Sometimes the most mundane things take on a curiously beautiful life of their own. Son the Youngest thrust my coloured pencils at me recently, and demanded they all be sharpened. I keep a tin of them (an old Illy coffee receptacle for those who care) on the kitchen table, and I reckon there's about 80 in all. They're difficult to keep track of because I keep finding them tucked under pillows and in use as props in Dr.Who games. So I got out the sharpener and set to work. Normally I would stand over the waste bin or next door's garden, but there were so many I thought I'd just let the shavings fall on to the table. Which was very satisfying, because not only was it a job done that was long overdue, it was also fascinating to see how big the pile was at the end. Well, I thought so anyway.
7 comments:
A very woody image! When our son started to draw a lot we experimented with various kinds of coloured pencils and found that cheap ones are hopeless once you attempt to sharpen them - the 'leads' just keep breaking up. We settled on Koh-i-noor ones ('Pencils since 1790') from the Czech Republic, which seem to have served him well. Maybe I should visit the pencil museum in the Lake District to find out what the British can achieve in this direction.
Yes indeed, the Cumberland Pencil Museum has a pencil twenty five feet eleven inches long, with a yellow lead.
Oh, the smell of pencil sharpenings takes me straight back to primary school.
Sorry, but crayons are made of wax in my world. Coloured pencils on the other hand are a joy. I particularly used to like the ones you could then brush liquid over to make water colour effects.
I particularly liked the packaging that Lakeland (or were they Derwent?)pencils were in. Anyway, they had lovely artwork showing a beautifully executed Lake District scene on the box and/or tin, if memory serves.And the smell.....enough to evoke Jilly Goolden-esque hyberbole without having to even draw a cork.
Thank you, Peter !
The wonderful smell of pencil-sharpenings is due to the wood used, incense cedar, which grows, I believe, in America. The tradition of pencil making in the Lake District probably dates back to the discovery of graphite there in 1564 (No, I'm not that knowledgeable - I looked it up!).
Oh, and another lovely photograph, Peter!
Thankyou Martin. And thankyou Simon for correcting me- they are of course coloured pencils.
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