The new Blackwing pencil

[Blackwings: a new Palomino and an old Eberhard Faber. Click for a much larger view.]

[Note: The “pre-production” Blackwing, it turns out, is the new Blackwing. See below for an explanation.]

While waiting for two pre-production Blackwing pencils to arrive in the mail, I began thinking about an old song: “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons.” Sentimental reasons are reason enough to like the Blackwing: the sheer dowdiness of the design, the roster of distinguished users — Archibald MacLeish, Nelson Riddle, Stephen Sondheim, and John Steinbeck among them. Somewhere — where? — I’ve seen a photograph of Duke Ellington with Blackwing in hand. The Blackwing even boasts a slogan — “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed” — as if this pencil were a personal brand, like a cigarette. Sentiment aside, the Blackwing is a pencil whose smooth lead makes writing a simple pleasure. I’d walk a mile for a Blackwing.

California Cedar Products’ choice to revive the Blackwing cannot be explained by profit motive alone. It’s a labor of love, evident most obviously in the recreation of the Blackwing’s distinctive ferrule. (The breakage of expensive-to-repair ferrule-making machinery helped bring production of the original Blackwing to an end.) The care that has gone into the new Blackwing’s manufacture is considerable: I immediately noticed that each pencil’s ferrule and imprint are in alignment, so that the Blackwing name is visible when the pencil lies flat (that’s not the case with every old Blackwing). My new sample Blackwings are not perfect: one has minute specks of gold paint on the barrel; the other has thin black streaks across the imprint. (The streaks are visible in the photograph above.) As Henry Petroski notes in The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance (1992), few pencils, if any, turn out to be perfect when subject to close inspection.


[The new Blackwing makes a noticeably darker line, no?]

Writing with the new Blackwing is a pleasure. The lead is soft and smooth and doesn’t smear, though now and then a tiny crumb breaks off. The new Blackwing’s point wears more quickly than that of the old Blackwing, and the new pencil’s line is noticeably darker. (An older California Cedar HB Palomino pencil in my possession is, to my surprise, darker and softer still.) The new Blackwing’s eraser works well but not perfectly, leaving a slight trace of lead on a yellow legal pad and a slight sheen on a Moleskine calendar page. But this eraser doesn’t destroy paper, as the erasers on my old Blackwings do, and did, even when new.


[Old imprint.]


[New imprint.]

The differences in appearance between the old and new Blackwings are many, and likely — for sentimental reasons — to be significant to the dedicated user. The brand name appears in larger and more eccentric lettering on the old Blackwing (note especially the C, K and G). The imprint on the new Blackwing is not nearly as crisp, though the lettering does have the advantage of being readable in any light. The Blackwing slogan is missing from the new pencil: perhaps the cost of printing on two sides of the barrel is prohibitive. Most important though, I think, is the change in color. The old Blackwing has been described as charcoal-grey or smoke-grey, but I prefer to think of it as graphite-grey: the Blackwing has the shiny grey look of pencil lead itself. The black, gold, and white design of the new Blackwing is not nearly as attractive. To my eyes, it suggests a now-dated idea of luxury, reminiscent of hair-tonic bottles and whitewall tires. Yipes.

My suggestion to California Cedar: the visual appeal of this pencil is likely to be as important to potential customers as the quality of the lead. Witness the speculation that just brewed about whether the Blackwing slogan would appear on the barrel. Change the color of the barrel to graphite-grey, drop the gold band, and enlarge the Blackwing imprint. Stamp the Blackwing slogan on each pencil if that can be done at a reasonable cost. A pink — or grey? or black? — eraser would be a significant improvement. Appearances aside though, the new Blackwing offers a writing experience that will be a pleasure in any color scheme.

[I refer in this post to “the old” and “the new” Blackwing, but I am, of course, evaluating tokens, not types.]


[All photographs by Michael Leddy.]

September 13, 2010: Production Blackwings are now en route to the States from Japan. It’s not clear whether they differ in any respect from the pre-production samples.

September 15, 2010: California Cedar has been, I think, misleading — at best — in describing these pencils as “pre-production” samples. I evaluated the new Blackwing with the understanding that my comments (and those of other Blackwing fanciers) would help to shape the finished pencil. The very short turnaround time between the distribution of samples and the shipping of finished pencils to the States now makes clear that changes in design based on users’ evaluations were never in the offing. The “pre-production” Blackwing, it turns out, is the new Blackwing. So why send out “pre-production” pencils? You can read Cal Cedar’s explanation here. There’s more discussion (and a bit of subterfuge) in the comments on this post.

