OH MY.

I collect pencils. It started on a family trip to Washington DC. I had been saving allowance to buy souvenirs, and as it turns out, the thing I could afford most was pencils. I have hundreds stored in an old Saucony box in my parents' house. And other hoards here and there. I used to dream big with intentions of installing them in a sunburst over my sofa (which I have yet to acquire) in my adult home (which I've got.) I was going to model it of the display of drumsticks in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Well that will probably never happen, but I've discovered a more practical way to display them, and I should probably get moving on it because The secret to getting ahead is getting started, and I'm pretty sure Mark Twain was right about that one. 

I stumbled across the website for the Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies this week and disappeared down a hole of pictures of vintage pencils, and erasers, and sharpeners. I've always loved things like this. I remember looking at all the curious tools and templates from my dad's college drafting kit, and when I was little and had to go to work with him, I liked looking through all of the things in his desk drawer.  There were photo blue pens, old pencils, china markers, and a glorious, weird, bulbous metal thing that I now know is called a typeball! 

I've gotten three pencils recently. I was able to pick up two pencils in Atlanta. One from the High Museum with a paintbrush where the eraser should be (!!) * and a pre-sharpened golf pencil from Ikea. They are throughout the store, so that you can write down all the furniture numbers that you are interested in buying. Of course I just slid one in my purse. The third came from a New Belgium Clips Beer and Film Tour. They are given to participants with a "passport" to write comments about the beer tasting. I didn't sharpen my pencil, and just drank the beer. Most of my pencils are unsharpened, and I like them that way, but I do make special allowances for some sharpened pencils.

There is a great book about the history of all things pencil. The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance offers more than there ever was to know about pencils -- from graphite mines in England, to how they get those leads in there. (And even why we still call it lead, when there's no lead in pencils at all. Go on, lick the point, it's completely OK.) And there's a little Tennessee trivia in there too. Since 1916, the Musgrave Pencil Company has been operating out of Shelbyville. Chances are high that you've probably used a pencil made by this company. I learned this in one of my college classes. A professor was explaining that the look of the farm landscape began to change drastically around here, and that there was a company going around trading wire fences for all the split rail cedar fences that were traditionally on Tennessee farms. It was the Musgrave Pencil Company and there was such a pencil boom that they wanted the fence rails in addition to trees to make into pencils. You can read more about that here.  The part about Musgrave begins in the scanned pages from the American Forest September October 1990 near an ad from American Arborist Supplies.

I've never been a huge fan of mechanical pencils. I have such a tense, death-grip when I write sometimes that I snap that spindly little lead. I still use real, wood pencils all the time. Just plain old yellow ones around the gallery, and Staedtler Mars drawing pencils for art.

* On a complete side note, this almost trumps my pencil that I got long ago on that DC trip from the Supreme Court. Back in the 90s, the Supreme Court was selling tan pencils with two horizontal erasers on top... to make the pencil look like a tiny gavel. Pencil wit -- it kills me.