Edwardian Sampson Mordan Engine Turned Silver & Rose Gold Pencil Holder

Sampson & Mordan engine turned silver & rose gold pencil holder. Main body is marked "S Mordan & Co, Sterling Silver" and has the registration number 459680 (1905). The removable top that holds the pencil is marked with the Registration Number 511475(1907) and has British silver Hallmarks for London (the lion and leopard‘s head marks are quite rubbed).

Beautifully made pencil holder with crisp engine turned finish. The rolled rose Gold is in good condition with just a single area of slight mis-shaping to the silver case. Unusual to see this form of pencil holder with the combined engine turned and rose gold finish.

Sampson Mordan (1790 - 1843) was a British silversmith and a co-inventor of the first patented mechanical pencil. In 1822, Mordan and his co-inventor John Isaac Hawkins filed the first patent in Great Britain for a metal pencil with an internal mechanism for propelling the graphite "lead" shaft forward during use, as an improvement on the less complex leadholders that merely clutched the pencil lead to hold it into a single position. S. Mordan & Co." continued to make silverware and brass postal scales until 1941, when their factory was destroyed by bombs during the London Blitz.