Continuing the series of Cumberland Pencil Co Ltd catalogues, today we have the catalogue from 1920.
The other two catalogues can be found on my blog, here:
The aim of putting these catalogues online is to help people try and date some of the pencils they have in their collection; this can be a bit tricky when the catalogues have limited to no pictures. Still, they have some use and really are just interesting to read.
So to the 1920 catalogue… Like the others, it is presented largely without major comment.
Lets look at some of the points of note for this catalogue. Firstly, it’s really quite short, with pencils really only taking up one single page. There are a few reasons as far as i can guess as to why this might be the case. 
Firstly, the Ltd company was only formed in 1916, so they probably didn’t really have much of a range. Cumberland coloured pencils, for example, were not due for another 12 years. There is a good chance that this is their first official catalogue (as the Greenwood owned company), but you never know.
Secondly, I think it would be safe to assume that WWI would have played a major impact on resources and so there is a good chance that Cumberland were not really fully up and running in 1920.
I wonder was it the lack of graphite which was causing the issues here? This would make a lot of sense, particularly if they were sourcing their graphite from Bavaria or Austria (the Borrowdale mines being long since abandoned).
Pencils from this era have some helpful identifiers; they are left to right stamping and they don’t, yet, have the trademark S with the arrow through it. If we take a look at the older Scawfell in my picture below you can clearly see the distinction between it and the two more modern versions below it.
The 142 is a nice pencil, despite a rather dull name. I don’t have a great example, but pencil friend Bob Truby has one and so I’ve borrowed the image:
Bob’s site can be found here, for those that don’t know already – Brand Name Pencils
I have a couple of other examples of pencils mentioned in this catalogue, but they all have the S with the arrow, so I don’t believe that that are as old as this catalogue. As always, should you have any examples (particularly the Rydal) that you would like to trade or donate, do please get in touch.
The final 3 pages have no reference to pencils, so I’ve just set them out below for completeness. I did find it interesting that there was a rather wide selection of penholders available. This seems to fit with the lack of graphite being a major issue.
One final point on the last couple of pages is the fact that Cumberland opted to call their penholders the Lakeland Series. I’m glad they repurposed this name when they produced their very successful coloured pencil series.
Pencil Fodder 