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.
A fake Noris. The company behind it didn’t try very hard, but I’m sure many customers who are not so familiar with pencils will buy this pencil because of the familiar colours and patterns. It even features a black strip between two yellow sides.
Long time readers might remember my blog post about the Reynolds 432 and the Nataraj 621, both of which look pretty much like a Staedtler Tradition. There are also countless Staedtler Noris copies – previously I’ve mentioned the Fox Essentials. Recently, I’ve come across a quite cheeky copy of the Noris, when one of my students was using it in class. I call it a cheeky copy, because it features a red cap, just like the original Noris …but the copied pencil’s cap is rather ugly in compared to the original.
The Noris eco is my daily pencil. The Leuchtturm Loop has been reused from a previous diary, thanks to a paper riveter.
A few weeks later I also finally got my hand on a Noris eco. I planned to get one from Cult Pens when I order from them again, but then I saw the Noris eco in WH Smith, where they sell for 85p (~$1.40; €1.05) each. I also had a look at my local Ryman, but they didn’t sell them there, even though they sell them in their official eBay outlet [1]It’s difficult to find there, though – they spell Staedtler wrong, even though they do sometimes get the spelling right, e.g. for the Staedtler Traditional [sic] pencil..
Top: Noris eco – Bottom: Wopex 2H
The lovely Noris eco is now my daily pen in my diary’s loop.
One thing I noticed: the green colour of the Noris eco seems virtually identical to the Wopex in 2H.
Top: Noris eco – Bottom: Wopex 2H
While the Noris has a more complicated pattern [2]The six sides of the hexagonal Noris are painted like this:
black, yellow (thin black strip) yellow, black, yellow (thin black strip) yellow., the Noris eco has a simpler pattern [3]The six sides of the Noris eco are painted like this:
black, green, black, green, black, green.. I assume this is because it’s not so easy to extrude a thin black strip precisely over a corner.
Now, if the Noris eco is just a green Wopex with black strips and if there are fake Noris (plural: Norises?) anyway, why not make your own (fake?) version from a yellow Wopex?
I’ve only ever seen the yellow Wopex in Asda and on Ebay. I assume the ones on eBay were bought in Asda, where they are very cheap.
To increase my chances of getting acceptable looking black strips on the pencil I decided to cover the areas not to be painted with a tape.
The taped Wopex. The tape dispenser in the background is an old Bakelite model.
I then used a permanent marker to paint the Wopex. As you can see it all went belly up. Somehow the tape didn’t stick well and the lines from the black marker were not very straight …so I didn’t bother to do the thin strips carefully either. If you want to try it and are successful: Try to do the red cap using nail polish. Pencil Revolution has further instructions.
Epic fail!
Price and exchange rates: January 2014
I’d like to thank Kamil Musial for showing me the “Stationery” Staedtler Noris copy.
It’s difficult to find there, though – they spell Staedtler wrong, even though they do sometimes get the spelling right, e.g. for the Staedtler Traditional [sic] pencil.
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.
