A Look At A Restored Wm. K. Rockman (Guanleming) Model 50 From 1936

[Seele]

It's been more than a year since I posted my rather long post on the prehistory of the firm now known as Guanleming, documenting its establishment in New York City and its novel designs, until its founder Guan Chongcheng - also known as William K. Rockman - moved the firm to Shanghai just prior to the Wall Street Crash.

 

While the firm continued to trade under the Chinese name of Guanleming, and known to the Chinese as such, in English the firm carried on being known as Wm. K. Rockman for at least more than a decade after the establishment of the PRC in 1949. As I stated in the original thread, they escaped the Wall Street Crash in the US, but found themselves on a rollercoaster from hell: their patented fountain writing brush stopped working in China altogether because the papers and inks available there were totally different from those in the US. After much effort, Wm. K. Rockman pens evolved to become a commercial success, but the problems with sourcing materials stayed being a problem for many years.

 

Couple with the fact that China and Japan were on a collision course towards all-out war, The Rockman company had to be somewhat secretive in sourcing materials from the only viable suppliers at the time, all located in Japan. This Model 50 from 1936 was a most interesting example.

 

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x101/Seele2015au/WritingInstruments/WKR50_01_zps26cf309a.jpg

 

It is a compact pen made for students and priced accordingly. Here are the vital statistics: length: pen only, 110.5mm, capped 120.5mm, posted 148.3mm, maximum diameter 11.4mm, mimumum section diameter 7.5mm. Mass: pen only 9.6g, with cap 14.5g. Centre of mass: pen only 67mm from tip, posted 86mm. For comparison here it is, next to a Hero-Doctor 616 which is practically identical in size to the Parker 51.

 

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x101/Seele2015au/WritingInstruments/WKR50_02_zps4cfdb845.jpg

 

Even with total war imminent, Guan instructed the company manager Gan Hanhui to make a secret trip to Japan in 1936, to learn about the technology of pressure moulding of celluloid, and to source the material, Gan was successful in doing so. Normally, pressure moulding of thermoplastics uses phenolics materials (think Bakelite), but rarely celluloid, but it was indeed possible to do so. With the technology at hand and availability of Japanese-sourced powdered celluloid, the first product was the Model 50.

 

Interestingly, this pen still has some ebonite materials, such as the cap finial and button-filler blind cap. After all these years they have all faded somewhat, and appear a bit lighter.

 

The Model 50 is quite extensively marked, as shown in the following pictures.

 

The clip is not very springy at all, and the chrome plating has come off in places, showing the red copper underneath. Marked on it is the original round WmKR logo and the Chinese markings "Made by Guan Leming".

 

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x101/Seele2015au/WritingInstruments/WKR50_03_zps9c4c5813.jpg

 

Pressed on the barrel, the marking contains the Chinese characters "Leming" with the round logo between them, underneath in English says "Rockman's". These markings are getting faint, which is common to early Rockman pens; many such early examples have their barrel markings barely legible.

 

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x101/Seele2015au/WritingInstruments/WKR50_04_zps731de73a.jpg

 

At the tip of the ebonite blind cap, the marking "50" can be seen stamped into it, somewhat less than carefully.

 

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x101/Seele2015au/WritingInstruments/WKR50_05_zps51e7f5c7.jpg

 

The nib is decorated with zig-zag lines, featuring the round logo and a number "3" which possibly indicates its size, At the time, pens were classified as "steel pens", "gold pens" etc, and those with iridium-tipped steel nibs were named as such. So this is a "steel pen" with a steel nib - which sees a bit of surface corrosion now - without iridium tipping. The repairer reported that the feed was not ebonite, and I have a feeling that it is black celluloid as well.

 

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x101/Seele2015au/WritingInstruments/WKR50_07_zps5709c7d8.jpg

 

Like many pens from China in that period, button-filling was the most common design. Note the barrel and blind cap have different colours.

 

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x101/Seele2015au/WritingInstruments/WKR50_06_zpse36e55f2.jpg

 

When I acquired this pen it was in quite poor condition, and its restoration work was beyond what my resources could handle. So I sent it to Old Post Office Pens, in Victoria, who did a great job, as seen here. With the pen still in bits it actually allowed me to see some of the issues brought about by the passage of time.

 

The barrel and cap body are pressure moulded in celluloid and it seems that in the intervening years, they have shrunk somewhat. The threaded end of the barrel, into which the section goes, has cracked as a result, so the section had to be slimmed down a little to fit. Likewise, the cap also shrank enough for the cap band to fall off, so the cap was carefully machined and a smaller band made to fit. The shrinkage of both screw threads also made its operation a little less smooth, but I will indeed be most careful when removing and replacing the cap.

