I was lucky enough to spot several Staedtler Noris pencils in the BBC’s national and regional news in the last couple of days. One of the regional news clips was even filmed just around the corner.
…but Sean has sent me an even more exciting Noris spotting:
The 6-part series from the BBC called The Story of England by Michael Wood features Staedtler pencils in several shots. Here’s a photo from this series, featuring a Welsh-made Noris.
I believe that the use of the the screen shot of the Noris pencil, taken from Michael Wood’s Story of England falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.
As you might have guessed after reading The Noris, then and now or any of the other Seen in the wild posts: I’m always happy when I see the Staedtler Noris on somebody’s desk or in a shop (not really worth a blog post: “Did you know, my local bank is using Noris pencils”) or on telly (probably more interesting for you, so maybe worth a blog post).
Last time I spotted a Noris was in Episode 3 of Uncle. This episode gives you the opportunity to admire the Noris in Nick Helm’s right and left hand and in his mouth (maybe the production company shouldn’t have picked the bacon flavoured Noris).
I believe that the use of the screen shot of the Noris pencil, taken from episode three of the first season of the TV series Uncle falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.
Now that Pencil Revolution mentioned my blog posts featuring pencils on telly I feel I should add some more. Speaking of the Pencil Revolution: I also noticed pencils on Revolution – and I was shocked how carelessly they use the pencils as well as other sparse resources …but then they also didn’t really honour their irreplaceable pencils in Stargate Universe.
You might have noticed that my “Seen in the wild” pencils often mention my favourite pencil, the Noris. This is just because this pencil isn’t that often on TV. If I’d focus on the Ticonderoga I’d have a lot of screenshots to show – a big proportion of Malcolm in the Middle and The Big Bang Theory episodes feature this nice pencil.
So, today the focus is on the Staedtler Noris.
Not yet posted on Bleistift and in chronological order:
In episode 1 they are mainly using Staedtler’s Tradition. In later episodes the Noris is more common. In the second screenshot you can see Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) sharpening his Noris with a knife.
In episode 7 you can see Chief Inspector Köster using a pencil that looks like a Castell 9000, but today is Noris day, so I won’t show the Castell 9000.
They also had some really nice pen trays in House of Cards.
2008: Commissario Montalbano (Italian TV series)
You can see the Noris being used in the Commissario Montalbano episodes Le Ali della Sfinge / The Wings of the Sphinx and La Pista di Sabbia / The Track of Sand in this blog post.
2008: Tatort (German TV series)
You can see the Noris being used in the Tatort episode Liebeswirren in this blog post about the Noris.
2009: Fangavaktin (Icelandic TV series)
You can see the Noris being used in the second episode of Fangavaktin (The Prison Shift) in this blog post.
2009: The Armstrong and Miller Show (British TV series)
You can see the Noris being used in the second season of The Armstrong and Miller Show in this blog post.
Comrade John from the Pencil Revolution sent this screenshot from The Bletchley Circle, a murder mystery set in the famous [1]If you’re into Cryptography or Computer Science you will have heard about it. Bletchley Park in 1952. I’m not sure though they would have used a Noris in H there [2]OK, it doesn’t have to be H – the Malaysian Noris has shown that same colour doesn’t necessarily indicate the same pencil grade. – Staedtler took the Royal Sovereign Group over in the 1970s, so the code breakers would have been more likely to use Wolff’s Royal Sovereign.
2013: Bach: A Passionate Life (British TV documentary) (added after this blog post was first published)
I haven’t watched this documentary either, but Sean was kind enough to tell me about it and to send me this screenshot.
2013:
If you want to see a Noris being tortured you should head over to Bodyform‘s video (if you don’t want to see the horrible bit, skip a few seconds around 1:13). Rad and Hungry‘s boss Hen Chung posted this video on her Facebook page , which was then also shared on Bleistift’s Faceboook Page[3]The one I haven’t mentioned on this blog yet..
The screenshots in this blog post have been taken from different TV series and films, as stated above. I believe that the use of the screenshots shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.
I’d like to thank Sean for the Quartet and the Bach: A Passionate Life screenshots.
I’d like to thank John for the The Bletchley Circle screenshot.
