“I found a bunch of pencil adds in some old “Industrial Arts and Vocational Education” magazines from 1951, and thought you might find them interesting, so I scanned some for you. I thought that it was interesting to see these ads, and know that there was once a time and forum for the art of the pencil in its different amalgamations and uses.”

Many thanks to Brian for always being on the lookout for great pencil stuff!

4) I’ve read about your extensive bullet pencil collection, with considerable jealousy. What attracts you to this type of pencil, and how did you build your collection?

First off, it’s the compact quality. I love having a tight little drawing tool in the front pocket at all times, and I’m here to tell ya, these little sonofabitches have saved my butt many a time…on airplanes, in meetings, in a pinch, wherever. I always keep one in the front, left pocket of my 501s.

I’ve kind of given up on erasers of any sort in these little guys, as the kind you’d score from a junk store or estate sale are old, old relics and the erasers are dried way up and dead. Rock hard, usually. So, there’s this certain model that didn’t come with an eraser, and just had a plastic tipped end. I collect these ferociously, with a good 20 or so hoarded away. Now, the classic type with the erasers, shit, I’ve got a couple hundred of those bad boys.

What I love about them the most, is how banal they were back in the day. Simple, cheap advertising tools given away at local businesses. Feed-n-seed joints, car lots, insurance agents, what have you. Just crappy little promo items that packed a real wallop. I’ve got a couple old salesman sample sets. Old and beat up, and a look into what it was like to have a guy sit down and say, “Here’s what we can do for your company.” So good.

I’ve built my collection junkin’ across America—scouring the dirtiest of estate sales, garage sales, junk stores, antique malls and the occasional eBay lot. You can score them in the Midwest pretty regularly, across the rustbelt and great plains. Farmers used these things. I guess a lot of them are collector’s items. I could care less. I use the things, and never pay more than eight bucks or so for them.

5) Despite the return of the famous Blackwing, pencils in America seem to be on the decline today. Models are canceled, and most companies have moved their production out of the USA. Can you comment on the current pencil offerings available in the United States in 2011?

I’m no authority on this stuff, so I’ll tread lightly here. I know this much, it’s harder and harder to make an American Made promo pencil. And, with good imprint applications that aren’t stock type crap. I was lucky enough to get a monster order in just before Christmas and man, love these things. Hex pencils, people!

6) The Field Notes pencil is downright gorgeous. With its round shape, lack of paint and green eraser, it’s obvious that a lot of thought went into it. Can you tell us a little about the design process and what made you choose its current form?

Like all Field Notes products, we started with the direction that the thing had to be natural at all costs. Finding the source with the green eraser was a happy accident. Plus, the cedar wood just smells so nice. Those things take a beating, just like our memo books! I have a pile of them all beat to shit, still kickin’ after a couple years on the scene. Those pencils WILL NOT disappoint.

7) Are there any upcoming pencil accouterments from DDC and/or Field Notes to which Comrades might look forward? Pencil clips? Bullet pencils? Brown sharpeners with black Futura print on them?

After an exhaustive search for the perfect pencil sharpener from existing sources, we gave up on that shit and started drawing up plans with a couple Midwestern Tool & Die manufacturers to craft the ultimate hand held sharpener unit. We’re still at the point of initial CAD drawings, blade strength options and ballistic grade metal sourcing. If we can pull these little buggers off, man, they are going to rule. Just you wait. They’ll be something to marvel at. And, get the job done for the ages!

We’ve got some leather stuff coming down the pipe for Field Notes made right here in Portland by our friends at Tanner Goods. Very, very excited about this project. And yes, there’s Futura Bold on these new items. You can take that one to the bank.

MANY MANY thanks to Aaron for helping to spread writing/noting/drawing joy, the world over!

[Images, A.D. Used with permission.]

“Who would have guessed the huge old stockyards that once dotted the Midwest would best be remembered in something as small and simple as a pencil?…

….Twedt also collects the bullet pencils, so-named because of their shape. Each came with a metal cover over the leaded end of the pencil, making the pencil look a bit like a bullet.

Most bullet pencils, like most other stockyard memorabilia, were handed out by consigners at the stockyards. The consigners would contract with the farmer to sell the livestock to one of the various area packers around the stockyards.”

[Read the rest at Iowa Farmer Today.]

More photos to come.  Mine’s full of carpenter’s pencils and assorted pencil gear.

Anyway, if you’re visiting Harper’s Ferry, home to John Brown‘s famous raid, and you’re visiting the bookshop, you’ll find historical pencils.  Really cool pencils.

These replicas do feature some pretty, well, inaccurate information with them.  For one, this is not the same cedar that colonial pencils would have been made of, not to mention that they would be far less precisely constructed.  From the manufacturer’s site:

“Our Colonial Cedar Pencils (1004) are a set of five round, natural 7-inch cedar pencils without erasers similar to those used in England and imported to the American colonies during the 18th century. Pencils of this nature would have had to be sharpened by whittling or cutting one end with a knife. No pencil sharpeners for those colonists! Pencils are neatly wrapped in a parchment history sheet.”

Nonetheless, I was tickled enough to grab a pack for myself/the site and for my baby daughter’s growing collection/arsenal of pencils.  I haven’t sharpened them yet, but I’m getting severely tempted — with a knife, of course.

