Eagle Mirado 174: The Yellow Pencil with the Red Band

Before it became the Mirado, one of America’s most recognizable yellow pencils was called the Mikado.

The model number was 174.

Early twentieth-century advertisements make its identity unusually clear. Eagle Pencil Company sold the Mikado No. 174 as a yellow pencil with a red band, and promoted it in several grades rather than as a single one-size-fits-all writing pencil.

That combination — yellow lacquer, red-banded ferrule, and model number 174 — became the visual backbone of a pencil that survived through several corporate eras.

The story begins before the model itself.

Eagle Pencil Company grew from the Berolzheimer family’s pencil business. Daniel Berolzheimer and Leopold Illfelder established a steam pencil factory in Fürth, Bavaria, in 1855. The family later expanded into the United States, where Heinrich Berolzheimer built a New York operation serving the rapidly growing American market.

By 1882, the business had taken the Eagle Pencil Company name.

Eagle became one of the major American pencil manufacturers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, producing writing pencils, copying pencils, colored pencils, mechanical pencils, and specialized drawing products.

The Mikado 174 sat in the middle of that expanding catalog as a high-visibility general writing pencil.

Newspaper advertisements from the early 1920s show exactly how Eagle wanted customers to recognize it.

“ASK FOR THE YELLOW PENCIL WITH THE RED BAND.”

That sentence is more important than it looks.

The pencil industry was already learning that color could function as brand identity.

Yellow had become strongly associated with quality graphite pencils in the United States after European manufacturers popularized the color in the late nineteenth century. Eagle did not merely use yellow; it added another visual identifier.

The red band separated the Mikado from the many other yellow pencils on a store counter.

This is one reason ferrules matter so much to collectors.

On an ordinary pencil, the ferrule may seem like a small piece of metal whose only job is to hold an eraser.

On the Mikado and later Mirado, the ferrule became part of the brand.

A narrow red stripe could identify the family even when the imprint was partly worn away.

The No. 174 model number also gives collectors a useful anchor.

Pencil names can change.

Corporate names can change.

Typography can change.

But model numbers often persist surprisingly long.

The 174 designation followed the pencil through much of its life and helps connect examples that otherwise look like products from different companies.

That continuity becomes especially useful after the Mikado name disappears.

Eagle applied for the Mirado trademark in 1947.

By the postwar period, the familiar pencil was being sold as the Mirado rather than Mikado.

It is tempting to reduce the change to a simple wartime story, but the surviving evidence is more useful when treated carefully.

What can be documented is the sequence:

Mikado was the established earlier name.

Mirado appeared as the later trademark.

The model number 174 and much of the pencil’s visual identity continued.

For collectors, that makes transitional examples especially interesting.

A late Mikado and an early Mirado can look remarkably close.

The name changes while the product lineage remains visible.

The yellow barrel is still there.

The red ferrule band is still there.

The 174 designation is still there.

Brand evolution can sometimes be studied one letter at a time.

The Mirado also provides a good example of why old American pencils should not be judged only by the familiar No. 2 label.

The range existed in multiple grades.

Historical Mikado advertising explicitly states that the pencil was made in five grades.

Later Mirado versions appeared in familiar numbered and lettered hardnesses depending on market and period.

This matters because the pencil was not merely a standardized school tool.

Different grades served different writing and drawing needs.

A No. 1 or softer Mirado could provide a darker, smoother line.

A No. 2 occupied the general-writing center.

Harder versions were better suited to fine, controlled work.

The model family therefore overlaps both everyday writing and technical use.

That broader range helps explain why vintage Mirados appear in desks, schools, studios, workshops, offices, and drafting environments.

The pencil was ordinary enough to be everywhere and consistent enough to become recognizable.

That combination is difficult to achieve.

Collectors often gravitate toward rare pencils because rarity feels important.

The Mirado makes the opposite case.

A historically important pencil can be important precisely because it was common.

Millions of ordinary writing sessions leave fewer museum-quality artifacts than a luxury object made in tiny numbers.

Common pencils are sharpened away.

Chewed.

Lost.

Dropped.

Loaned and never returned.

Thrown out when they become too short.

Their survival rate can be surprisingly poor relative to how many were originally made.

A clean early Mirado therefore preserves something that was never intended to be preserved.

The Eagle imprint is especially useful for dating.

Corporate wording changed over time.

The Eagle Pencil Company name eventually gave way to Berol branding.

The Berolzheimer family remained deeply connected to the pencil industry, but ownership and company structure changed during the twentieth century.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mirado pencils increasingly appeared under Berol rather than Eagle.

