Sales Book 580

I don’t have an exact date for these pencils but there are some clues. The packaging and design share some features with this box, which I believe dates back to the ’20s. This announcement, dated 1921 from Eberhard Faber, mentions their Sales Book pencils:

Since these pencils are polished gray, then they were likely made prior to 1921 (NB – I wonder what a “steno shading pencil” is).

This is the first gray-polished pencil I’ve seen, at least from this time period. Looking closely you can see two different shades—I wonder if this had something to do with the switch to yellow polish.

A.W. Faber Lay Out 2526

I admit that I don’t know very much about “layout” pencils except to say that they often have large and soft cores, allowing artists and editors to quickly sketch ideas. One of the most popular it seems was the Eagle Draughting 314, which became the Berol 314, then the Sanford 314, then ultimately General’s 314 (I may not have the order correct). Other well-known layout or “sketching” pencils include those from Blaisdell and the Eberhard Faber Ebony pencil. But one I haven’t heard as much about is the A.W. Faber Lay Out 2526.

Some preliminary searching turned up an article from 1948 which stated that the 2526 was being made again (perhaps it can be inferred that the Second World War interrupted their production). However, I don’t know when they were discontinued; if they haven’t been available for a long time, that may be the reason they aren’t as frequently mentioned. It’s an extraordinary pencil, though.

I don’t have a sharpener with a large enough aperture so I took to knife-sharpening, but this pencil is so large and there is so much wood that it seemed more like whittling than sharpening. The lead core, even compared with other layout pencils, is very large:

From left-to-right: Eagle Draughting 314, Eberhard Faber Ebony, Faber-Castell Castell 9000 Jumbo, A.W. Faber Lay Out 2526.

The core of the 2526 is about 7 mm, as much as the entire diameter of the 314. The lead, to me at least, seems much smoother than the 314 or the Ebony, and it wears less quickly than you might think given how soft it seems.

The label should be a clue as to their age, though I don’t currently have anything to compare it against; I’m guessing the 1950s.

Microtomic Tube

Yet another application of Eberhard Faber’s clamp eraser design, this time as end-caps for a tube of Microtomic replacement leads:

The label mentions Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, which means that they were made no earlier than 1957 1956 (when the Eberhard Faber Company moved from Brooklyn to Wilkes-Barre).

It’s similar to a much earlier design from the 1920s and ’30s, and I wonder to what extent they were practical as erasers:

Contrapuntalism is a clamp-friendly blog.

Preserving Bach’s Manuscripts

I’m not certain if this is the most counterintuitive thing I’ve ever seen or the most ingenious—probably a little bit of both.

In addition to their inherent fragility, Bach’s remaining manuscripts are susceptible to damage from rust owing to the iron content found in the ink he used (which he often made himself). This can do everything from changing the color of the writing to holes being eaten into the paper. To preserve these priceless manuscripts conservators apply cellulose to weakened areas of the paper, but it’s the way the do it that is incredible.

First, the manuscript is placed between two sheets of adhesive gelatin then pressed together (images are ©EuroArts):

Here is the amazing part—those two sheets are pulled apart, dividing the manuscript’s thickness in half:

Areas that are ink-damaged receive some individual attention:

Then a layer of cellulose is placed in between the two halves before they are joined back together:

I’m sure that this method was researched and rehearsed over and over again, but still, can you imagine being the first person pulling apart one of these irreplaceable documents? Talk about no do-overs…

You can watch this harrowing procedure here (I thought that the choice of music—with the dissonant suspensions while they separated the sheets—was a fitting choice). Afterward there is also some discussion about the Bach Digital project as well.

Here is an article from the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation that describes in detail the process of paper splitting. It features much of the research done by Günter Müller and Wolfgang Wächter, who provided key support to the Bach project.

Time Capsule

Either a 1/2 gross box of Eberhard Faber Van Dyke drawing pencils, grade B, or a time capsule; I’m not sure which:

I don’t know their exact date but based on the packaging and design, I think they are from the 1930s, perhaps even the early 1940s:

Each box of 12 has the same stripe motif as the larger carton, and the top is hinged to the bottom by a strip of similarly-striped tape. The colors are deep and brilliant:

The design of this box was carried forward into the 1940s, when the Eberhard Faber Company began to push their “Microtomic” refining process:

This stripe motif would remain on Van Dyke packaging for many years to come, and was a feature of many Eberhard Faber packaging designs as well:

Back to the Van Dykes—each box of 12 has a piece of textured paper that wraps the top 6 pencils, and contains the company’s pitch for their product. The quality of both the printing and the paper is remarkable:

The gold coloring on the underside of the lid is consistent with the underside of this (presumably contemporary) Blackwing box:

The Van Dyke was Eberhard Faber’s flagship pencil, perhaps much in the way that the Castell 9000 was to A.W. Faber (and is to Faber-Castell), which launched in 1905. The earliest mention I have seen so far of the Van Dyke is this 1898 advertisement from The School Journal:

However, it seems that the Van Dyke experienced something akin to a re-launch in 1914:

From American Stationer and Office Outfitter, 1918.

