Faber-Castell Type Cleaner

A second box has a large price sticker with the code 11983: January 1983? November 9, 1983? I bought both boxes, at a much later date, from an office-supply store that was surrendering, finally, to time’s slow-chapt power. I had no need for Faber-Castell Type Cleaner: I just wanted to give these items a home.

The packaging design seen here — Helvetica type, a black-and-white photograph, a colored flap — was once found on a range of Faber-Castell products. I have a box of Mongol pencils with brown flaps. Blackwing Pages has photographs of similar boxes for Blackwing pencils, light blue flaps and then brown. I don’t know what other products wore green.

Looking at the photograph on this package leaves me convinced of something that I’ve suspected ever since getting an iPhone: that the jumping-up keys on the iPhone’s keyboard are more than practical, visual feedback. I think that they’re yet another bit of skeuomorphic design, meant to suggest the movement of a typewriter’s typebars. I have no evidence, but it’d be difficult to persuade me otherwise.

[This post is the fourteenth in an occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real.]

Other Museum of Supplies exhibits
Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27 : Eagle Turquoise display case : Eagle Verithin display case : Fineline erasers : Illinois Central Railroad Pencil : A Mad Men sort of man, sort of : Mongol No. 2 3/8 : Moore Metalhed Tacks : National’s “Fuse-Tex” Skytint : Pedigree Pencil : Real Thin Leads : Rite-Rite Long Leads : Stanley carpenter’s rule