Here is a funny editorial from a November 1906 Popular Mechanics magazine. Apparently, even back then people didn’t know why they licked their pencil points. You still see it once in a while now, but it must have been much more common 104 years ago. The author claims that nearly everyone other than “newspaper men and stenographers” wet their pencils. “It hardens the lead and ruins the pencil,” he laments. He tells the story of a pencil-loving newspaper clerk who was tired of customers licking the pencils they borrowed from him, and the story concludes, “Surely no one who reads this will ever again wet a lead pencil.”

(The article is next to news that a US company had just sold Russia the largest-ever gasoline engine for a submarine and an ad for a DIY wireless telegraph that “will work up to a mile.”)

I read somewhere that pencil licking was to activate the dye in copy/indelible pencils. So I licked a vintage red Dixon Anadel and asked my wife if my tongue was red. Her horror that I’d lick a pencil was only matched by the big red splotch on my tongue!  Don’t ask me what it tasted like; I hastened to some strong coffee.

“Before pencils were invented and used, goose quills did the work that both of them are now appointed to do. There were lead pencils then; something unknown at the present day, although the general speech of the people is now as then of a lead pencil. But lead or no lead the crude plummet and pencil of only two or three generations ago, has been evaluted into the handy, useful and attractive looking pencil of to-day; has gone the way of all the earth, with the wafer-box, in which were stored the thin, round, red wafers with which we sealed our letters; the more aristocratic stick of sealing wax; and the sand-box that held the sand, then doing the service which the blotter pad does now.”

Read the rest of the issue (if you’re so inclined) here.

It is only appropriate that the first such post be on Professor Henry Petroski’s The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. This book is widely available in trade paperback, and the current edition is actually a very well-designed book itself, with a durable cover with very nice graphics. The height is actually longer relavtive to the width than more books, and this gives it a pleasing grip and span.

The Pencil is a book about engineering told through the sustained example of the pencil. What you get is the story of the pencil, from its origins in England in the sixteenth century to the pencil industry of the late twentieth century and everything in between. Professor Petroski covers graphite discoveries, the production of pencil “leads,” wood, erasers — and there is even an entire chapter devoted to my personal gadget, the pencil sharpener.

The text is extremely engaging, even though we non-engineers might be tempted to be wary of reading a book about engineering. In my own field (philosophy), I can certainly spot a boring book. But take my word for it: this is an exciting book for anyone who uses, likes or admires pencils. Far from being boring, it reads like an epic novel, with the protagonist and hero being the pencil, with other heroes that help the pencil along the way.

While it seems that pencils are simple objects at first glance, Professor Petroski shows that they are anything but simple, as he details the technological advances and engineering geniuses who have brought us our wooden warrior. Do you know why, for instance, Incense Cedar is the preferred wood for making quality pencils? Do you know what people used for erasers prior to rubber ones? Or just how long it took for sharpeners (as we know them) to appear on the scene? If you give The Pencil a good read, you will know all this and more.

Certainly, having some understanding of what forces, minds and inventions have brought us pencils affords us a much greater appreciation for the humble tool that many us take for granted. If you are intersted in learning more about our graphite champion and/or in reading an enlightening and entertaining book, then The Pencil is for you.

[Photos, J.G.]

Comrades, it seems to me that the Revolution has been a little silent on an important front, namely carpenters pencils, which even today still quietly carry out their traditional function in the workplace. I thought that these photographs and a few words might inspire some Revolutionary activity around carpenters pencils. As an engineer, I am perhaps the black sheep of my wood-working family –- son of a boat-builder, nephew of a wood-turner, brother of a carpenter, etc. Architects, engineers, inventors and the like have increasingly turned away from graphite, conducting their business on computer screens, but when it comes to actually making their designs a physical reality, the pencil still plays its important role. Whether you can see the marks or not, there’s every chance that your house and furniture, some of your most important possessions, were marked with pencils by the people who made them.

The photograph above is of a couple of my father’s old pencils; they’re at least 30 years old. Sharpening is of the “rough and ready” kind, usually done with a chisel. You can tell that my dad’s an old school type of craftsman: don’t throw your pencil away until its far too short to actually hold; the saw is fine Philadelphian steel engraved that its properties “…can not be Excelled,” and the ruler is in inches. He works in inches, his children work in millimeters but know inches.  His grandchildren don’t even know what an inch is. For those of you not familiar with the ways of the wood, the “vee” mark drawn against the pencil line indicates which side of the line you should cut with the saw, to leave the wood the correct length.

Modern carpenters pencils here in New Zealand seem to come in grades hard, medium and soft, and cost about US$1 retail for a name brand like these Rexell’s, and US 80 cents for a “no-name generic” pencil with absolutely no markings whatsoever. But “trade” and “volume” discounts could easily be in the 50 – 90% range. They have a rectangular core, which allows sharp or wide lines to always be drawn by simply turning the pencil through 90 degrees. Of course the rectangular body is to stop your pencil rolling or blowing away when you put it down. So that’s my carpenter pencil primer. Over to you!

[Text and images, D.P.  Used with permission.]