Robert Caro, Mongol user
I found this Arnold Newman photograph chance. It’s from 1975 and shows Robert Caro in his office, holding a Mongol pencil in his hand.
A Staedtler Mars Lumograph
A venerable pencil, on a desk in a classroom in a movie.
Moses Mongol
Robert Moses with a Mongol pencil, as seen in “City of Tomorrow,” the sixth episode of Ken Burns’s New York: A Documentary Film (2001).
Atlas Stationers
It’s pen and paper bliss in Chicago.
A giant pencil
News from New York State: “Ticonderoga unveils giant pencil sculpture celebrating graphite heritage.”
Notebook and pencil sighting
Maybe a Scripto. Maybe a Skilcraft.
Recently updated
Sondheim Blackwings at auction, now with a link to the auction catalogue.
Sondheim Blackwings at auction
Three boxes of Stephen Sondheim’s Blackwing pencils have sold at auction for $6,400.
Orange Crate Art: A Ticonderoga sighting
From Targets (dir. Peter Bogdanovich, 1968).
Review: Carol Beggy, Pencil
This book is a huge disappointment. It’s a volume in the series Object Lessons, short books devoted to the contemplation of everyday things: barcodes, hyphens, rust. Other volumes in this series might be terrific. But Pencil is not.
Ticonderoga sightings
In the horrible movie The Impossible Years.
No Remington, Ticonderoga
From Jean Stafford’s Boston Adventure.
A Mongol sighting
From I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (1948).
“Writer-y”
From Zits.
Tár pencils: Blackwings
Quite a stash.
A Tár pencil: Caran d’Ache
A Pablo colored pencil from Caran d’Ache.
Cora, Nick, Ticonderoga
Lana Turner, Cecil Kellaway, and a Dixon Ticonderoga.
A Frasier Mongol
In a cup on a desk.
A handful of pencils
A scene from a movie, with a handful of pencils.
Why are pencils so popular?
MarketWatch says because of kids.
“Cause I Ain’t Got a Pencil”
Food for thought: Joshua T. Dickerson’s poem “Cause I Ain’t Got a Pencil.”
“School Pencils? Pencil Cases?”
A 1953 Woolworth’s ad.
Pencil sharpeners of the past
In action, from 1886 to 1920.
The pencil business
A classified ad in a movie.
A visit to the Musgrave Pencil Co.
Smithsonian visits the Musgrave Pencil Company.
From The Pencil
”The pencil is always an extension of the fingers. With a pencil we can count beyond our ten digits, usually striking out every four marks with a fifth — four vertical fingers made into a hand by a diagonal thumb. We can turn the pages of slick magazines and catalogues more quickly with the dry eraser than the licked finger. We can dial or press telephones that our nails are too long or our fingers too fat to work. We can hold more places in books by sticking pencils where our fingers were. We can point to details that our fingers would obscure. We can exaggerate our gestures. We can make visible what our fingers can only trace in air. We can vote not by raising our hands but by marking our secret ballots.”
Henry Petroski (1942–2023)
Author of The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance.
“Look! The lead!”
“Real-Life Science Fiction Premise Plays Out As Man Employs So-Called Mechanical Pencil.”
A Gershwin and a Mongol
George, composing.
Look to the tip
Making my Apple Pencil work.