Thanks to Scribble and the United Inkdom crew I recently had the chance to try out the Manuscript Lettering Pencil Set.
It comes with a glass file for shaping your own leads as well as preshaped leads in assorted colours.
Have a look at my video to find out more about this pencil set.
You can find further information on Her Nibs’ Blog and on Scribble’s Blog.
It’s International Lefthanders day this weekend. For more than 40 years this day has been observed on 13 August.
In my wife’s photo above you can see two Staedtler items for left-handers. Yes, that left-handed Metro pencil is apparently made by Staedtler UK in Pontyclun. They also made pencils for Berol and Chambers in their Pontyclun factory (You might remember the 2014 La La Land post with Chambers pencils and the 2013 Berol post).
You can read more about the notebook used in the photo in Pencil Talk’s latest blog post and more about Helmut Hufnagl in this Insights X post and more about the left-handed rulers in another Insights X post.
An ink sample I got from Scribble.
Not any blue, but an Enchanted Blue
..but not any Enchanted Blue, this is the Enchanted Ocean.
It combines the seriousness of a blue-black ink and the joyfulness of Hello Kitty merchandising, which means that you will be embarrassed to take it out at work as well as feeling awkward taking it out at a children’s party, too.
Photographed against the light to make the sparkles more obvious.
This morning I got the order I placed yesterday with The Pen Company. Diamine’s shimmer ink and the Lamy Safari in Neon Lime (the stationery part of my birthday gift).
Looking forward to trying these out.
I have touched on the complicated history of the Royal Sovereign Pencil Co in a previous blog post. Today I want to show another pencil made by Royal Sovereign: the Briton.
To put this pencil into context: it was made in the early 1970s, i.e. after Staedtler’s partnership with the British Royal Sovereign Pencil Company started in 1960 and after the owner or Royal Sovereign, the Charnaud family, offered Staedtler their shares in 1966. I guess there’s a chance these pencils were made on the same machines as the early Staedtler Tradition pencils shown here.
The Briton pencil was available in five different degrees: 2H (yellow), H (green), HB (red), B (light blue) and 2B (dark blue), but towards the end of the Briton line, before it was replaced by the Staedtler Tradition, only the HB and B pencils were still in production.
Just like the earliest Staedtler Tradition pencils, it has golden lettering and was pre-sharpened on the right side. This means that the text is upside down if you hold the pencil (the normal way) in your right hand.
The Briton is easy to sharpen and erase. Sharpening was tested using a Maped Metal sharpener, made in Suzhou [1]That’s one of the nice things in Chinese supermarkets: the label on the product or shelf will tell you which city a product is made in., near Shanghai. In terms of darkness, the lead produces a line similar to modern Staedtler pencils but feels a bit scratchier. It is definitely a good all-round and everyday pencil.
I would like to thank mrsnuffles for telling me which other Briton degrees were available at the time.
References
| ↑1 | That’s one of the nice things in Chinese supermarkets: the label on the product or shelf will tell you which city a product is made in. |
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