Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Caran d'Ache Offerings Expanding on Pencils.com Store

Earlier this summer our Pencils.com unit began offering a selection of outstanding graphite and color artist pencils from Caran d’Ache, the Swiss producer of extremely high quality art materials and writing instruments. Known as the “Maison of Haute Ecriture” the company’s products feature “Swiss Made” quality, subtle luxury, craftsmanship, authenticity and contemporary personality that set an aspirational benchmark within the creative art materials and writing instrument industry.

Originally founded in Geneva, Switzerland in 1915, as Fabrique de Crayons Ecridor the company was acquired in 1924 by Arnold Schweitzer, predecessor of the present day owners. At that time Mr. Schweitzer acquired his pencil factory he gave it the name Fabrique Suisse de Crayons Caran d’Ache in honor of a famous French artist he very much admired, Emmanuel Poiré. Under the pseudonym “Karandash”, which is the Russian word for a pencil, Poiré worked as a designer and caricaturist in Paris during the Belle Epoque.
The term “Karandash” is derived from the Turkish phrase “kara tash,” which means “black stone,” referring to the graphite found in pencils. He was most famous for his “Stories without words” which were printed by most of the illustrated newspapers of the time, and he is considered one of the fathers of the comic strip. In fact, the painter’s original signature, slightly modified, is still used today as the highly distinctive logo of all Caran d’Ache Fine Arts products range shown here.

We at CalCedar are extremely proud of our multiple generation association as wood supplier to Caran d’Ache and of the close relation between the family owners of both companies. This relationship began with my grandfather who travelled annually to Geneva, visiting his friends at the factory, consulting on technical matters related to wood machining and pencil making followed by a period of hiking the glaciers of the Swiss Alps. The commitment to excellence in use of quality materials and technical processes to produce superior products in a responsible manner are mutually shared values of both companies.

One important example of this long collaboration and shared values is the commitment Caran d’Ache demonstrates to supporting responsible forestry practices through the utilization of our FSC Certified slats in all of their Incense-cedar pencils throughout their product range. All of the Caran d’Ache pencils offered on Pencils.com feature FSC cedar wood in combination with superior pigments, product performance and craftsmanship. Our current offerings include the 120 strong color pallets of both their famous Pablo coloring pencils and their Supracolor watercolor range, the extensive 15 grade range of Grafwood graphite pencils and the outstanding set of Artist Series pastel selections covering 84 vibrant colors in both pencil & cube form. All these top professional quality ranges offer rich and smooth coloring performance for fine artists with great coverage and high lightfast performance. Many of these have long been used by some of the most noted pencil and fine artists past and present.
Now I’m also very excited to announce that we will be adding in the coming days and weeks a larger mix of fine Caran d’Ache products including an interesting selection of ball point pens, mechanical pencils, fixpencil and some specialty gift selections which represent totally new categories of products to the Pencils.com store. This selection has been curated to extend our commitment to creativity in offering one stop shopping for the best of wood cased pencils and a growing range of outstanding artist and writing products as we enter the holiday gift giving season and a variety of price points. While we won’t be adding any of the Ultra-Luxury fountain and ball point pens Caran d’Ache is well known for, we’ve selected a couple of classic and stylish pens that we think complement our fine and general writing pencil selections and demonstrate the great writing performance of Caran d’Ache products as well.

Also to improve our commitment to educating our customers about products we offer on Pencils.com our Studio602 blog will publish a series of more detailed product posts regarding different Caran d’Ache product ranges in the coming weeks as well.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Keyboarding Nostalgia


I was cleaning a few things out of my office today and found this picture of my father with who I believe are a couple of slat customers visiting the company, circa 1969. His initial job once he joined CalCedar was as the first Data Processing Manager (for you young'uns that's today's IT Manager or CIO) setting up the first computer system. It was an IBM System 3, with everything controlled by punch cards he'd create to develop reports and store data. I recall ladies in the office entered all the data from slat production and sales on these cards via keyboards and giant stacks of green paper printouts (about 15x20 inches) with perforated edges for tractor feed. I remember using one of these punch card systems in my first computer programming class in high school in the 1970s. The system took up a large percentage of the office space. That same office space, now remodeled is where I have my office today.

The 2nd picture below (also found today) is of dad playing the keyboards he really prefers around the same age. He's probably playing "Night in Tunisia", his favorite song. Just love the pants above and the jacket below. Dad went on over time to become President of both CalCedar and Duraflame and now Chairman of the Board of both companies. His computer keyboarding now is most often to pass along jokes and videos he finds interesting from the internet to friends and relatives, but he's still always sitting down at the piano with the same set list of jazz classics. I can't say his taste in clothing has changed much either.

Monday, August 05, 2013

Keeping A Road Trip Journal

Each year Ginger and I take a road trip together in August. This year we've headed North to Oregon and I decided to try keeping a road trip journal using one of the beautiful prompted journals from the Journals Unlimited Range we stock on Pencils.com. This is a great series of Journals, each promoted with relevant data depending upon the topic. There are both mini and normal sizes in a number of topics. All the notebooks are "Made in the USA" and use soy based inks as well so they are environmentally friendly. Would be a nice pairing with our ForestChoice pencils as a gift, but on this trip I'm using my Blackwings and trying out a prototype pencil case.

For this trip I selected the Journal entitled, Adventures, My Road Trip Journal. Each day's entry has prompts related to who you're traveling with, departure and destination points and stops along the way. There is a technical data section for keeping track of odometer readings, MPG, gas prices, total distance travelled, and the route taken. Also sections for noting highlights, sights and memorable places visited, where you ate and things to remember for the next trip. The back page is open form for notes and journal thoughts about the day. I'm using it to make notes of interesting things Ginger and I talked about during the ride. Also each year we listen to one or two books on CD, usually picking an old classic. This year's selection is Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and I've taken to writing down a few thoughts of interesting passages we listen to that day.

Overall the format seems pretty helpful, though on a down driving day like here in Sun River for a few days the technical sections are less useful, though I did use an app to track our bike ride and there is plenty of space for writing about our wilderness kayak trip today and my fishing trip tomorrow.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Introducing the Blackwing Pearl


Recently, our Palomino business unit announced the newest addition to our Blackwing pencil range, the Blackwing “Pearl”. Here is the first photo of the "Pearl" set to make it's official debut on May 2nd at Pencils.com and other dealers around the world. You can register for the Studio602 newsletter updates at Pencils.com for more information on just when the product will go live.

May also marks two years since we introduced our “602” model as a follow up to our first Palomino Blackwing pencil launched in October 2010. Since then, we’ve focused on building awareness and distribution for our two Blackwing pencil models, as well as our flagship Palomino and ForestChoice brands. This included introduction of a complementary range of high quality notebooks and sketchbooks. We’ve been pleased with the progress, as many of these three product ranges are now available in an increased variety of online and independent retail stores throughout the U.S. and Canada, as well as growing international distribution in Europe, Australia and Asia.

Over the past two years, we’ve received numerous requests for new Blackwing items from fans as well as our dealers and distributors. Many want new color combinations for the casing and/or erasers and others have made suggestions for alternative graphite formulations. We’ve also considered numerous requests for custom imprint services on Blackwing pencils similar to the custom imprint options now available on our traditional Palomino HB eraser tipped pencils.

One of our key concerns in introducing any additional Blackwing pencils has been positioning the new pencil for use when it comes to differentiation of the graphite performance. In the tradition of the original Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 pencils, we’ve never published a specific hardness grade for our Blackwing models. When we launched our 602 model in 2011 we introduced the “firm and smooth” and “soft and smooth” descriptors to differentiate the new pencil from our original Palomino Blackwing in the black matte finish, which has a much softer, buttery feel loved by those doing a lot of sketching, music notation and other activities that require a dark mark. The “firm & smooth” 602 has been well received by those doing extended writing and note taking who want longer lasting performance between sharpening in a pencil that more closely replicates the original Blackwing 602 in performance, look and feel. Adding new grades and colors and keeping such graphite performance descriptors certainly foretells future taxonomy challenges and increases potential for confusion among consumers, so we’ve thought much about this before proceeding. In fact we've already had a few interesting suggestions from fans on coming up with our own Blackwing graphite grade scale to simplify things down the road.

Given that we already have a well-received graded graphite range in the Palomino brand, we’re not looking to replicate that by continuing to add a large variety of graphite grades in the Blackwing brand. In selecting a course of action for adding one additional grade we could have gone firmer than the “602” or even softer than the Blackwing, but we experimented with several options and looked at things within the context of our wider artist graphite range and decided to go for something in the middle to fit the broadest user base which offers about the same darkness of the 602, with a bit softer feel that still gives improved wear rates vs. the “soft & smooth” model. We’ve decided to call it our “balanced & smooth” formulation.

