If you will recall the photograph on page 11 in the January, 1990 issue of CJ showing the large lily-shell M-4710 (see photo below) that showed up at the Allentown National, remember that it was purchased in advance by Chris Hedges. The insulator was graciously transported to Chris (he could not make the show) by Clarice and Wes Gordon. Wes was ready with camera in hand when Chris arrived at Charlie Allmon's home to pick it up. The photo below needs no caption as it is easy to see by the expression on his face that Chris was pleased. If a second photo could have been made a split second later, you could have read the two words of exclamation on his lips. I can easily hear him exclaim, "##*@ #*##"!! By the way, Jeff McCurty was the one who attached the small plastic boat to the "boat anchor". I had incorrectly attributed that clever idea to Clarice.

Robin Harrison sent in a few reports that are very interesting. The first one is a new unipart style which was found by Jeff Hogan. Jeff found a new style of fog-bowl insulator which is a two-piece glazeweld. Jack Tod has assigned it U-859. Jeff's specimen has a chocolate brown glaze with two different markings used by Victor Insulators, Inc. Both incuse and under-glaze ink "V" markings inside of a rectangle were used on the same side of the insulator. It is somewhat crude, sits lopsided on the base, and is evidently of early manufacture for fog-bowls. Robin later found another U-859 which was better made and having only a single incuse marking on the upper skirt. 

Another unusual insulator reported by Robin is U-964 with the Victor R=oo (insulator logo) marking. This style was made popular by Fred Locke and many are found with one of his various wordy patent markings. However, specimens with the insulator logo marking appear to be much more scarce. Robin's insulator has a real nice rusty-red glaze typical of Locke's early production from 1908 to mid-1910's. 

Robin reports still another unusual find. He has a Sim-U-310 which he says came from the east coast. It has an incuse marking of a Maltese cross on the bottom of the outer skirt (see the photograph below). Has anyone else seen a similar marking on this or any other style? The insulator does not have any other markings.

Robin also reported a new date stamp on a brown U-713. His specimen only has the marking "11-5-04". These insulators were made by Imperial Porcelain Works. This particular date is the latest manufacturing date ever reported for Imperial beating the previous late date of "9-2-04" by more than two months. Perhaps later dates will be reported as it is believed that Imperial continued to make pin-type insulators until their plant was totally destroyed by fire on 2-3-07. Imperial used a brown glaze for most of their production (as indicated by specimens) during the period from late 1901 until at least late 1904. 

There is another news item that came out of the Allentown National that we have never had the opportunity to report. I am sorry to say that I have now forgotten who gave me the report, so my apologies to that person for not being able to give him credit now. If you are the one, please drop me a card, and I will be glad to give you credit in the next "PIN" article. 

There are several marking errors on white insulators manufactured by the Imperial Porcelain Works. All of the errors, except two, have been in the word "porcelain" which appears in the marking line "IMPERIAL PORCELAIN" just below the crown marking. 

Such misspellings are "PORCELIAN", "PORCELINN", and "PORCELANN" and all were on U-927C. All of the errors on U-927C occurred during April, 1900. One brown U-746 dated 12-20-01 was marked with the old stamp which had the error "PORCELIAN". That marking device must have been left over from marking the U-927C's in April, 1900. A worker was probably told to throw it away, but missed the garbage can. The marking device, later found 1-1/2 years later on the floor behind the garbage can, was then reused on the brown U-746. 

Other less frequent errors are "TRENTON, N.I." and "PROCELAIN" in the "Manufactured by" marking which appears together with the crown marking. All of the "PROCELAIN" errors have been on insulators manufactured from 7-7-98 to 11-10-98 which seems like a long time to keep a marking device having an error. Actually, the error first appeared on a U-934 dated 7-7-98. It never appeared again until 9-20-98 on a U-935. It was last used on a U-935 dated 11-10-98.

We now have a different error in the crown marking which was reported to me at Allentown. The error "IMPRIRIAL" rather than "IMPERIAL" was found on a U-927C. Now that is a very unusual error even for the error-plagued U-927C. It is very strange that they had so many problems correctly marking U-927C. 

You may be wondering how could I possibly know when all these errors occurred and on which style. Well, about five years ago, I started recording all the manufacturing dates I saw on the insulators made by Imperial. I would keep the list handy and add new dates while at a show. It is a very interesting list for someone interested in the history of Imperial.

Imperial produced pin-types over a very short period. They probably stopped making pin-types sometime between 1904 and in 1907 when the factory was destroyed, but Imperial did continue making specialty porcelain until the company went out of business in about 1940. The latest Imperial advertisement that I have been able to find was dated June, 1938. With their pin-type production over nearly 90 years ago and much of their activities overshadowed by Fred Locke influences, not much is known about Imperial history. Any clues we can gather from specimens could potentially help to unlock a bit of their history. 

With the exception of a few two-piece Fred Locke styles (M-2795 and M-2796), Imperial was the only company that put the exact manufacturing date on each insulator. That practice began officially on July 15, 1898, but marking of production advance of that official date began on July 1, 1898. Marking of units with the manufacturing date was standard practice even after dropping all other markings. As stated earlier in this article, Robin Harrison has reported the latest Imperial manufacturing date of 11-5-04. The latest date has been pushed later twice in the last 10 years. Who knows, someone may find an even later date, but I doubt that Imperial stayed in the pin-type business past 1904. Their operation was too small and old to have competed successfully much longer.