I for one won’t be buying — not because of the new Blackwing’s design but because of what I consider to have been a misleading marketing effort.

Other Blackwing posts
All Blackwing posts (Pinboard)
Duke Ellington, Blackwing pencils, and aspirational branding
The Palomino Blackwing pencil and truth in advertising
Palomino Blackwing non-users
Nelson Riddle on the Blackwing pencil
Stephen Sondheim on pencils, paper
John Steinbeck on the Blackwing pencil

Other reviews
Blackwing, Reborn. (The Blackwing Pages)
Mark Frauenfelder, First impression of the new Blackwing pencil (Boing Boing)
Palomino Blackwing pencil (Pencil Talk)
Wiedergeburt eines Klassikers [Rebirth of a Classic] (Lexikaliker)

The Palomino Blackwing pencil and truth in advertising

California Republic Stationers, the division of California Cedar responsible for the replica version of the Blackwing pencil, seems prepared to go to any lengths to promote its merchandise. The company’s page on the Blackwing and popular culture now claims John Lennon as among those

who were just rumored to have used the Blackwing (if you have proof one way or the other, let us know!). When there’s controversy and rumors surrounding what kind of pencil a person used, you know you’re dealing with something big.

These assertions are — I’ll say it — bullshit: “stupid or untrue talk or writing; nonsense” (New Oxford American Dictionary). According to the same dictionary, to bullshit is to “talk nonsense to (someone), typically to be misleading or deceptive.”

The alleged rumor that John Lennon used Blackwing pencils seems to have its source in a comment on a Cal Cedar blog post, a comment naming Lennon as a Blackwing user. There is no evidence of a rumor about Lennon’s pencil use, and no evidence that John Lennon had a particular attachment to the Blackwing pencil. That Lennon’s pencil use is a matter of an alleged rumor hasn’t deterred Cal Cedar from giving a place of prominence to a photograph of Lennon (photographer uncredited) in its banner pantheon of Blackwing users. For a company to advertise its products by using the likeness of someone who could never have used those products — who was murdered before they were manufactured — is about as low as it gets.

The comment naming John Lennon as a Blackwing user names several other alleged users, including J. D. Salinger. Salinger’s name, I notice, is conspicuously absent from Palomino Blackwing publicity materials. No doubt the estate would pounce like a mad beast on anyone using Salinger’s name or likeness without permission for marketing purposes (not that such permission would ever be forthcoming).

In response to recent developments, Blackwing Pages has updated its Q. and A. page on the Palomino Blackwing: The Palomino “Blackwing Experience” as Cultural Vandalism.

California Cedar: please. Gimme some truth, as John Lennon might have said.

Related reading
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)

[The funny thing is that the Blackwing isn’t even my favorite pencil. That would be the Mongol. But I care about facts, and I don’t like seeing people’s names used in a shoddy marketing effort. A post at Blackwing Pages prompted Cal Cedar to silently remove Frank Lloyd Wright’s name from its marketing materials. Several Orange Crate Art posts led to the silent removal of Duke Ellington’s name. It is time for Cal Cedar to remove John Lennon’s name as well.]

Stephen Sondheim on pencils, paper

From a 2005 interview:

Do you use any special kind of paper or pencil?

I use Blackwing pencils. Blackwings. They don’t make ’em any more, and luckily, I bought a lot of boxes of ’em. They’re very soft lead. They’re not round, so they don’t fall off the table, and they have removable erasers, which unfortunately dry out.

And paper?

Yes. Yellow lined pads. I used to have them so it was, I think 26 lines to a page, and my friend, Burt Shevelove, who was a stationery freak, said, “Buy cartons of them!” I said, “Oh Burt, come on. I’ll buy 12 pads. That will be enough.” God, was he ever right, because they discontinued making them about 20 years ago. I’m used to the other pads now. You get used to the exact amount of space between lines, because you write a word and then you write an alternate word over it. You want enough room so you can read it, so the lines can’t be too close. But if they’re too far apart, you don’t get enough lines on the paper. I could go on. I’m sure many writers have these tiny little habits. All over the United States there are people who only use Blackwings. I sometimes get letters, “Do you have any source for the Blackwings?”

And they’re extinct?

