Dear Jack:

I thought you would be interested in learning that I was fortunate in obtaining another specimen of the "Henderson" insulator (reported in CJ 1975-1977 issues). A friend was lucky enough to find this at the Lachute, Que. flea market, and which is in the same town where the other specimen was found. I hastened to his place where we made a deal so I could become the proud owner.

This specimen is essentially identical to the other specimen I reported, being somewhat crudely turned and having a greyish dark chocolate brown colour, although a bit darker than the other one .... 

Another interesting feature is that there are three marks in the glaze on the dome, appearing as if they could have been made by the index and middle fingers on one side and the thumb of the left hand on the other side, as when handling the item during or after the glaze dipping process. These marks are similar on both specimens, but they are much more pronounced on this second specimen .... 
Doug Henderson, NIA #593 
Hawkesbury, Ont., Canada 

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Very interesting, and this is the first and only early "threadless" pin type appearing in the Universal Style Chart of the new book "Worldwide Porcelains". Doug's letter was full of very detailed info on background of these insulators (too long to print in full), but he is continuing to try to track down the origin of these items or learn of the early line on which they were used in Ontario.

Jack

Dear Jack:

I bought this object (sketch above) at a garage sale, and the man said he thought it was old and that it was an insulator of some kind. It's crude ceramic, a light grey color and has no marking of any kind. Any ideas what it was used for?
Dwight Dodge 
Quesnel, B.C., Canada 

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We'll award one silver star to any reader who can identify this "whatisit" thingamabob, and will make it a gold star if you can also show it's an insulator and describe its use.

Jack

The Universal Style Chart of U.S. porcelains has always been limited to unipart pin types, arbitrarily defined as those fired all in one piece (thereby including glazewelded styles). This was strictly for practicality, and I've been staunchly against varying from this ground rule, although there are a number of small two-piece multis which are quite commonly collected and mail traded.

But even without somewhat minor variations, we already have over 950 styles in the chart. Certainly there are about that many multipart cemented-together styles, and they all are larger styles ranging to ship-anchor size. Discounting years of tine to research the catalogings of all these, it would have taken thousands of hours to draw them all and publish them in a book so big one couldn't lift it. And all for really no good purpose, since the majority of these are either no longer extant, or are not collected, or aren't ever mail traded, or discussed in correspondence, etc. 

This arbitrary rule has served us fairly well, but I've certainly lost a lot of sleep in the past 11 years over the two items pictured below not being in the Universal Style Chart. I'm thus repenting by adding these two classic Thomas transposition insulators as U-219 and U-219A. I trust that this will be good news to the fortunate several who may have one of these super goodies, and also to those less fortunates who use the U- Chart as their Christmas "wish book"!

Both were cataloged by Thomas as their #2030, the U-219 in the 1907 catalog, the U-219A in the 1912 catalog. Specimens exist of each style, but they are both in the very rare class as far as I know. These are the only U.S. telephone styles ever made by cemented parts. Canadian Porcelain Co. also made a very, interesting two-piece cemented transposition, and it is included in the U- Chart of "Worldwide Porcelains" for the same reason that it is a real goody. 

Jack