Eagle Pencil Co. Prismacolor Box
This packaging is an interesting part of design history because it was produced during a time of drastic change and upheaval: for the art & design community, and especially for the United States. During the year this product was launched, the Eagle Pencil Company was struggling to stay afloat during the Great Depression. U.S. unemployment was extremely high and unions struggled to protect jobs, let alone the wages of those who had jobs. In 1938, around 850 employees of Eagle Pencil Company walked out after 10% of their wages were cut. Strikes like these became more common than ever before due to new legislation (part of FDR’s New Deal) that legally protected the right of unions to organize. Unfortunately, most of these strikes ended as failures because of the strained economy. The Eagle workers' strike, however, was settled seven weeks later and considered a partial success for employees who received some wages back.
With this backdrop of poverty and unemployment, it’s difficult to understand how such a stylized package design came about. The original eagle illustration used on early packaging and ads was much more traditional. The style was ornate, detailed, and had calligraphy flourishes. It resembled a lot of the patriotic eagle imagery in those days. Over time, we see that illustration get simplified, shrunk down, and used mostly on the back of packaging – almost like a logo. Then more Deco (American Streamline) iterations of the eagle started to dominate the packaging. This slick, opulent flair could’ve been an attempt to push Prismacolor, a new line of colored pencils by Eagle, that was launched as a high-quality art supply. Or maybe Eagle was leaning in to America’s renewed love of art (as government-funded WPA art projects were in full swing). Or, as Heller and Fili explain in their book “Streamline,” this could have been one of the many efforts to jolt the country out of its depression by encouraging Americans to open their wallets. In the 30s, it became the job of the “artist for industry” to sell the public by “[whetting] its appetite through seductive imagery and ornament. The stage for this visual sales pitch was world’s fairs, three of which were held in Chicago (1933), San Francisco (1939) and New York (1939).”
Not much is known about the packaging designer, Robert Foster, but it’s likely that he’s the same Robert Foster who contributed a series of art sculptures to the 1939 New York World’s Fair (one of these pieces was a large eagle). There’s also another interesting connection that solidifies this guess: The New York World’s Fair produced a number of souvenirs to commemorate the occasion – including an oversized novelty pencil created by none other than the Eagle Pencil Co.
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Where Did the Eagle Go?
The Eagle Pencil Company was established in 1856 by Bavarian immigrant Daniel Berolzheimer in New York. The family company acquired other companies and products, prompting a name change to Berol (a reference to the family). Changes to the name (and company ownership) resulted in losing the eagle imagery and various product lines, except for the product line “Prismacolor,” which is shown here on this package. Prismacolor is now its own brand under Newell Brands – and the only remnant left of Eagle.
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Works Cited:
Heller, Steven., and Louise. Fili. Streamline : American Art Deco Graphic Design. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995.
Marybeth Kavanagh. “The Eagle Pencil Strike of 1938.” New-York Historical Society (blog), March 30, 2017. https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/eagle-pencil-strike-of-1938.
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Art - Sculpture - American Eagle (Robert Foster)" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed November 30, 2023. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/5e66b3e8-d98a-d471-e040-e00a180654d7.
Internet Archive. “The History of Berol | Eagle Pencils,” November 8, 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20161108173254/http://berol.co.uk/berolhistory.html.
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Courtney Hendricks | @courthendricks
