I like wood-cased pencils.
I like the way they look, the way they feel, and the way the write. I like having to sharpen them. I like learning about who made them and the times in which they were made. And oddly enough, I like them because they don’t last—not if you use them, that is.
I have a handful of hard-to-find pencils that I do not intend to sharpen or otherwise use, which I guess technically means that I have a “pencil collection.” But I have never identified with pencil collecting per se—I’m neither looking for that perfect Thoreau specimen nor trying to complete a set of 1965 Microtomic pencils or something. In other words, just looking at pencils doesn’t really do it for me. Instead, I have developed an affinity for using a relatively narrow selection of well-made, high-quality pencils that are unfortunately either discontinued or impracticably expensive, or both. This means that the few I can manage are usually well-looked after, even though the very act of enjoying them means destroying them.
An 1854 article from Illustrated Magazine of Art titled “Pencil Making at Keswick” touches upon this notion—that to “use them is to lose them.” It also goes a bit further by extending the metaphor upward to the person holding the pencil. If nothing else though, this quotation—only a single sentence—is a paean to the comma:
And we might conclude by moralising on the fact, that as it is by the wear and tear and destruction of the agent that its worth is developed, so it often is that men, in striving and labouring for society and the world, are themselves exhausted and consumed, and the elements of their physical constitution pass away, to mingle with, and to be absorbed into, the universe at large.
A very poetic metaphor indeed.
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How do you decide on what kind of writing you will use these rare pencils?
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I wouldn’t go so far as to call them rare—well, maybe some of them are, but only in the sense they are hard to find, not because they are necessarily valuable. The kind of paper I have to work on is what determines things most. If its rougher paper then the softer pencils (Blackwings, Blaisdell, etc.) are a bad choice. Otherwise, I just choose from whatever supply I still have left. You’d be surprised at how long you can make a pencil last when you’re paying close attention to just about every stroke.
I would never want my interest in pencils to become so severe that fretting over which one to use becomes more important than the work I’m doing with it. At that point it becomes something more like a fetish rather than one of life’s simple pleasures.
Het is vroeg in Nederland, niet?
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Thanks for the response Sean, it was something I always wondered with just Blackwings.
Het was inderdaad erg vroeg, vandaar ook mijn kromme Engelse zin 😉
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In my case as an artist I just experiment. Guess is the same with writers and musicians.
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So beautiful…
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That Faber Castell kit with the green pencil stubs and silver holder is simply exquisite, clearly a precursor of the “Perfect Pencil”, though packaged so much more beautifully and compactly.
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I’m not sure for how long the Zeichenstift set was available, but I’ve been able to date them back to around 1905-6 at least. It’s right around the time A.W. Faber became Faber-Castell. If you look at the brass threads on the pencils in the last photo (from the early ’90s pre-cursor to the Perfect Pencil, the one with just the silver cover/extender) you can see how similar they are.
I’d like to know whether the Zeichenstift were considered a premium item or not. Written by hand on the back of the box in a calligraphic style, it says: 30.~ I wonder if that mightn’t mean 30 Reichsmark, or perhaps if it goes back even further to the Goldmark, Papiermark, or Rentenmark. My feeling is that it’s older than the DM, but I can’t be sure.
Perhaps Matthias or Gunther might be able to help us out.
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What a marvellous item! I wonder how much the pencils with threads would cost today … The box is great too, and it is a pity that the majority of today’s boxes look so boring.
Is the article from Illustrated Magazine of Art available online?
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Sent to you by the magic of e-mail!
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Miraculously arrived by the speed of light – thank you!
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