demise was in 1969, so this pencil might be much older than 1988.
A nice link to the past for only thirty cents.