Where Do Pencils
Come From?
You're sitting at your desk, putting off the things you should be doing,
playing casually with a common pencil. You've done the rubber
pencil thing, balancing it between your forefinger and thumb,
and waving it loosely up and down until it appears to bend and flop.
You've thrown it straight into the air and watched it stick into a ceiling
panel. It drops in front of your feet. You start drawing in the margins
of your desk calendar. You draw a bunny. You think,
I wish I'd have discovered the pencil. I'd have a million dollars.
The truth is that no individual can claim to have invented the modern
pencil, but if any company has a legitimate argument that they were
there at its beginnings, it is the Derwent Cumberland Pencil
Company of England.
Graphite was discovered in England, in Borrowdale
near Keswick in the 1500s. The popular story is that it was discovered
by shepherds who, thinking it was coal, were confused by the fact that
it wouldn't burn. They did discover, however, that it was an excellent
material for marking sheep. The earliest graphite pencils were roughly
hewn from the deposit and wrapped in sheepskin. As the fame of the Cumberland
graphite spread via Flemish traders, the Italians were the first to
use a wooden casing to hold the graphite. The knowledge bounced back
to England, where a cottage industry of pencil-making continued. From
this industry emerged the company which later went on to become Derwent.
Throughout its long history, Derwent has established itself as one
of the great producers of fine art pencils in the world. Wet
Paint carries its several lines of graphic, studio,
watercolor, Aquatone, and color pencils. We carry them
both in open stock and in sets. We also have their charcoal pencils.
You can purchase the following great pencils right here at our Online Store by clicking on these links:
ColourSoft
Drawing
Graphitint
Inktense
The Derwent pencil has been many artists' choice for generations. And
with studied wrist action and careful elbow movement, they are also
good and rubbery.