Yeah, they’re extinct. Adam Green, Adolph Green’s son, has written an article for The New Yorker, which I think will be published next year. Quite a long article on the Blackwing pencil and the fanatics who go crazy when they don’t have a Blackwing in their hand. You just get habituated. Of course you can still write. If there were no yellow pads in the world, I’d find a way of writing on white paper or on non-lined pads. It’s the lined pads that make it. Yellow is just good because the contrast of the yellow and the black lead is just easier on the eyes than white.

If you’ve never seen a Blackwing, here are photographs. And here is a photograph of Sondheim with a Blackwing. For the Blackwing slogan, stamped into each pencil, see the blog description above.

A search for blackwing at the New Yorker shows no trace of Adam Green’s article.

[The slogan, no longer appearing above: “Half the pressure, twice the speed.”]

Other Blackwing posts
Blackwing 2: The Return
The new Blackwing pencil (a review)
Nelson Riddle on the Blackwing pencil
John Steinbeck on the Blackwing pencil

Palomino Blackwing non-users

[Egg on face: I’d forgotten that Blackwing Pages called attention to Levenger’s advertising copy last year, in one of the very posts I link to below: Facts, Fiction, and the Palomino “Blackwing Experience.” E. B. White though is a new addition to the chorus of Palomino praise-singers.]

From the Levenger website:



I’m reminded of the Dashiell Hammett story in which the Continental Op looks at a sign in a bar — “ONLY GENUINE PRE-WAR AMERICAN AND BRITISH WHISKEYS SERVED HERE” — and begins to count the lies. No, Steinbeck, White, and Wolfe never sang the praises of the Palomino Blackwing, because they lived and died before that pencil came into production. To claim that these writers sang the praises of a Palomino product is equivalent to claiming that Blind Boy Fuller sang the praises of my National guitar. No, because my guitar is a replica. And so is the Palomino Blackwing.

California Cedar has chosen, again and again, to promote its products by invoking the names of prominent people, among them Duke Ellington, John Lennon, and Frank Lloyd Wright, all of whom lived and died before the Palomino Blackwing and thus could never have used that pencil. What’s more, there is no evidence that Ellington or Lennon or Wright had any particular allegiance to the original Blackwing. (Nor to my knowledge is there evidence that White sang the praises of the original Blackwing.) Facts are stubborn things, as someone once said.

Related posts
Duke Ellington, Blackwings, and aspirational branding
The Palomino Blackwing pencil and truth in advertising

And from Blackwing Pages
Facts, Fiction, and the Palomino “Blackwing Experience”
Wright or Wrong?

And from pencil talk
California Cedar: What’s going on?

[I’ve invoked the Op before, when writing about an “old-fashioned recipe” for lemonade. Martha White’s introduction to In the Words of E. B. White (2011) mentions “boxes of Blackwing pencils” from White’s office. Well-known photographs show White composing at the typewriter. Roger Angell’s foreword to the fourth edition of The Elements of Style describes White composing at the typewriter “in hesitant bursts, with long silences in between.”]

Duke Ellington, Blackwing pencils, and aspirational branding

Sean at Blackwing Pages offers a playful and erudite response to the latest efforts of a certain pencil manufacturer to associate its product with great artists, composers, and writers who may have used the pencil that said manufacturer has now recreated in replica form. You can guess the pencil’s name, yes?

Of particular interest to me is California Cedar’s identification of Duke Ellington as someone who used the Blackwing pencil to create “timeless works of art.” The sole basis for this claim would appear to be a post that I made late last year with a photograph in which Ellington has a Blackwing in hand. There are any number of photographs of Ellington writing music. In just this one, to my knowledge, is he using a Blackwing pencil. More important: there appears to be no evidence that Ellington had any particular attachment to the Blackwing pencil, or to any writing instrument. If there is such evidence, California Cedar hasn’t offered it. (If there is such evidence, I’d like to know about it.) Given Ellington’s indiscriminate choice of writing materials — hotel stationery, menus, napkins — in other words, whatever was at hand, the possibility that he had a favorite brand of pencil seems remote. For all we know, the pencil in the photograph may be a borrowed one.

To paraphrase something I said to Sean: it’s curious that as Moleskine steps back from the abyss of aspirational branding (“the legendary notebook of Hemingway, Picasso, and Chatwin”), California Cedar has jumped in, head first, without even putting on a helmet.

