National Pencil Day
Pencils are magical.
And so are erasers, for that matter.
A long time ago, in a youthhood far, far away, I wrote a love poem about all of the words stored inside my pencil and how they spilled and tumbled out onto the page in a rush to put those three words of longing and hope and joy and trepidation into the physical world. Before I could speak them into the air, my pencil tenderly, if impatiently, expressed the words “I love you.” I never showed that poem to anyone and I have long since lost the page it was written on, probably for the better: it was very lovesick and pretty cringe. But still, I wrote it down—with a good old-fashioned No. 2 pencil—and gave those words a tangibility that they hadn’t had inside my head. Though lost to time and probably having biodegraded in a landfill in Texas, those briefly tangible words stuck with me longer than they would have otherwise and I was able to use the best ones and craft them into a much better poem a decade later.
All that is to say that I once did a very meta thing by writing a poem with my pencil about the words that were brimming with life in my pencil. It was arguably as much a love poem to my pencil as it was to my sweetheart. So, today, for National Pencil Day, I want to take some time to put some love on this seemingly omnipresent implement of magic!
Photo by cottonbro studio
First, let’s look at some vintage, graphite-laden magic. While graphite had been used in pottery as early as 4,000 BCE, it wasn’t really used in many other way—at least, not in the western world—until the modern age in Europe, when a graphite mine was discovered in Cumbria, England. Even then, it was used for marking sheep and, under Queen Elizabeth I, to line cannonball molds. People didn’t really start using it for writing and drawing until 19th century. Prior to that, lead was used for writing and marking, beginning with the Romans and their lead styluses which …something something lead poisoning something (while you can’t pin something as complex as the collapse of a civilization solely on a metal, lead poisoning did plague many Romans). The use of styluses continued into the middle ages, when scribes used lead or silver styluses, known as plummets, to rule lines on parchment to ensure their handwriting was straight and for illuminators to sketch out illustrations that were to be painted after the page’s writing was complete. Fun(?) fact: despite the fact that pencil lead isn’t lead, people have gotten lead poisoning from pencils. Back in the day, folks like me who tend to chew on their pencils could end up with lead poisoning because of the paint on the outside of the pencil.
Photo by Pixelia
Once that Cumbrian graphite mine was discovered—the only large source of graphite in Europe—the prototypical pencil was born by way of theft. The mine was under royal control, especially once its benefit to the military was discovered, and punishments for theft ranged from whipping to transportation. Still, small pieces were smuggled out, wound in string and et voilà: pencil(-ish)! Renowned for the strength of its marking, (sanctioned) square sticks of English graphite were highly sought-after. Every time Britain went to war, the other nation lost access to English graphite, so folks started getting creative: during the Napoleonic Wars, a French army officer and chemist combined clay with some lower quality graphite powder and fired it in a kiln, essentially creating the graphite blend that comprises the core of pencils today and busting Britain’s monopoly on graphite.
Photo by Leeloo Thefirst
In the 16th century, an Italian couple developed the carpenters’ pencil, the oldest such pencil found so far dates back to the 1600s. Eventually, the little-changed process of cutting a wood casing in half, hollowing out room for the graphite, and gluing it back together was developed and became the standard manufacturing process. Mass production began in Germany in the 18th century, first by Faber-Castell, whose pencils are still regarded as high quality today; the mass manufacturing of pencils in the United States didn’t begin until the American Revolution, when importing pencils became a problem. Subsequently, the hexagonal casing we’re familiar with today was developed as both a more efficient use of wood and a matter of comfort—square and hexagonal designs yielded more pencils than round designs did and, between the square and the hexagon, the six-sided pencil is more comfortable to hold. And all of this lead up to what I think is the most rad part of pencil history: allied forces used pencils during WWII to help prisoners of war escape from captivity. Still functional for more mundane and necessary tasks, these pencils had a functioning leaded end and eraser, but they were also hollowed out in the middle to accommodate a tiny map and a miniscule compass was hidden in the ferrule underneath the eraser.via GIFER
(Charles Fraser Smith, the man behind the pencil scheme and a number of other escape aids and spy devices, is said to have been the inspiration for Q, James Bond’s quartermaster.)
Rad, fascinating history aside, I love pencils. I am a writer and an artist and every time I see a good pencil—you know the ones, you could be looking at a pack of ostensibly identical pencils but there’s just that one that catches your eye and then you pick it up and it feels right in your hand, those ones—I see possibility. What kind of magic does it hold? What words are whirling around in there ready to be loosed? What is the image it’s ready to sketch? What problems will it solve? There are ceaseless possibilities with a pencil and those possibilities will differ wildly, depending on the hand that wields it.
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Artist: Arinze Stanley
Pencils are tools that help us express our thoughts. They are magic wands that usher the things we imagine into physical space. For a lot of us, pencils help promote creativity and give us the time to really think through our problem-solving. They allow us to communicate—however secretively—and, occasionally, escape captivity. Pencils helped take us to space. They’ve helped fill our world with music. Pencils help us extend grace to ourselves: graphite’s ability to be erased allows us room to mess up and try again. They help us learn.
Photo by Katerina Holmes – Say it with me: “The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”
In short, pencils are kickass. So, pick up your pencil from off your desk or out of you junk drawer and show it some love today—use it! Even just for a quick doodle on the back of an envelope. Use it; use it with intention. And then give it a little, National Pencil Day fist bump—it deserves the recognition.
Just a quick doodle or, you know, some illumination work—whichever works for you.