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.
After Pencil Revolution’s Wopex post and the following discussion on how to sharpen a Wopex: a photo of a Deli 0668 sharpened Wopex.
Typical pattern created when sharpening a Wopex with a cylindrical sharpener. Click to enlarge.
For many months now I have hardly ever sharpened my Wopeces with anything other than a Deli 0668. For that purpose I have one Deli 0668 at home and one in the office. The 0668’s angle of 20° is more suitable for the Wopex than the more acute angle of ~17°-18° the Deli 0635 will produce.
One warning though, the hardness of the Wopex can make the auto-stop fail. If you notice that the sharpener doesn’t stop, release the pencil holder (back to it’s original position) to avoid more of the pencil being fed further towards the burr cylinder. To finish the sharpening process just keep turning the handle until there is no more resistance .
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.
I know, Christmas is over, but the weather is still fairly wintery and it’s just starting to get warmer now, so you might forgive me if I wrote about snowmen. Since 1982 Channel 4 has been showing The Snowman every year for Christmas. It’s a 26-minute animation drawn using pencils.
I don’t think The Snowman is very well known outside the UK, but if you’re not on the British Isles you might know another animation from the author Raymond Briggs: When the Wind Blows.
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the animation Channel 4 made a sequel: The Snowman and The Snowdog. When I first heard about the sequel I was sceptical and didn’t expect it to be hand drawn using pencils, but to my surprise it’s hand made using pencils. The sequel cost £2 million and according to a documentary about the making of the sequel 200 000 sheets of paper and 5000 pencils were used.
In a documentary, also shown on Channel 4, you can see all sorts of pencils being used in the studio in North London where the cells were hand drawn. I was surprised to see fairly few Derwent Cumberland pencils [1]I would have thought that Derwent Cumberland would have an interest in sponsoring this movie – 5000 pencils wouldn’t have been a lot for them.. The pencils visible in the documentary don’t have to be representative of those used for the animation, but the pencils you get to see in the documentary are not from Derwent – they are mainly Prismacolor pencils. The 20044, an eraser-tipped blue pencil, seems to be particularly often used for outline animations [2]If that’s the right word. . I believe the reason blue is being used is because cameras or copiers will ignore this colour or shade of colour, so that sketch lines don’t need to be erased and the final black lines can just be drawn over the sketches [3]I first read about this when I discovered Staedtler’s non-photo-blue pencils.. You can also see some Caran d’Ache pencils, Staedtler’s Mars Lumograph and two mechanical pencils, which I think were both Pentels.
Some scenes were filmed in Raymond Briggs’ House where many Derwent Cumberland pencils were visible and where you can also see him using a Staedtler Mars Lumograph.
The images in this blog post have been taken from Rare Day‘s documentary How the Snowman Came Back to Life. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.