[Some of the language in this advertisement is likely influenced by the impact of the First World War, but I can't help noticing the irony in this pencil—made by an extended German family and named after a Dutch man—being a "truly American" product.]

The boxes and pencils are in such good condition it’s easy to imagine that the last person who handled them might have been the person who helped make them:

It’s All Right

Long before I began playing an instrument or even expressed an interest in doing so, I remember seeing Richie Havens on some television show—but it was only a glimpse. It was one of those exciting kid-moments, you know, when your parents hadn’t yet realized that it was way past your bedtime: you sat there as quietly as possible hoping you wouldn’t get noticed, enthralled by the mysterious images and sounds coming from the “grown-up” world of late-night television.

I don’t recall which show it was.

(Richie Havens, 1941-2013)

I could only have been 6 or 7 years old, and it wasn’t his song Freedom that first hooked me, it was his rendition of Here Comes the Sun (a song featured in the movie The Hoax not too long ago). Though I was old enough to recognize the melody (if not the name) of the song, I didn’t know if the guy I was watching was the guy who originally wrote it, but I didn’t really care. I also didn’t know that the unusual way he played his guitar—with his thumb reaching over the fingerboard—was even unusual, because that didn’t matter either. All I knew was that I liked it.

I liked it a lot.

And to this day, when it comes to music it’s still the only thing that has ever really been important; and it’s all right.

Package Deal

There is something rotten in Denmark Newark.

Photo: eBay

Well, perhaps not rotten, but curious at the very least. The box for these A.W. Faber-Castell U.S.A. Columbus pencils has a two-part design, where pushing one end reveals the pencils at the other. It even says to “push this end” on the box. But this is a design that I associate with Eberhard Faber:

Several Eberhard Faber products had this type of packaging including the Mongol and Van Dyke, dating back to the 1920s. The patent was filed in 1923 by Carl H. Kappes and assigned to the Eberhard Faber Pencil Co. by 1927:

The style of the packaging would evolve over the years but the basic design stayed the same (there is an additional patent for the Van Dyke box).

It’s easy to find instances of pencil manufacturers “borrowing” from one another, going back to some of the earliest commercial products. In fact it was the cheap lookalikes of his pencils that prompted Lothar Faber in 1875 to petition for a law that would protect his proprietary rights (though I’m uncertain as to how they were enforced). But I was surprised to see that A.W. Faber-Castell U.S.A. adopted this box design (during what I’m guessing was the ’60s), knowing who it was originally associated with.

I don’t know if the patent or trademark in this case might have expired, or maybe even if there was some sort of arrangement between the two companies in America. But it’s an interesting overlap nonetheless.

Ersatz Fabernalia

A.W. Faber replacement pencils No. 9061, ca. 1910.

“A.W. Faber Plant Sold At Auction”

This is a follow-up to a previous post called 94 Years Ago Today, which detailed the seizure and sale of A.W. Faber’s American assets in 1918 as a result of the Alien Property Act. I came across an article that summarized the day’s events and also contained a couple of very interesting bits of information.

Ultimately Mr. Friedeburg’s winning bid would not be approved. In fact, it was denied in the form of an executive order from President Woodrow Wilson, stating that the bid was too low and did not represent fair market value. This is understandable, but why did it take 13 days to come to that conclusion? Furthermore, who ended up with A.W. Faber’s assets, and what was their nationality? Or more to the point, what wasn’t their nationality? Perhaps not everyone would have been happy with Friedeburg—and his surname—winning the property once owned by the “enemy”. This is pure conjecture on my part and perhaps even a little bit irresponsible, but my feeling about it was bolstered upon discovering that there were only two bidders for the property:

With all of the intense competition that existed between early 20th-century pencil-makers in the United States it seems rather surprising that there was only one other bidder. But this brings me to the other interesting bit: another pencil-maker was present at the auction, but he didn’t bid:

Perhaps his curiosity got the better of him, or maybe his schadenfreude had runneth over, but he was likely not the only person interested in the apparent demise of A.W. Faber in America. The underlined passage is very telling, though—Eberhard Faber continued to distance himself from his relatives in Stein while reminding the war-weary American public that he too was in fact an American, and that his business was “thoroughly American in character.”

The rest of the article offers some history as well as a few details regarding the approval process for the winning bid:

The First World War and the Alien Property Act presented the Wilson administration many opportunities to acquire not only goods and property, but cash and patents as well.  And with all the cronyism that was going on at the time, an auction of this size having only two bidders (the winner of which was denied) makes you wonder if there isn’t more to the story.

Phil Kubicki, 1943-2013