March 29: I’m happy to report that Duke Ellington’s name no longer appears on the Blackwing Experience page. Thanks to Gunther and Sean for passing on the news.

April 10: Sigh. Ellington’s name still appears in what appear to be California Cedar press releases. Here’s an example. And the company now claims that John Lennon was rumored to use Blackwings. That’s nonsense.

Related posts
Duke Ellington, Blackwing balalaika user
Duke Ellington, Blackwing sombrero user
Duke Ellington, Blackwing Johnson’s Baby Powder user
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)
All Duke Ellington posts (via Pinboard)

[In Duke Ellington in Person (1979), Mercer Ellington describes the materials that came to form his father’s Music Is My Mistress (1973) as written on hotel stationery, menus, and napkins.]

Graphite-grey

Back in August 2010, in a post about California Cedar’s revival of the Blackwing pencil, I wrote:

The old Blackwing has been described as charcoal-grey or smoke-grey, but I prefer to think of it as graphite-grey: the Blackwing has the shiny grey look of pencil lead itself.

Graphite-grey: I was (and am) very happy about hitting upon that phrasal adjective, which, as far as I could tell, had never been applied to the Blackwing pencil.

And now California Cedar has announced plans to produce a pencil that more closely resembles the original Blackwing. Here’s the description: “a replica styling of the original Blackwing graphite grey finish.” I’d prefer seeing the hyphen in graphite-grey. But hey, you’re welcome!

I’ll admit to a decided lack of interest in this replica. It’s not the real thing — and ain’t nothing like the real thing, as Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell taught us. And the “pre-production” fiasco and subsequent subterfuge accompanying the Blackwing revival last year left me feeling pretty sour about throwing any money Cal Cedar’s way. But I’m sure the new Blackwing will find its way to happy writers.

A related post
The new Blackwing pencil

Tár pencils: Blackwings

[Tár (dir. Todd Field, 2022). Click for a much larger view.]

Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) has quite a stash of Blackwing pencils — no doubt to suggest a tie to her teacher Leonard Bernstein, another Blackwing user. Yes, Tár was his student: the Bernstein estate has confirmed it.

If you click to see the screenshot at full size, you’ll see Eberhard Faber Blackwings on the left, followed by Palomino Blackwings, followed by more boxes of Eberhard Faber pencils. I like seing that Tár chooses an Eberhard Faber Blackwing to sharpen. She’s using the real thing first.

I have nothing against resurrecting a brand name, but I have an admitted animus against the company that makes the Palomino Blackwing, whose business practices I find ethically dubious. See, for instance, these two posts: Duke Ellington, Blackwing pencils, and aspirational branding and The Palomino Blackwing pencil and truth in advertising. And from Sean Malone, the Blackwing’s own historian, Facts, fiction, and the Blackwing experience.

Related reading
All OCA Blackwing posts (Pinboard)

Blackwing 2: The Return

I can’t help thinking of it as heroic narrative: the late, great Blackwing pencil has returned, thanks to California Cedar Products.

I’m one of the fortunate people chosen to receive pre-production pencils. I’ll have a review in the near future. For now, The Blackwing Pages has photographs and a short review of the new Blackwing.

[Here’s the review: The new Blackwing pencil.]

Other Blackwing posts
Nelson Riddle on the Blackwing pencil
Stephen Sondheim on pencils, paper
John Steinbeck on the Blackwing pencil

Duke Ellington, Blackwing balalaika user

[“Jam Session in the U.S.S.R., 1971.” From Duke Ellington’s Music Is My Mistress (1973). Photographer unidentified.]

Look: it’s Duke Ellington, and he’s playing a balalaika. Can we leap to the conclusion that this instrument helped him create “timeless works of art”? Sure we can. Can you prove that it didn’t happen?

If you’re tuning in late, the context for this post is a pencil company’s choice to market its merchandise by using the Ellington name. The Blackwing is a celebrated pencil that California Cedar has recreated in replica form. The company’s choice to associate Ellington with its merchandise rests on exactly one photograph of Ellington with a Blackwing (the real thing, not the replica) that I posted late last year.

Why I care: I’ve been listening to Duke Ellington for about thirty-six years, and I don’t like seeing his name used in a tacky commercial ploy. And I think that facts ought to remain stubborn things. John Adams, as quoted in David McCullough’s 2001 biography: “Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” The state of facts and evidence — a single photograph — does not support the conclusion that Duke Ellington had any particular attachment to the Blackwing pencil.

