Saturday, January 13, 2018

Inside General Pencil

The New York Times Magazine has a terrific feature on Jersey City’s General Pencil Company. With photographs by Christopher Payne, text by Sam Anderson:

In an era of infinite screens, the humble pencil feels revolutionarily direct: It does exactly what it does, when it does it, right in front of you. Pencils eschew digital jujitsu. They are pure analog, absolute presence.
They are also nice to write with. I so wanted to make this post with a pencil, a General Kimberly (2B).

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

comments: 4

Geo-B said...

I have a Wednesday afternoon class which is in a computer lab, so computers are on the desks, and there is a large screen for an overhead projector, which I have to raise to write on the board. I regularly use electronic media in my teaching (I'm saying so I don't sound completely antiquated). But while I was speaking, a young man got up and went to the wall where he crunchingly ground his pencil in the sharpener. It seemed so timeless a student gesture, albeit increasingly rare.

Michael Leddy said...

I wonder how often those sharpeners need to be emptied. :)

Frex said...

Might you write a blog post in pencil and post a scan of it?
Not the same I know... but it would be fun for us to see.

"Digital jujitsu"--that made me smile.

Michael Leddy said...

Hmm — National Handwriting Day is coming up (the 23d). There’s handwriting in some posts here, but I think it’s all in pen (fountain).