Conté Indiana № 1073

They seem to be older than the merge of Conté with Gilbert-Blanzy-Poure (in 1960, but Gil­bert had alre­ady bought Conté in 1950).

The fact that their hard­ness is HB-n°2 might indi­cate a later production…but really here I’m just gues­sing, since maybe they were desti­ned to the export mar­ket („made in France“ and not „fabri­qué en France“)?

Inte­res­t­ingly too, the „Indiana“ lin­eup, coming from Conté, was con­tin­ued to almost the end of French made pen­cils era by Conté/Gilbert/Bic, whe­reas most of the late offe­ring of Bic/Conté was issued from the Gilbert/Blanzy-Poure ori­gi­nal lin­eup. I’m not much of a pen­cil his­to­rian, but I wish Conté name was kept in the pen­cil production…I also wish I were more inte­res­ted in pen­cils when I was young, there was some colorful offe­rings from these now defunct brands!

The typo­gra­phy and design of old pen­cils and its con­tai­ners fasci­na­tes me!

Thank you very much for sha­ring this enorm­ous wealth of infor­ma­tion on wri­ting instruments.