Ink blotters advertising Canadian pencils are quite rare. I recently added this one to my collection. It is from Lewis Stationery Company Ltd in Calgary, Alberta. Given the 1 letter plus 4 digit format of the phone number, I'm guessing that this comes from the 1940s. The Lewis Stationery Company appears to have been founded by James Lewis in the 1930s and continued on well into the 1970s. 

The pencil shown on this ink blotter is just like some of the older Ticonderoga's in my collection. This same type of pencil and band are shown in the advertisement from Canadian Stationer from May, 1946. All three of these items refer to the Dixon Ticonderoga is "The Business Pencil." 

You could work in the rain with Dixon Thinex colored pencils... but why would you? This vintage ink blotter takes committment to work a bit too far.  It turns out that this is the first Canadian ink blotter I've acquired that is not from Ontario. Nice to have a bit of variety. I tried to search for information about the Regina Typewriter & Stationery Company but only found a few mentions in local newspapers between 1937 and 1954.

I mentioned this ink blotter in a previous post, but that was before I had a Canadian example of one.

Stationery companies often gave out ink blotters adverting various pens and pencils. I have shared some ink blotters in the past... see Ink Blotters and Ink Blotters - Part 2. I've added two more ink blotters to my collection which feature Dixon pencils. 

A story is what turns an object into an artifact and ink blotters have lots of stories to tell. The ink blotter on the right advertises the Dixon Ticonderoga pencil. In the US, the image of Ethan Allen often adorns packaging and advertisements for Ticonderoga pencils. This was problematic for the Canadian subsidiary of Dixon Pencil as Ethan Allen doesn't have the same patriotic connotations in this country.

Beaupres Interiors Ltd. also has a story to tell. Harold Beaupres enlisted in the Canadian Air Force in 1941. He became a flight lieutenant and was a navigator on a Lancaster Bomber which was shot down in 1943. It crashed in occupied France and Beaupre was taken to a prisoner of war camp near the Polish border called Stalag Luft 3. The camp was made famous when seventy-four prisoners escaped in 1944, inspiring the film The Great Escape.  He was liberated from the prison in 1945. In 1946, after returning from the war, he worked in his father's store Beaupre Paint and Wallpaper. He  later renamed the store Beaupres Interiors. Beaupre ran the business for thirty years in several downtown locations before retiring in 1979 and opening up another shop called Beaupre Stamps. The seven-digit, two letter and five number (2L+5N), format of the telephone number helps to date this ink blotter most likely to between 1951 and 1962. 

Below is a picture showing the ink blotters featuring pencils that I've collected from Canadian stationery and office supply stores. Turns out, all of these stores are from Ontario.

Stationery companies often gave out ink blotters which contain advertisements for products they sold. Some these advertisements are for pencils. I have shared some photos of ink blotters in the past. Below are three ink blotters from the Hay Stationery Company of London, Ontario.  ​

Colored pencils are made for a variety of purposes. School pencils, art pencils and pencils for the office. In the 1950s, colored pencils would have been found on the desks of engineers, architects, advertisers and accountants. Colored pencils marketed for the office were often hexagonal instead of round. They had hard thin cores designed for long wear and durability. In Canada, popular pencils in this category were the Eagle Verithin and Dixon Thinex. These two pencils were very similar and direct competitors.

The vintage ink blotters shown below feature advertisements for Verithin and Thinex pencils. They paint a sad picture of the life of the average 1950s businessman. Working in Dickensian conditions... sitting at a desk all day tediously drawing thin red checkmarks in a drafty warehouse with broken windows and a leaky roof. Writing with a stub of a pencil and hoping that the rain doesn't ruin your days work.

Writing with ink can get messy. Writers who use fountain pens or dip pens will sometimes use ink blotters to prevent smearing. These ink blotters are an absorbent paper that can be used to blot the excess ink off your paper. Manufacturers quickly realized that these blotting papers were an ideal host for advertisements. You can find ink blotters with advertisements for just about everything. My favorites however are ink blotters which advertise pencils. They seem to straddle the worlds of ink and graphite. A bridge to connect different writing instruments. 

Many of the businesses that stamped their names on these ink blotters were small independent retailers. It is often hard to find information about these small businesses.