And if you’ve decided that you should really listen to some Ellington music, this post suggests the best place to start.

March 29: I’m happy to report that Duke Ellington’s name no longer appears on the Blackwing Experience page. Thanks to Gunther and Sean for passing on the news.

Related posts
Duke Ellington, Blackwing sombrero user
Duke Ellington, Blackwing Johnson’s Baby Powder user
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)
All Duke Ellington posts (via Pinboard)

Duke Ellington, Blackwing Johnson’s Baby Powder user

[Duke Ellington, Paramount Theater, New York, 1946. Photograph by William P. Gottlieb. Published in Down Beat, September 23, 1946. From the Library of Congress’s American Memory. Click for a larger view.]

Not a Blackwing pencil in sight, but this dressing-room scene is rich in detail. Notice the Johnson’s Baby Powder: another item that no doubt helped Ellington to create “timeless works of art.”

The context for this post, as explained in an earlier post: a pencil company’s choice to market its merchandise by using the Ellington name. The Blackwing is a celebrated pencil that California Cedar has recreated in replica form. The company’s choice to associate Ellington with its merchandise rests on a single photograph of Ellington with a Blackwing (the real thing, not the replica) that I posted on Orange Crate Art late last year.

We now have one photograph of Duke Ellington with Johnson’s Baby Powder, one photograph of Ellington wearing a sombrero, one photograph of Ellington playing a balalaika, and one photograph of Ellington writing with a Blackwing pencil. These single photographs do not support the conclusion that Ellington had any particular attachment to Johnson’s Baby Powder, sombreros, balalaikas, or Blackwings. In the absence of evidence of such attachment, capitalizing (pun intended) on the Ellington name seems to me a cynical way to sell pencils (or the other stuff).

California Cedar has removed Frank Lloyd Wright’s name from its marketing materials. It should remove Duke Ellington’s name as well.

March 29: I’m happy to report that Duke Ellington’s name no longer appears on the Blackwing Experience page. Thanks to Gunther and Sean for passing on the news.

Related posts
Duke Ellington, Blackwing pencils, and aspirational branding
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)
All Duke Ellington posts (via Pinboard)

[Some Ellington preferences: Beaujolais, Coca-Cola with extra sugar, coffee with lemon, hot water, Pall Mall cigarettes. These preferences are well documented.]

Nelson Riddle on the Blackwing pencil

Composer and arranger Nelson Riddle liked the Blackwing:

Pencils should be of very soft lead, so that a minimum of pressure is needed to convey the marks to the paper, but the lead should be dense enough to be able to carry a sharp point, since clarity is essential. My favorite pencil is the Blackwing #602, by Eberhard Faber, but there may be many brands equal or superior to the Blackwing. Another important feature of a pencil is its eraser. It should be firm, though not dry, and since soft lead is quite easily blurred, it should be an eraser that makes a clean sweep. Some arrangers prefer a mechanical pencil with a refillable reservoir for lead, but I find that the lead in these pencils is quite often brittle, and the eraser wears out after a couple of packets of lead have been expended.

Nelson Riddle, Arranged by Nelson Riddle (Van Nuys, CA: Alfred Music Publishing, 1985).

Here’s a photograph of Nelson Riddle holding a pencil that shows the distinctive Blackwing ferrule. (Squint.)

Related posts
Blackwing 2: The Return
The new Blackwing pencil
Proust’s supplies
Stephen Sondheim on pencils, paper
John Steinbeck on the Blackwing pencil

Blackwing goes to Hollywood

In The Hollywood Reporter, Seth Abramovitch looks at the Blackwing pencil’s place in the entertainment industry and asks, Why Is Hollywood Obsessed with This Pencil? Abramovitch calls the Blackwing “one of the industry’s most valuable — and quickly disappearing — possessions.”

For anyone who wants to learn more about the Blackwing pencil, Blackwing Pages, cited in the article, is the place to go. You might start with this post: No Ordinary Pencil: A Portrait of the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602.

