Seen in the wild

Ordering Food? There’s a Pencil for that…

 in Chung Hwa / Pencils / Seen in the wild  tagged Chung Hwa / Chung Hwa Drawing Pencil 101 / Made in China / seen in the wild / Shanghai / 上海 by

The Chung Hwa Drawing Pencil 101 is still the pencil of choice in Shanghainese Dim Sum Restaurants.

In the nicer dim sum places, like here in a branch of Sue Hsiao Liu, they are of course also nicely sharpened.

If you wonder where they come from or how many a restaurant would keep: here’s this branch’s ‘secret’ stash of sharpened Chung Hwas, ready for the customers.

If you want to read more about Chung Hwa pencils – here’s a selection of related blog posts form around the web.

The 101:

Other Chung Hwa Pencils:

Professor T’s Pencil Pot and more 1

 in Seen in the wild  tagged Belgium / John Van Humbeeck / Koen De Bouw / Pimoroni / Professor T. / Steve Geerts by

Faber-Castell in the Wild

Now that the final season of the TV series Professor T has come to an end1 it’s time to revisit his use of stationery again. In the previous blog post, we looked at Staedtler’s Noris, which was a common sight in the first season.

Professor T is a great TV series, even though the handheld cameras were often extremely shaky. I certainly liked how normal scenes were interspersed with one second cuts when people picked up or dropped stationery.

It’s nice to see Faber-Castell’s Design Pencil Stand in this TV series. It is on the desk of Chief Inspector John van Humbeeck.

“Professor T’s” Faber-Castell Design Pencil Stand (Image © Skyline Entertainment)

I first wrote about this pencil pot in a blog post from 2009. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be produced anymore, but you can still get the last few ones on eBay US and eBay UK in a set with 24 Polychromos pencils.

From Faber-Castell to Lamy

Speaking about coming across nice stationery in unexpected places: I was surprised to see some exciting stationery on Pimoroni’s website. Pimoroni is a hobbyist electronics company producing accessories for the Raspberry Pi. Their product photos feature fountain pens from Faber-Castell and Lamy (the Lamy 2000).

Pimoroni’s Lamy 2000 (Image © Pimoroni)

Unexpectedly, Lamy also made it’s way to tea packaging in my local supermarket, in the form of a Lamy Safari nib drawing in B.

From Lamy to Kaweco

Pimoroni doesn’t only feature Lamy and Faber-Castell. By coincidence, I came across the blog of sandyjmacdonald who seems to be behind these photos. On his blog, he explains in wonderful detail how he made these shots. His shot shows a Kaweco fountain pen.

Speaking of Kaweco: On Reddit you can also see famous actress Emma Watson with a fountain pen, a Kaweco Liliput in Copper.

Emma Watson and her Kaweco Liliput in Copper (Image © unknown)

Back to Faber-Castell

Going back to Faber-Castell, in case you were wondering: here’s how my Faber-Castell pencil pot looks now, 10 years later.

…and here’s my own.

The first two images in this blog post have been taken from Episode Eleven of Season Three of the original Professor T. TV series and from the Pimoroni.com web site. The Emma Watson photo has been taken from Reddit. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

  1. The original has come to an end, but like other Belgian TV series (Cordon / Containment) it seems that other countries prefer to remake Belgian TV series, rather than broadcast the original in another language. Professor T is no exception. [↩]

Hungry? 2

 in Seen in the wild  tagged seen in the wild / Twitter by

If you’re one of the 41 followers of my Twitter account you might have seen this earlier this week. 

Hungry?

Not quite pencil-shaped, but why not try some crayon-shaped biscuits.

In case you wonder what’s inside the tin, GTanpopo has you covered:

Banana Pens, Sex Workers and a Measuring Tape

 in Seen in the wild  tagged Banana pen / calligraphy / Lidl UK / Royals by

Here in the UK the Duchess of Sussex (the royal formerly known as Meghan Markel), was in the news this weekend – because she wrote notes for sex workers on bananas.

A clever idea to write the notes on bananas. If you think how crazy people can get when it comes to celebrities  and royals the bananas would probably have to go straight to the freezer if the recipient wants to sell them to some eccentric collector.

I remember that a friend of mine posted about a banana pen. I forgot the details, but luckily Gunther, of Lexikaliker fame, has a better memory than me: He reminded me that I saw it in this post from a friend.

You don’t need to look for this pen if you want to write on bananas. You can just use vinegar, e.g. in a brush pen.

I wonder whether the Duchess of Sussex used a banana pen / vinegar or a normal marker, like an Edding or a Sharpie. There have been numerous reports that she is or was into calligraphy, so she might know about banana pens…

Another clever idea, maybe not as clever as banana pens:

A measuring tape with a built-in pencil that takes 2mm leads.

Seen this weekend at Lidl UK.

The screenshot in this blog post has been  taken from BBC News. I believe that the use of the screenshot shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.