I recently saw a beautiful vintage pencil sharpener on Ebay that was made in Canada by the Automatic Pencil Sharpener Co. of Canada Limited. I really didn't know much about APSCO so I did a bit of digging to find out more. There is a great post from the Made in Chicago Museum with lots of information about the origin of this company in the US.

It appears that the Automatic Pencil Sharpener Co. of Canada Limited was incorporated in Canada on January 17th, 1933. This is around the time that several US pencil manufacturers opened up subsidiaries in Canada. The company would be renamed APSCO Products (Canada) Ltd in August of 1953.  This helps to date some of these pencil sharpeners.

The sales leaflet below was printed in the USA and shows "Made in USA" sharpeners but appears to be printed for the Canadian market. The back lists the company as, "Automatic Pencil Sharpener Co., of Canada, Limited Toronto, Ontario". It also describes the Giant as, "Canada's favorite pencil sharpener." The business stamped on the back, "Callow Brothers Limited" in Toronto was in operation from at least 1922 to sometime after 1933. Given the two-letter, 4-digit telephone number on the leaflet, we know that this flyer is from pre-1954. The addition of a fifth digit to Toronto numbers started in 1951 (from 1923 to 1958, 2 Letter 4 Digit (2L-4D) dialing was used in Toronto).

I love the fonts both on the pencil and on the box for these China-Markers. Blaisdell gets is name from the company founder, Frederick E. Blaisdell of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who patented the paper-pencil, (the type better known as “china markers” today) on November 19, 1895.