The Mezimbite Forest Centre artisans have much in common with the journeymen, carpenters and cabinet makers that pioneered the modern lead pencil. The pencil, with its simplicity and elegance of design, took centuries to refine. It was rarely a luxury, it was mostly a necessity.

“Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”
— Henry David Thoreau

Henry and his father John Thoreau, played a vital role in this long journey of the pencil’s evolution and refinement. Two hundred years ago precisely, in 1812, William Monroe of Concord, Massachusetts–an artisan cabinet-maker and journeyman himself–invented the first pencil making machinery and sold the very first pencil made in America on July 2, 1812.

The industry of pencil manufacture in America was now launched. A decade later in the 1820′s John Thoreau & Co. also began manufacturing pencils in Concord, Massachusetts.

John’s son, the innovative and imaginative Henry David Thoreau, took the pencil to a whole new level. Henry experimented with mixing graphite and clay until he perfected a more durable and aesthetic form of lead imprint. He also figured out that varying the amounts of clay facilitated a wide range of hardness and softness consistencies for the end-user. This helped artists, artisans and architects, who could give more texture and tone to their drawings.

… After all that work refining a writing instrument, Henry then began to actually do somewriting, which is quite a good thing because he gave everyone from Mohandas K. Gandhi to Leo Tolstoy to Nelson Mandela lots of ideas to ponder–particularly within the discipline of civil disobedience. On the life of a writer, this John Thoreau & Co. pencil-populated perspective isby Henry David Thoreau at the Thoreau Memorial on the Library Way in New York City…

Pencils and Planting Trees

Conservationists have become concerned in recent years about the impact of pencil manufacture upon forest conservation. An analysis of this global impact from Pencils.com:

“Not all pencils are created equal when it comes to wise and sustainable use of Earth’s forest resources. Increasing worldwide competition has lead to greater concentration of manufacturing in countries with lower operating costs and often less stringent environmental regulatory standards. Forest management standards vary from country to country and from company to company. Enforcement of standards by governmental agencies can be lax in certain regions of the world.”

After considerable research I determined that the most conservation-conscious pencils to buy are cedar pencils made by the California Cedar Products Company, because they adhere to a strict tree planting to sustainable harvest ratio. This “Lets Make a Pencil“ video demonstrates the planting-tree-to-producing-pencil-process. In addition, this 10-step process of cedar pencil-making takes us from the sawmill to dry kiln to slat factory to grooving, painting and finishing.

“Henry David Thoreau is one of the greatest and most moral men America has ever produced. His ideas influenced me greatly. I adopted some of them and recommended the study of Thoreau to all of my friends who were helping me in the cause of Indian Independence.” – Mohandas K. Gandhi

Henry David Thoreau died twenty years before his close friend Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Ever the curious student of life, Ralph Emerson had read several Sanskrit translations of theBhagavad Gita and he was fond of quoting the Hindu Vedanta. It is often said in New England–although this is probably an urban myth–that when Emerson sat at the deathbed of his beloved friend Thoreau he pondered and posed a query:

“So, Henry – what is the answer to life? What is your summation, your recommendation? Your legacy.”

“The answer I venture, dear Ralph, would be just this: simplify, simplify.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson pauses over this profound pronouncement, then responds gently to his friend:

“Henry, one ‘simplify’ would have been sufficient.”

In spite of everything I shall rise again:

I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken… and I will go on with drawing.
– Vincent Van Gogh

“Simplify” seems a wholly appropriate word when thinking of a pencil.

A pencil gives a person perspective. Since you are reading this on a computer you may often forget, as I very often do, that less than 5% of the world has an internet connection. That less than 1% of the world actually owns a laptop. And that half the world lives on less than $2 a day and half of them, on less than $1 a day. It is hard to maintain that perspective on our laptops.

When we travel, the perspective is clearer. In all the schools I have visited or taught at, in the remotest rural regions of India, or China, or Africa; the one consistent symbol of all that is simple, elegant and functional is the pencil. There are vast regions of the world that have no idea what a Smart Board is, or an iPad, or an iPhone, or a Mac – but they have something familiar.

They have the lead pencil. In the classroom, at home on the kitchen table when they do their homework; in the local market where the vendor uses his stubby pencil to tally his sales, and where the local artisan uses her sharpened pencil to draw the latest design for a clay pot, or a wooden cabinet, or a woven basket.

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that’s all I do. — I, Pencil

Perhaps the finest tribute to the pencil is an essay which our Mez Mag contributing editor, Thomas Thwaites, celebrates on his website:

“I now know about the essay I, Pencil, written from the perspective of a pencil ‘as told to Leonard E. Read’, and I think it’s fantastic!” – Thomas Thwaites

Here is an excerpt from I, Pencil:

G. K. Chesterton observed:

“We are perishing for want of wonder, not want of wonders.”

I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove.

…

And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.

Written by Karim Ajania, Editor-in-Chief Mezimbite Magazine