Related reading
All OCA Blackwing posts (Pinboard)

A tribute in dubious taste

In the aftermath of the Great Blackwing Fiasco of 2010, I’ve had little to say about the Palomino Blackwing pencil. This pencil doesn’t interest me. But I had to say something when the Palomino Blackwing’s manufacturer attempted to associate the pencil with the music of Duke Ellington and John Lennon. And now once again I have to say something:

California Republic recently began a line of limited-edition Blackwing “tribute” pencils. The latest one, “A Tribute to Dorothea Lange,” marks the eightieth anniversary of Lange’s photograph Migrant Mother. This pencil is a tribute in dubious taste — or a tribute to dubious taste. From the company website:

Blackwing 344 celebrates the 80th anniversary of this historic photo and the artistic legacy Dorothea Lange left behind. The deep red barrel, red foil imprint, bright red ferrule and black eraser reflect what a Blackwing 602 pencil would look like in a darkroom. The model number references Library of Congress LOT 344, which contains a number of her photographs, including the iconic “Migrant Mother.”

The arbitrariness (eightieth, 344) of this tribute aside, I have to wonder what it means to ”celebrate” a photograph that documents human suffering by turning that photograph into an opportunity to market high-end stationery supplies. And I wonder what Dorothea Lange would make of it.

See also Montblanc’s Gandhi pen.

Related reading
All Blackwing posts (Pinboard)

[I follow The Chicago Manual of Style in italicizing the title of the photograph.]

Sondheim with a Blackwing

[From Original Cast Album: “Company” (dir. D.A. Pennebaker, 1970). Click either image for a larger view.]

There’s Stephen Sondheim with an Eberhard Faber Blackwing pencil, his pencil of choice. Sondheim’s affection for the Eberhard Faber Blackwing — and for thirty-two-line yellow legal pads — is well known.

Note to a pencil company known, infamously, for its shameless and unacknowledged appropriation of other people’s work: Orange Crate Art is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. If you want images for commercial purposes, get a Criterion Channel subscription and get them yourself. And then see if the Pennebaker and Sondheim estates take kindly to what you’ve done.

Again, Sondheim is using an Eberhard Faber Blackwing, not a twenty-first-century replica.

I post these images in memory of my friend Sean Malone, the most dedicated and knowledgable Blackwing user ever known (and whose work was shamelessly appropriated by a certain pencil company). Sean’s website Blackwing Pages has many references to Sondheim. I would like to have been able to send these images Sean’s way. Perhaps I have.

Related reading
All OCA Blackwing posts and Sondheim posts (Pinboard) : Sondheim’s writing habits

Duke Ellington, Blackwing sombrero user

[Photograph by Stanley Dance, 1968.]

The Ellington orchestra toured Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico in 1968. The album Latin American Suite followed in 1972. It stands to reason [crosses fingers] that a sombrero must have inspired the music therein. My claim rests on this one photograph, which appears in Derek Jewell’s Duke: A Portrait of Duke Ellington (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977).

Thus far: one photograph of Duke Ellington wearing a sombrero, one photograph of Ellington playing a balalaika, and one photograph of Ellington writing with a Blackwing pencil. “The state of facts and evidence” does not support the conclusion that Ellington had any particular attachment to sombreros, balalaikas, or Blackwing pencils. A pencil manufacturer’s association of the Ellington name with its replica version of the Blackwing pencil is a matter of very wishful thinking. Some might call such marketing cynical and misleading.

Why do I care? The balalaika post explains.

March 29: I’m happy to report that Duke Ellington’s name no longer appears on the Blackwing Experience page. Thanks to Gunther and Sean for passing on the news.

Related posts
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)
All Duke Ellington posts (via Pinboard)

[“Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence”: John Adams, Blackwing quill user.]

Blackwing Pages for the taking

I will phrase carefully: it appears that California Cedar, maker of the replica Palomino Blackwing pencil, may have used images from Blackwing Pages for commercial purposes with neither permission nor attribution.

Cal Cedar has previously claimed “fair use” concerning a photograph from Blackwing Pages that it used in a promotional video with neither permission nor attribution. Use is the key word, and this company’s business practices give new meaning to the term Blackwing user. Nobody likes to be used.

Related reading
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)

Another tribute in dubious taste

The latest Palomino Blackwing pencil, or “Blackwing” pencil, glows in the dark. From the box:

In a speech delivered at the New York Public Library in 2010, the late Dr. Maya Angelou poetically described the humble library as a “rainbow in the clouds” so that “in the worst of times, in the meanest of times, in the dreariest of times . . . at all times the viewer can see a possibility of hope.”

Libraries are more than just archives, they’re representations of our collective human experience. They’re reminders of where we’ve been, inspiration for where we want to go, and collections of all the beauty, pain, and wisdom that fills the gaps.

