A broken Clarks Noris

If you don’t like gory pictures look away, we have a broken Staedtler Noris coming up.

Today: a Noris I came across in a Clarks store. Clarks is a British shoe shop chain. My guess is that they are the biggest shoe shop chain in the UK, but I could be wrong.

The Noris, which can be seen on the poster and which seems to be used by a worker in the shoe factory is broken, the end bit is partly split off – yes, I know, you just walk into a shoe store, don’t expect anything bad and then you are confronted with a broken Noris ..without warning!

The EAN code seems to indicate that this poor butchered Staedtler Noris has a B lead.

Close up

 

5 thoughts on “A broken Clarks Noris”

  1. You might expect to find this kind of shock-media in a haberdashery or apothecary’s shop, but woe betide the unwary shoe shoppers of Britain.

  2. To me this is odd. The photo and the whole scene is aimed for style and perfection, so the severely damaged Noris doesn’t fit. By the way, the hand looks a little strange too.

  3. Thank you for your comments.

    Sean, yes! Imagine someone with a weak heart walks in.

    Lexikaliker, I agree. I don’t think this photo was just casually taken while someone was working, I assume it was set up. If it as set up then maybe the strange position of the hand is natural for whatever step in creating a shoe is being undertaken here, but why this pencil? No other pencil available, but they needed a pencil to look less high-tech? ..or a broken pencil on purpose to look more down to earth?
    If the scene is set up for the photo then it is odd to stick with the broken pencil. My working hypothesis is that it was the real pencil (I wonder how it broke) and the photographer thought keeping it instead of replacing it gives the photo a down to earth touch.

  4. Hi
    I actually think the shoemaker has a purpose with the “broken” pencil.
    Could it be that it is used to mark the shoemakers last by scraping the pencil where material has to be removed? Leaving the lead on a large surface, by not writing but applying the lead parallel to the pencils length. (hard to describe)
    Just a thought

  5. That sounds like a good hypothesis. Some people mark their blades with a marker to see where material gets removed when they sharpen it. If it’s on purpose I would have expected the cut in the pencil to be more uniform, but it is a good idea. I wonder whether anyone working in this business can shed some light on this.

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