Later corporate transitions carried the name further.

Berol was eventually sold, and the Mirado passed through additional ownership before becoming associated with Sanford and Paper Mate under Newell.

A row of Mirado 174 pencils can therefore become a miniature corporate timeline.

Eagle Mirado.

Berol Mirado.

Later Sanford or Paper Mate-era Mirado.

The model survives while the company name above it changes.

For a collector, those transitions are often more interesting than small variations in graphite feel.

The imprint records ownership history directly on the barrel.

This is why I would catalog Mirados by exact wording rather than simply entering “Mirado 174” in a collection database.

At minimum, record:

manufacturer name,

model number,

grade,

country of manufacture,

ferrule design,

eraser color,

imprint style,

and any secondary patent or quality-control markings.

These details can separate pencils made decades apart.

The ferrule deserves its own photograph.

The red band is one of the strongest identifiers in the family, but its execution changed over time.

Metal finish, stripe placement, crimp pattern, and eraser proportions can help distinguish variants.

A heavily sharpened pencil may lose most of its printed barrel information while leaving the ferrule intact.

That small component can carry more historical information than expected.

Boxes are even better.

An original box can preserve a company address, trademark style, grade description, quantity, slogan, and period-specific graphics.

For the Mikado period, packaging and advertisements reinforce the yellow-and-red visual identity.

For later Mirado periods, boxes help reveal how the brand was repositioned.

A loose pencil shows one production detail.

A full box shows the marketing system around it.

There is also a wood story behind Eagle.

Like other American pencil manufacturers, Eagle depended heavily on cedar.

Eastern red cedar had been the dominant American pencil wood, but rising demand pressured supply.

Eagle became part of the industry’s shift toward California incense cedar.

By 1910, its Hudson Lumber subsidiary had established a sawmill and slat operation in San Leandro, California, using incense cedar as a substitute.

That change became enormously important for the entire pencil industry.

Incense cedar proved easy to machine, sharpen, lacquer, and imprint.

Today it is one of the defining woods of quality pencil manufacture.

The Mirado therefore sits inside two different histories at once.

It is a branded consumer product.

It is also part of the American industry’s transition from eastern red cedar to western incense cedar.

That material change is invisible once the pencil is painted yellow.

Sharpening reveals it.

A clean vintage example can show grain, color, and machining quality that the lacquer hides.

Of course, not every Mirado from every era used identical wood or identical core formulation.

The model lived too long for that assumption to be safe.

That is exactly why comparing generations is useful.

Take an Eagle Mirado and a later Berol or Paper Mate Mirado of the same nominal grade.

Use the same paper.

Sharpen them similarly.

Compare darkness, friction, point retention, wood aroma, core centering, lacquer thickness, ferrule construction, and eraser quality.

The name may be the same.

The manufacturing system behind it may not be.

Long-lived pencils are excellent tools for studying industrial change because branding can outlast factories, suppliers, and formulations.

The Mirado survived long enough to accumulate those layers.

It also survived long enough to become culturally ordinary.

That can make it easy to overlook.

A Blackwing 602 attracts attention because of its unusual ferrule and famous associations.

A Venus drawing pencil attracts attention because of its wide grade system.

A carpenter pencil looks specialized immediately.

A Mirado 174 looks like a yellow pencil.

That apparent simplicity is its historical achievement.

The design became so normal that its specificity disappeared.

Yellow body.

Pink eraser.

Metal ferrule.

Red band.

Gold or dark imprint.

Number 174.

Nothing about the object needs explanation before use.

Yet every one of those details belongs to a design tradition.

The strongest collecting strategy for Mirado is therefore not to search for one “best” example.

Build a sequence.

An early Mikado if possible.

An Eagle Mirado.

A Berol Mirado.

A later Sanford or Paper Mate example.

Keep the grades visible.

Keep the boxes when you find them.

Photograph ferrules and imprints.

The result becomes a physical history of an American pencil moving through the twentieth century.

The Mirado was eventually discontinued, ending a product line whose roots reached back through the Mikado era by roughly a century.

That makes surviving examples more interesting now than they were when office-supply shelves were full of them.

A discontinued pencil changes status.

Yesterday’s consumable becomes today’s evidence.

The Mirado 174 deserves that treatment.

Not because it was exotic.

Because it was dependable, recognizable, widely distributed, and durable enough as a design to survive repeated changes in ownership.

Its history can be summarized in one old advertising instruction:

ask for the yellow pencil with the red band.

For decades, American customers knew exactly which pencil that meant.