In a previous blog post I compared three Staedtler tradition 110 pencils, made in three different factories – the one in Wales, the one in Australia and the one in Germany. Today I want to look at three different Staedtler Noris 120 pencils – made in Malaysia, Wales and Germany. I bought a dozen of the Malaysian Noris in March 2010 for £2.24 (~ $3.40; €2.78) from a Malaysian seller on eBay.
Noris presharpened, top to bottom: Malaysia, Great Britain, Germany
The only pencil from this comparison that is still in production is the Nuremberg-made Noris. The factory in Malaysia closed down two years ago and the factory in Wales closed down four years ago. You can still find Welsh-made pencils in the UK, but there are very few shops left that still have stock. I am not sure about the situation in Malaysia, but I assume most of the Malaysian Noris are also sold by now. In a previous blog post I mentioned that 2B is the most common pencil grade in Malaysia. It is so popular in Malaysia that the Malaysian Noris is only available in 2B, therefore I’ll compare it with the Welsh and German Noris in 2B.
Different caps – Top to bottom: Malaysian 2B, Welsh 2B, Welsh B, German 2B
The colour of the Noris cap normally indicates the pencil grade. The HB Noris has a red cap. Strangely enough the cap colour is not consistent. The older Welsh and Malaysian 2B Noris have black caps, while the newer German Noris, bought in April 2012 at Müller in Volkach, Germany for €0.59 (~ $0.73; £0.47), has an orange cap, similar, but a slightly lighter in colour than the orange cap of a Welsh Noris B.
Noris sharpener (511 004) and two wedge sharpeners (510 10 and 510 50)
Which eraser could be most suitable to sharpen a Noris? None other than the Staedtler Noris sharpener, of course. Bought at Currys / PC World in Preston, when they tried to get rid of their stationery in December 2011 this sharpener was part of a ‘study set’ that came with 2 Noris HB, one Staedtler Mars plastic eraser and the Staedtler Noris sharpener for £1.17 (~ $1.79; €1.45). The blister pack says “Made in Germany”, but the wedge sharpener in the Noris sharpener is made in China, or at least the the metal body of the sharpener inside is. I wonder why Staedtler put a metal sharpener in there. Most people probably wouldn’t notice and Staedtler sells plastic sharpeners with the same form factor that could have been used in the Noris sharpener to keep the price down…
The W wedge sharpener in the Noris sharpener
The bottom of the metal sharpener 510 10 in the Noris sharpener features a ‘W’, which indicates that this sharpener is one of Staedtler’s newer sharpeners, optimised for use with the Wopex. It has a sharpening angle of 23°. The thickness of the shavings produced by the Wopex-optimised sharpener is the same as the one by the older model, usually just under 0.3 mm. I assume the difference is in the way the blade has been sharpened.
The older 510 10 wedge sharpener
I used a notepad from Brunnen [1]bought in August 2011 at McPaper in Schweinfurt, Germany for €1.19 (~ $1.46; £0.96) to compare the different leads in terms of smoothness, reflectiveness, darkness, erasability, graphite transfer to another page and how long they keep the point. As far as I can tell the three different Noris perform very similar. The graphite from the Malaysian Noris might transfer a bit easier to another page, e.g. in a diary, but it’s only every so slightly worse than the other two Noris pencils.
No bar code on the Malaysian Noris
In terms of exterior appearance the Welsh and German Noris are nearly on par, with the paint on the Noris from Nuremberg being slightly more even. The paint of the Malaysian Noris is however much worse, but still better than the no name or own brand pencils you usually get in super markets. The Welsh Noris has a diameter of 7mm, which is slightly more than the 6.9mm the Malaysian and German pencils have.
For me the Noris is THE typical pencil. Previous blog posts showed the Noris being featured on TV. Today I want to add two more screen shots. One from Episodes, where Sean Lincoln (played by Stephen Mangan [2]…who recently, as Dirk Gently, used a Faber-Castell Grip 2001 ) is using a Stadtler Noris in the USA, even though it isn’t officially on sale in the USA. The character must have brought it from the UK, the desk is full of Noris pencils ..or, in the real world, this scene might have been filmed in the UK.
