The pencil may be a humble object, but it's created countless masterpieces in the hands of artists and writers since the 16th century. The discovery of a large graphite deposit in the English town of Borrowdale in 1564 got the pencil ball rolling. Though the graphite was originally wrapped in string before the invention of the wood-cased pencil...
It's a labour of love by British academic and stand up comedian Brian Mackenwells. Lynn Freeman first heard him enthuse about pencils in a BBC podcast ironically entitled The Boring Talks.
Very old pencils are hard to come by, he told Lynn Freeman.
“I think my oldest was maybe 1920s and I'd love to get pencils from the early days of pencil production, but they're very hard to get, and they're very expensive. When they do do sort of crop up they're often museum pieces.”
The first pencils were made in north west England, he says.
“Pencils were discovered, if you like, in Cumberland in northern England in 1630s. And the graphite that was discovered there, the first sort of big mine of it, was supposed to be the purest in the world ever.
“And literally no one has ever reached that level of purity of graphite, and it is supposed to be the most wonderful pencil. So, I'd love to try one of those pencils.”
Old pencils, by their very nature, tend not to last long, Mackenwells says.
“People use up pencils, and they sharpen them, and then they throw them away. Or they forget where they put them. They just by necessity gets smaller and smaller.”
The very earliest pencil known was discovered quite by chance.
“In the 1960s there was a house in Germany that was just doing a sort of a refurb, a very old sort of house, and they discovered a pencil in the attic that had been accidentally left behind and blocked in a corner”
That pencil dated back to 1613 and is now in a museum.
He describes pencils as a “small pleasure”, and they were a comfort to him in 2016 when Brexit in Britain and Trump in the US was dominating his social feeds.
“So it was the Brexit elections over here in the UK and there was the US elections happening as well. And for me, and people I know, it was not a very happy time.”
The world of pencils, and pencil enthusiasts were “little islands of calm,” he says.
So, what his perfect pencil?
“I like to be like a darker pencil, a softer pencil. So 2B is kind of a sweet spot for me. Harder pencils that go up in the H grades, I find them a bit too light and less nice to write with.”
There are many brands of pencil still in production; the Tombow, Mephisto, Blackwing and Mitsibishi, he says.
The pencil will never go away because it is an example of design perfection, he says
“They are a perfect object because you can't really improve upon them. They have been carved down to their most basic essence.”
When he started talking about pencils on the “nerdy comedy circuit” he realised there was a community out there.
“Lots of people would come up to me and talk about their pencils.
I’ve become the pencil guy that people know so, when they have a pencilly question they can come to me.”
Brian Mackenwells refers to the Erasables Podcast Pencil Community as well as Pepa Stationary (they also carry a very good book about pencils that he recommends highly) and Mrs Blackwells Village Bookshop:
