Palomino Blackwing: Special Edition Gift Set

I am pleased to announce that we have received just in time for the holidays our new Palomino Blackwing Special Edition Gift Set, now available exclusively on Pencils.com. This is a beautiful new desktop set which includes a gorgeous natural wood grain box with the Palomino Blackwing brand embossed in a black leather trim, 24 Palomino Blackwing pencils and one of our KUM-Palomino Long Point sharpeners. At this point we have had just 200 of these box sets produced for the 2010 Holidays. 50 of these have been pre-reserved for our own internal company gift needs. This means there are just 150 sets available for sale in this Special Edition. At our normal Pencils.com margins this product represents a $130 value, however we have elected to offer this price at a price just under $100 per set in support of our loyal Palomino Blackwing fans.

The box itself is an absolute gem produced in the Alsace Region of France featuring true artisan craftsmanship in the integration of the arts of woodworking and the production of fine quality CUIR de TERRE leather by our supplier Atelier de la Forêt. The Alsace is known as a land of winemakers & tanners and for the Vosages foothills, rivers and forests. The region is known for its environmentally friendly and sustainable method of selective harvest of the forest down to the individual tree level and for it’s craft woodworking. In former times the Alsace had a thriving tanning industry and today the names of streets, neighborhoods, families and business bear witness to this rich past. The family business owners of Atelier de la Forêt, located near the village of Zittersheim, continue these long held traditions of fine quality craftsmanship.

The wood species used in this box is Sorbus Torminalis and is known commonly as the Wild Service Tree. Not knowing much about this particular species I took some time recently to investigate. Amazingly I found the interesting blog, Rowans, Whitbeams & Service Trees, maintained by Dr. Patrick Roper in the UK. Patrick is apparently a specialist in this group of trees and posts specifically about their history, use and preservation. One of the most interesting uses has been that of fermenting the berry’s for various beers as a substitute for hops and other alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages alike. The tree was even known to Martin Luther for these qualities. The blog also provided this helpful link addressing the the genetic conservation and use of this species.

The leather trim on this box is just one fine example of the beautiful leather desk accessories produced by Atelier de la Foret and it is my hope we can collaborate on further special editions within the Palomino and Palomino Blackwing family of products in the future. The company’s marketing literature on their fine leather work is as poetic as the words that can be written with the Palomino Blackwings themselves.

Selecting a great leather is like choosing a great wine… The CUIR de TERRE leather comes from the finest calf-skin and it is transformed by formulae written down in notebooks and loving guarded, in a place, a land, a knowledge that has been passed down in secret, within the family. … the skins delicately catch the light for the pleasure of sight and touch, reminiscent of a sturdy old Armagnac or an aged Port.

With this beautiful new gift set we bring together a truly global combination of fine quality craftsmanship of several companies, high quality raw materials and several countries.. The Blackwing pencils start with our superior quality Japanese produced graphite core so paramount to the writing pleasure are then incased in our Genuine Incense Cedar wood from the forests of California, transformed into high quality wood slats in our Tianjin, China factory before final pencil production by our Japanese woodworking and finishing partners. These are paired with the finest German produced carbon steel blade hand sharpeners from KUM. All packaged lovingly in a true work of art from France.

These Collectors Can't See the Art for the Trees

I've always had an interest in understanding how different economic, business and social principles apply to different industries and markets, particularly with respect to historical development of markets over time. Lately I've been reading more about the economics of the Art market leading me to an article by Paco Barragan at ARTPULSE Magazine titled "The New Spirit of Collecting: From Macenas to Prescriptor to Speculator". The article focuses on the historic transition of collecting art from a system of patronage and philanthropic support of the arts through to those who Paco describes as while still maintaining some sense of "the rank of trophy predators" now have set a new trend as "aggressive and benefit-seeking sharks" who's only motivation is to drive up the value of their holdings whatever level of undue influence and market manipulation is required.

He goes on to state that this trend is now pushing it's way into the European collector's psyche:

"Furthermore, the traditional European collector, with an extensive knowledge of art history and a profound respect for artists and art professionals, has given way to a new breed of collector inspired by the "American Model," based upon aggressive price negotiation, quick access to board of trustees of museums n order to conveniently push his artists, and in the end, the attainment of significant economic results for his investment in art."

Barragan appears to be describing a bunch of Wall Street speculators gone wild referring to a the neo-capitalism model of art collecting. Next he'll be calling for government intervention and regulation of the Art Market and as much as implies he would be a supporter of such a concept:

"Obviously there's a "new spirit of collecting," which has come along with the "new spirit of capitalism" ... that, I am afraid, not even Obama will be able to regulate."

As with any free market the excess of a few collectors who perhaps cannot see the Art for the Trees will always push the envelop. In my view the mainstream art collector still acquires based upon personal sense of appreciation for the art and artist on their own merit, not based on some fanatical obsession with profit making. Let's not overreact to the actions of a few and in my view if Barragan thinks the art world has not seen likes of obsessive promoters with good connections to ultimate benefactors and collectors for hundreds of years then he's generally naive.

One of the blessings of all the new social media is it's facilitation of sharing and appreciation of art and interactions among artists, fans and collectors alike. It may not be the most profitable means of getting rich as an artist, bit these media are opening up new windows for artists and becoming more of the mainstream (truly neo-capitalist) means for art distribution over time. Perhaps there will be some commoditization effect that impact valuation, but ultimately a greater number of artists will benefit as a whole vs. those playing in the shark tank who rise and fall as most speculative markets do over time. I think we pencil collectors and other art fans on the web need not worry much about these "aggressive benefit seeking sharks" out there.

The New Pencils.com

After several months of work I am pleased to announce we have completed our redesign project and have now re-launched our “Incense Cedar Institute – Pencil Pages” website under the new name Pencils.com. This has been a project some time in gestation even since I first initiated my Timberlines blog a few years back and happily is now up and running as a Beta site which we will continue to work on improving and developing over time.

The new Pencils.com site builds upon the past purpose of the site as an educational resource regarding pencils, Incense-cedar, renewable resources and forestry management but adds to it a broad range of new features designed to help celebrate and share the role of the pencil in our world. If you are a pencil enthusiast, artist, writer, teacher, parent or student the new site has something for you. I hope you will check it out and join what I think will become an active and growing community. In particular we have initiated a Palomino Riders group page which allows you to share and post artwork created with your Palomino pencils or to form other groups and discussion forums on a wide variety of topics related to education, art, writing and even pencil collecting.

In addition to expanded educational content and a host of social networking and related tools on the Pencils.com site one of the key new features will be our Pencils.com Store. This store will supplement our existing Pencil World Creativity Store @ eBay and ForestChoice.com and offers a much more flexible on line shopping tool with quantity discounting, pencil points discounts that you earn through participation in the Pencils.com community as well as other features. We’ve already added an expanded range of new California Republic items not on eBay as well as new items from another pencil manufacturer with more to follow. Over time we’ll be expanding the product range available on the Pencils.com Store, supporting and promoting products produced by our slat customers that supplement and complement our own product range.

A number of readers continue to request more of my in depth posts on industry issues and there have been plenty of issues to write about, although I’ve just been too busy with other business matters in the last year or so and more recently in developing the Pencils.com site for this launch. Looking forward I plan to return to providing somewhat more frequent posts about issues related to Pencil Industry here on Timberlines which will also have a feed to a dedicated Timberlines page at the Pencils.com site. However, posts more focused on news related to our California Republic Stationers product developments and the Pencils.com store offerings will be moved to my WoodChuck blog on the Pencils.com home page. Thus the Pencils.com site will be updating much more frequently than Timberlines going forward.

For more information you can visit Pencils.com or for more historical background of the Incense Cedar Institute and website transition to Pencils.com you can read the CalCedar press release here.

Could Blackfeet Become the Next Blackwings?

Earlier this week we had an inquiry from a consumer looking to find a supply of Blackfeet Indian pencils. I had to pass along the news that the Blackfeet Indian Pencil Company is out of business for sometime now. The linked article here provides an interesting look at the challenges faced by Blackfeet Pencil Company as they last tried to re-establish operations around 2000. Unfortunately the company was not able to recover from its prior debt load and the changing competitive environment as increasing volumes of pencils entered the US market from Asia..

The best advice I could offer this person was to try eBay and I was able to provide a link to a current auction at the time. Today this auction for a 12 pencil wood box set of “The Blackfeet Indian Pencil” ended at a total value of $62.25 plus $4.50 shipping for a whopping $5.56 per pencil. Certainly this includes the nice redwood wooden box that these pencils come packed in, but still seems quite a premium as compared to our own Palomino Wood Box sets priced at $9.95 for 6ct on eBay or Pencilthings.com’s Palomino Signature 12 count Wood Box Set at $16.95.

So will the now discontinued Blackfeet Pencil develop a similar sache to that of the famous Blackwing? This auction does not represent the amazing $20 to $35 each pencil premiums that Blackfeet pencils fetch that these days. Certainly there is a bit of emotional attachment some people place on buying a pencil produced by Indians that once benefited and supported one of our Native American cultural groups. The pencil writing performance is good, but not to the quality of the Palomno or many premium quality writing pencils available today. The natural wood grain finish is a nice feature, but in and of itself is not uncommon these days. In fact most people associate the all natural finish of the Blackfeet Indian Pencil with their image of this brand, but the company did produce a broader range of pencil styles and brand names as exhibited in this nice collection. Certainly there has been some attention to Blackfeet pencil at Pencil Revolutions and Paper and Pencil. I guess only time will tell if we’ll be seeing $10 or $20 Blackfeet on occasional auctions of this item.

"Catch" of a Lifetime

I recently added this 1954 Mirado Pencil magazine advertisement to my collection. I find some of these old pencil ads intriguing for both their design and copy content. Of particular interest to me is the contexts they provide as a historical reference and indicators of trends in promotional focus within our industry.

Given my own favorable predispositions towards both fly fishing and pencils (as covered in my prior post, WoodChuck on Fishing) I found this ad particularly interesting from both the graphic and copy standpoint. The use of the fishing scale to demonstrate that the strength of the Mirado lead “will take over five pounds of pressure… far more than you apply in daily use” is the first of several fishing references in pointing out features of the product. This theme continues with additional fishing analogies… “This yellow-bodied beauty with the bright red brand glides like greased lightening … smooth and fast. A Mirado reels off more than thirty-five miles of line, and you’ll agree that every inch is a joy and pleasure.”

So when you look at the Mirado performance features being promoted in this add it comes down to: the strength of the graphite core, smooth writing/gliding capability and it’s long lasting nature “35 miles of line”. It’s unclear if you’d have to sharpen down to an uncomfortably small nub to realize the claim of 35 miles of line. The ad also offers a free sample for writing into the Eagle Pencil Company.

Today there is much less print advertising done for particular pencil products like we saw in the first 50 to 60 years of the 20th century. Today newspaper circular insertions in support of given retailers mostly during the back to school sales period are the most common form of print advertising for pencils. These circulars generally cover pencils in addition to other writing instruments from a given manufacturer or brand range. The failure of these circulars in my view is that they communicate none of the performance features of product, just brand name and price point. Of course this is not the purpose of newspaper circular advertising which is designed around price promotion of known brand names to generate store traffic for the retailer, not to promote features and benefits of brands.

Where some manufacturers do seem to focus more marketing effort these days is on public relations activities focused on the wider corporate brand umbrella and not necessarily on specific pencil products themsleves. In the case of the Mirado pencil brand I am not aware of any advertising and promotional effort expended on this product by Sanford these days. Certainly their Sharpie marker range is quite heavily advertised and promoted along with their Waterman and Parker pens. I am sure there are also other less visible means of promotion of Prismacolor, Papermate, Uniball, etc. but the Mirado which is Sanford’s “flagship” high quality graphite writing pencil gets even less promotional support from what I’ve seen.

Also unclear at this point is whether today’s Mirado performance lives up to the billing of this Mirado ad from 50 years ago. Today’s cartons still make the claim of being “The World’s Smoothest Writing Pencil.” Some would say it does not offer the same performance as just 10 years ago following a series of cost reduction and brand repositioning steps. It has transitioned over the years from the Eagle corporate brand umbrella to the Berol Mirado, then in the past 12 years or so to the Sanford Mirado and is now currently the marketed as the Papermate Mirado pencil. I don’t know about you, but when I think of a high quality writing instrument that I would want to associate with my flagship graphite pencil brand, Papermate of all the brands under the Sanford umbrella is not the first one that springs to my mind. Over this time the Mirado has lost share in it’s primary market in the USA relative to Dixon’s Ticonderoga despite similar price points and market positioning for these two products. One thing that has changed is that the Mirado no longer fits the final claim from this 1954 advertisement that it is “The Largest Selling Pencil in the World”. Of course, I'm not certain that it did in 1954 either.

Sanford of course is not alone and I do not mean to pick on them in particular. The reduced advertising and promotional expenditures on branded wood-cased pencils in general these days is a partial consequence of trends that tend to “commoditize” all consumer goods. These trends include greater availability of lower priced foreign imports with improving quality, an increase in retailer concentration and control over access to distribution points along with their increasing use of Private Label. Another contributor is the reduced amount of product innovation in wood cased pencils, so there is less to talk about. When any product faces increased price pressure for products that are not well differentiated from other competitors this generally leads to reductions in marketing expenditure and excessive focus on cost and price reduction. This is to the detriment of other important aspects of a balanced marketing mix. Admittedly, this is a difficult challenge when every third sentence coming from buyers at Walmart, Staples and other large retailers is about the need to reduce prices.

Despite this I still believe that if the top pencil brands continue to advertise and promote their products and focus on keeping a quality advantage then their loyal consumers would continue to support the brand at reasonable pricing premiums and they would have “A Catch of a Lifetime”. More creativity is needed today in tying the fly and casting the rod to the right spot of the river than ever before. If the brands fail to do so then the fish will increasingly bite on other lures.

L&C Hardmuth - Koh-I-Noor: A Diamond in the Rough

The pencils shown here are all quite old pencils from L&C Hardmuth. Each represent different brand names and were produced in two different factories of this old group which had it’s beginnings in Vienna, Austria and later relocated to the Bohemia Works factory at Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Republic. Ceske Budejovice’s German name is Budweis, of beer fame, which has an interesting brand ownership rights history. This also is a situation not uncommon in the pencil industry over the years. In fact L&C Hardmuth’s own history resulted in divided ownership rights by region of their most famous brand. The Koh-I-Noor brand was first introduced in 1889, named for the famous diamond as a representation of the superior quality of this new product.

While Hardmuth's primary manufacturing operations remained in Ceske Budejovice, the company expanded in a multinational push between the two world wars opening Koh-I-Noor Pencil Company in New Jersey in 1919, had a joint venture factory with Johann Faber in Romania and in 1931 established a facility in Krakow, Poland as part of new trust combination with Johann Faber and A.W. Faber-Castell. (Petroski) At some point in time a new factory in Hirm, Austria was built as well.

Following World War II the company was broken up and the Czech, Romanian and Polish operations were nationalized while the Austrian company remained under private ownership. The US based Koh-I-Noor operations (of Rapidiograph fame) ended up as part of a separate group that was later owned by Rotring in Germany and was eventually acquired by Newell Rubbermaid in the 1990s. Eventually the Austrian company fell on hard times and went through bankruptcy and found new owners. This company was reorganized and operates today as Bleistfabrik Hirm-Cretacolor.

Meanwhile the nationalized group of companies consolidated over time into the large operations in Ceske Budejovice building a leading brand position in Eastern Europe and former Soviet block countries while having more limited trade with the west. This company was renamed Koh-I-Noor Hardmuth as it was privatized in 1992 and purchased two years later and has since operated as part of the Gamma Group. This company retains the Koh-I-Noor name today and has since further invested in pencil manufacturing operations in both Russia and China. The company has also recently opened separate marketing and distribution companies in both Poland and Slovenia, though there is no pencil manufacturing at these locations. It retains strong brand recognition in Eastern European market, has a reputation for fine quality and has strengthened its international distribution since it’s privatization.

As far as I’ve been able to determine these three pencil sets date from the period of time L&C Hardmuth was internationalizing the business through the 1930s. Of these three items only the Scalia pencils include any reference to the Koh-I-Noor name. None have the Koh-I-Noor name imprinted on the pencils themselves. All three seem to be different brands of copying pencils. Copying pencils have a hard lead that is designed to leave a dark and more permanent mark similar to an ink pen.

The beautiful set of Scala copying pencils are among the favorite in my entire collection. Note the wonderful lacquer job on these pencils that seems to simulate a length of bamboo. This box includes an information sheet on the care and use of these copying pencils in 12 languages demonstrating the multinational sales focus of the company. An excerpt of key technical information reads as follows:

All copying and couloured copying ink pencils should be protected against atmosoheric humidity as well as against excessive dryness and heat. ... for they are liable to absorb moisture from the atmosphere, which softens the lead and, if dried rapidly, it becomes brittle.
On account of their composition, the resistance of copying leads against breaking is entirely different than that of Blacklead Pencils, which are hardened by baking.
The structure necesitates care being taken when sharpening. The blade ... must be sharp and too great pressure should not be exerted.
Coloured Copying Ink Pencils particularly should not be sharpened to a very fine point. ... To prevent piercing oneself ..., it is recommended that the points be fitted with a protector.

The second two sets of pencils indicating they were produced in Poland include the yellow “Eureka” and black “Mephisto” pencils. They both reference a grade described as srednie or 73B srednie, which I've been unable to translate. What’s also interesting is that these two boxes seems to reference different company names. The first is L&C Hardmuth-Lechistan S.A. and the second L.i C. Hardmuth S.A. Krakow. A Wikepedia search for Lechistan indicates that it is the name for Poland used in some Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries that derives from the Polish word Lechia which is an alternate historical name for Poland. Thus it is probable the “Eureka” pencils were produced specifically for these other market regions and again are an interesting historical reference for the multinational period of expansion of the L&C Hardmuth in the 1930s.

A final note of interest is that I have only been able to find reference to one current Koh-I-Noor product retaining the Mephisto name and the Eureka and Scala names seem to have disappeared entirely from any current selections. This is a likely result of the declining demand for copying pencils and another example of how changes in product tastes and market conditions have lead to the decline in various pencil brands. The lone Koh-I-Noor Mephisto item is now a 5.6mm thick lead plastic mechanical clutch pencil.