The other screen shot is from episode 705 “Liebeswirren” of German/Austrian/Swiss crime TV series Tatort. One of the actors in this episode from Munich was Christoph Waltz of Inglourious Basterds fame.
This is not the first time that I mention the fact that Staedtler pencils are quite common in the UK [1]The blog post about the Staedtler Tradition and the one about the Chung Hwa drawing pencil both mentioned this, then there also the post about Staedtler UK.. Today I want to show you some examples of Staedtler pencils seen on TV. In the UK school is about to start soon, so there’s even Staedtler advertising on TV these days. The examples shown here are however not part of an advertising campaign and I believe that Staedtler pencils have just been used because they are quite common. I apologise as nearly all picture shown have been taken from TV series. As usual, all pictures not taken by myself come with a note explaining where they are from or who owns the copyright.
Real people
Let’s start with real, i.e. non-fictional, people using Staedtler pencils.
Stephen Wiltshire
I’ll skip photos of Stephen Wiltshire using Staedtler pencils. One reason is that you might remember seeing him using a Staedtler pencil from a blog post from March 2010 about the Staedtler Tradition. The other reason is that about a year after the blog post he started making advertising for Staedtler, so any new pictures showing him using Staedtler pencils would arguably be because of his contract with Staedtler, not because of the omnipresence of Staedtler pencils. I have seen him using other pencils in the past, I assume he is only or mainly using Staedtler products now.
Gordon Ramsay is a celebrity chef in the UK. Since he has been mocked in South Park I assume he must be a celebrity in the USA, too – or at least be known there. Here are photos of him in an episode of his TV series Ramsay’s Best Restaurant, where a restaurant ten miles from where I live was competing. I first wasn’t sure whether this is a real Tradition 110 or one of those copies available in many shops, but during this episode there were some moments when the reflection of the writing on the pencil can be seen quite well. It is not a copy.
You can see Staedtler Tradition and Noris pencils in several school sketches in The Armstrong and Miller Show. Staedtler pencil’s use in The Armstrong and Miller Show is not really surprising. They are common and also to some extent the archetype of a pencil.
Staedtler’s pencils’ image as typical pencils means that you can see them often when an association with school is needed or in related advertising as in the example seen on the right. The advertising, probably created specifically for the UK and Ireland, was on a phone booth. A Staedtler Noris can be seen, even though the film is from the USA, where the Noris is not officially distributed and not available.
In the next example Harvey Nichols, a posh department store, used Noris look-alikes in their shop window to advertise perfume – I am not sure what the link between the perfume and the pencils is.
Noris look-alikes in Harvey Nichols shop window. (Thank you to Mrs Schmitt for allowing me to use Staedtler’s photo)
Before I finish this blog post, a quick look at fictional characters outside the UK who use Staedtler pencils.
In the US-American TV series How I Met Your Mother the main characters, architect Ted Mosby (actor: Josh Radnor), can be seen using a Staedtler Mars Lumograph. Unlike the Noris and the Tradition, the Mars Lumograph is officially being sold in the USA. A fitting pencil: in the past the Mars Lumograph has been advertised a pencil for technical drawings and for engineers.
His second appearance in this blog …both times with a pencil: Daníel Sævarsson (actor: Jörundur Ragnarsson), one of the main characters from the …vaktin series and from the film Bjarnfreðarson, this time with a Noris in episode two of Fangavaktin.
In previous blog posts the Tradition was written with lower case letters because this is how the name is printed on the current version of this pencil. I decided to capitalise Tradition from now on, but I will probably refrain from changing the spelling in previous blog posts.
I would like to thank Mrs Schmitt from Staedtler for giving me permission to use Staedtler’s photo of the Harvey Nichols shop window.
I believe that the use of the following images falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service:
The two photos of Gordon Ramsay and the Staedtler Tradition, taken from episode three of the TV series Ramsay’s Best Restaurant
The two school sketch photos, taken from the second series of the TV series The Armstrong and Miller Show
The photo of the UK advertising for the film Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2
The two (poor) photos taken from the TV series How I Met Your Mother
The two photos taken from the TV series Fangavaktin
By the way, this is blog post 112. Quite fitting, as 112 is the article number of the rubber-tipped Staedtler Tradition.