For the casing décor, we chose a completely new effect by adding a pearly luster finish to contrast with the flat matte black of the Blackwing and the gunmetal metallic look of the 602 model. White is our most requested color for lacquer finishes and we think it looks just great with this new finish style. Thus the combination of white lacquer and pearly finish lead us naturally to name this pencil the Blackwing Pearl. We chose a black imprint for a stronger contrast, which looks great with the black eraser combination. In fact, we think the Pearl will look great with all six of our available eraser colors, which allows for further personalization or “hacking” for those so inclined.

We can see the Pearl being popular for use in home office décor or used as great guest gifts in weddings and other special events, but also well received for a broad range of existing uses by our fans and new initiates. In reality, regardless of the many different uses of our Palomino or Blackwing pencils, the selection of any specific pencil is always a matter of personal preference. In that sense, we think there is plenty of opportunity for you to find the pencil that is “just right” for your individual taste or a specific need in different situations throughout our full Palomino family as it’s grown and adapted over the past two years. We hope you’ll try out the Pearl and continue to discover the great function, design and performance of our developing Palomino family of products that help you to express your creative spirit in new and exciting ways.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Hough's American Woods: 141 Incense Cedar


This post initiates an extended project I’ve given long consideration to pursue on Timberlines. That is, writing more extensively on my long running interest in the study of natural history and in particular the history of early naturalists as well as the development of various scientific disciplines within the broad field of natural history.

One of the major influences in this hobby was my grandfather and namesake, Charles P. Berolzheimer, whose broad intellectual curiosity in the sciences, including botany, forestry, wood-machining among many other fields of study as well as my exposure to his extensive library which he developed over a lifetime of scholarship. Both during his lifetime and after his death in 1995 I was quite fortunate to receive from his collection a number of books which focused on the natural history topics I find most interesting. He was a unique individual, equally comfortable giving a technical speech on wood sciences in several languages, discussing art and enlightenment thinking or walking through the woods collecting and assembling his personal herbaria. He was particularly fond of trees and fungi. My access to this collection of books has spurred my own further research into these topics, sometimes in specific technical fields, but more generally focusing on the human side of the story of those individuals who advanced knowledge in particular areas of interest, the early field naturalists, discoverers, catalogers or researchers.

My first post in this series covers Hough’s American Woods. I’ve selected this work as a first post not so much due to Hough being an early pioneer of natural history study, though the scope of his work and focus on documenting physical wood samples of American tree species was indeed pioneering in many respects, but rather as this work strikes a bit closer to home for me with respect to the influences of my Grandfather and his interest in area relative to wood processing and treatment.

Hough’s work is a multivolume collection of wood cuts including the Transverse, Radial and Tangential section to show physical specimens exhibiting the natural character of woods, both native and introduced to North America, that he considered import to the study of forestry. The series in total includes 14 volumes and 350 individual species. Each volume includes both the section samples of 25 species as well as a bound pamphlet describing the individual species general and technical information as well as general information covering a range of topics from taxonomy, botanical identification of parts of trees and on the geographic area specific to each volume. The author, Romeyn B. Hough, personally supervised the selection of living tree samples of each species to assure accurate identification and production of the physical sections. The final 14th and final volume was published posthumously in 1928 with his daughter writing the pamphlet.

Given the broad geographic distribution of species extensive work required to identify, harvest and prepare these samples it’s not surprising the publication of this multi-volume work spanned from 1888 to his death in 1924. The specific care to assure proper drying, cutting and preservation of actual wood samples that would stand up without degrade now over 100 years later relates specifically to the technical study of wood chemistry and machining that my grandfather dedicated his own professional career to given our company's role in supply of wood to the Pencil Industry. American Woods is certainly a labor of love, which in his first Volume Hough dedicated to his own father, who in addition to his influence in Hough’s study of nature he also credits the original suggestion of the pursuit of the body of work covered in this entire series, officially titled, The American Woods, Exhibited by Actual Specimens and with Copious Explanatory Text.

Naturally of all the possible woods in these volumes I’ve chosen to feature sample number 141, Libocedrus Decurrens, or California Incense Cedar. This species is included in Part VI (published in 1895) which covers specifically woods of trees found growing in the Pacific Slope of the U.S. (a scan from my personal collection is shown) (today the Genus Calocedrus has commonly replaced the original taxonomy Libocedrus). Incense cedar first began to be investigated for pencil production around 1906 by our family members at the Eagle Pencil Company and produced commercially into slats at their Hudson Lumber Company mill. For more information on Incense cedar in pencil slat production, read here.

Originally, this collection sold for $5 per volume. Today a complete set including the 14th Edition sells for tens of thousands. You can see all the wood cuts from Hough's American Woods on line here.