The Blackwing 811 is a tribute to libraries and the hope they represent. It features an emerald gradient finish and gold ferrule inspired by the iconic green lamps that light the halls of libraries around the world. Each pencil is coated with a special phosphorescent topcoat, so it can be a literal light in the dark. The model number 811 is a reference to the section of the Dewey Decimal System that contains some of Dr. Angelou’s most famous works, along with the works of countless other inspirational writers.

The same text appears in a company blog post. And the same text accompanies a company video for the pencil.

The curious thing: there’s no mention of Maya Angelou on the company’s page for this pencil. Instead:

The Blackwing 811 is a tribute to libraries and the hope they represent. It features an emerald gradient finish and gold ferrule inspired by the iconic green lamps that light the halls of libraries around the world. Each pencil is coated with a special phosphorescent topcoat, so it can be a literal light in the dark. The model number 811 is a reference to the American poetry section of the Dewey Decimal System that contains the works of countless inspirational writers.

I wonder if the Angelou estate got in touch.

While this pencil is indeed a tribute in dubious taste, it cannot rival the Palomino “Blackwing” tribute to Dorothea Lange’s photograph Migrant Mother.

Related reading
All OCA Blackwing pencil posts (Pinboard)

[I’ve corrected Palomino’s nonstandard ellipsis, but I’ve let their comma splice stand. Google’s cached version of the company’s page for the pencil is from April 9. If Angelou’s name was ever on the page, it must have been removed by then.]

Blackwings for sale

I thought that Western Civ had come to an end when the Vermont Country Store started selling vibrators.¹ But now the VCS is selling replica Blackwing pencils, only (or “only”) $3.90 each. This little bit of copywriting adds another layer to the Blackwing story:



That can only be Howlin’ Wolf, composer of “Smokestack Lightning” and the latest member of the Blackwing pantheon. Welcome!

¹ They do. Really.

Related reading
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)
Blackwing Pages (a website devoted to the Blackwing pencil)

How to improve writing (no. 41)

Here (and why not?) is the evolution of a sentence from yesterday’s post on Palomino Blackwing non-users. My first effort:

There is a reference to “boxes of Blackwing pencils” from White’s office in Martha White’s introduction to In the Words of E. B. White (2011).

That’s one ungainly sentence. Notice the long chain of prepositional phrases: to boxes, of Blackwing pencils, from White’s office, in Martha White’s introduction. The sequence from White’s office in Martha White’s introduction is especially clumsy. (It must have been a small office.) Embedding the book title’s two prepositional phrases in yet another prepositional phrase adds a final awkward touch. What I think happened here: having taken a quick look at the book, I was concerned more with getting the data in one place — the quotation, the writer’s name, the book’s part and title, the date of publication — than with writing a good sentence.

I saw right away that I needed to rethink the sequence of elements in the sentence: it’s appropriate to put what’s most important at the end, right? So here’s an improvement:

In Martha White’s introduction to In the Words of E. B. White (2011), there is a reference to “boxes of Blackwing pencils” from White’s office.

Better, yes. And notice that the three references to Whites are better distributed in the sentence. But look at “There is a reference.” It should be easy to make the sentence shorter and livelier by cutting the verb to be and the nominalization reference and adding a transitive verb in the active voice:

Martha White’s introduction to In the Words of E. B. White (2011) mentions “boxes of Blackwing pencils” from White’s office.

Much better. Notice that dropping is and a reference means fewer prepositional phrases. Minus the two of the title, the sentence drops from five to three, and from twenty-five words to twenty.

This rewriting stuff, it really works.

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All How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 41 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. This post is the first to improve my writing. Many guides to writing suggest replacing to be (when appropriate) with a transitive verb in the active voice. The advice appears in The Elements of Style, or “Strunk and White”: “Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is or could be heard.”]

Recently updated

The “pre-production” Blackwing pencil, it turns out, is the finished product. Huh? I’ve updated this post accordingly: The new Blackwing pencil.

Related reading
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)

[Note: The comments from “Mark” that follow are the work of an employee of California Cedar, maker of the new Blackwing.]

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April 10, 2012: Only in retrospect does it occur to me to wonder: out of all possible names to choose when leaving these phony comments, why did the Cal Cedar employee chose the name Mark? Was he hoping to earn the company some good will by giving the impression that he was the well-known Blackwing fan Mark Frauenfelder?