 

Since I keep an eye on the collectors market, early Rockman pens do turn up now and then, mostly the larger Model 28 and 26, and pretty much all of them require full restoration. After all, for many years after the establishment of the PRC, the mere fact of owning a pen was enough to warrant a one-way ticket to the gulags in some places. This is actually the first, and only Model 50 that I have seen, that explains my wish to spend what seems to be a substantial amount of money to get it fully restored to a state as close to original as possible.

Edited January 11, 2014 by Seele

[rwilsonedn]

Thanks! This story continues to be fascinating, and your dedication to documenting and restoring these pens is, I think, a valuable contribution.

As an aside, the story of the intrepid Gan Hanhui making a merchant trip to Japan under the shadow of dreaded war sounds to me the stuff of a great novel in the tradition of Graham Greene. One can imagine him working his way through the pen-parts shops in Tokyo, under constant surveillance, and being solicited by both Japanese and various Chinese factions to act as an agent. Only by playing one off against the other is he able to complete his real, business mission and get home safely ...

ron

[Sailor Kenshin]

Thanks. Very cool-looking pen and wonderful bit of fp history!

[Seele]

Thanks gentlemen. I have been doing a bit more digging in the hope of finding more information on the firm during the period after its move to Shanghai, and primary sources of information are as elusive as ever, if not worse than before.

 

Currently there are several firms located by the search engines under the name Guanleming, and I do not know if they are all still active. I have a feeling that the original firm moved towards building watch parts and it is still active, and co-owns another firm which does precision engineering. The Guanleming name as a pen maker somehow got acquired by Hero and was located in their Changsu works, managed by a man called Yuan Jinrong, where the Jinrong and Guanleming pens were built. Then presumably Yuan Jinrong started again in Shanghai under the Guanleming name for building pens, which may or may not be associated with Hero as their offices are not only in the same area, but on the same road. I have written to Guanleming Pens and hope that the current management has information to get this mess cleared up, fingers crossed.

[SharonAnn]

Hello!

William K Rockman was my uncle and our family has been very interested in the history of the pen and the factory. We are so interested in what you have written, and there are facts that coincide with memories that have been passed down to us. You have much more information than do we, and it is so interesting learning about all of this. We do know that the factory was purchased and was operating several years ago. The former street name of the factory was Chenault, later changed by the PRC. Thank you for all of your research and we are so interested in knowing how you came upon so much information, especially regarding the difficulty in acquiring the materials for the pens. Thank you for your extensive article and photos. How did you come upon all this information?

 

[Seele]

Hello!

William K Rockman was my uncle and our family has been very interested in the history of the pen and the factory. We are so interested in what you have written, and there are facts that coincide with memories that have been passed down to us. You have much more information than do we, and it is so interesting learning about all of this. We do know that the factory was purchased and was operating several years ago. The former street name of the factory was Chenault, later changed by the PRC. Thank you for all of your research and we are so interested in knowing how you came upon so much information, especially regarding the difficulty in acquiring the materials for the pens. Thank you for your extensive article and photos. How did you come upon all this information?

 

SharonAnn,

 

I am glad that my rather random peregrinations following your forebears' footsteps were to your approval. In a very roundabout kind of a way our respective ancestors might even had walked past each other in the street: both the Quan/Rockmans and my maternal grandmother's family were from the Quad City area, from Kaiping and Xinhui respectively, and I believe they shared a common accent, if not the same language. By the way another son of Kaiping is the well-known Chicago chef Ken Hom.

 

I am also quite intrigued to lern that at least one branche of the Rockman family is still flourishing in the US, as it's generally reported that the whole family hauled anchored and relocated to Shanghai just prior to the Wall Street Crash. That said, Chinese sources are notorious for inaccuracies, just like a piece of information I found later on which indicated that his son was already born when WKR made his first trip to the US. What I also know with a degree of certainty is that WKR lived on a state pension after his retirement until his death at his home town, on 28th October 1953, aged 72, and I cannot find any further indication of him having further offsprings; this would be an opportunity to find out indeed!

 

The name of the street in Shanghai where the works were established was definitely Connaught Road, now Kangding Road.

 

As to how I came about studying this subject, I guess I just keep picking a subject and then study as much as possibe before picking another! I could mention the past subjects but I fear it would be the ultimate cure for the worst case of insomnia. Still, it's a struggle trying to access information from Chinese sources: the fact that they are in Chinese is the least of the problems, it's more like the idea of giving citation in any article has never even been contemplated. So it's very much like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing, and with several identical areas in multiple pieces but cut differently: there might be those with more pieces but they just say, "you're doing such a good job, when you're done we'll read it and say you have done well"... rather frustrating that.

 

Needless to say I'd be most interested in your story; having a family connection it might just make it more intriguing to figure out the family's activities in the US: NYC and indeed beyond. It'd also be good to see if there are written documents relating to the history, written prior to your discovery of my writing as a way to eliminate memory contamination too, and the registry offices, census records, company registration, trade directories etc, would make a fertile field of your investigations.

Edited August 23, 2016 by Seele