More pencil history...

     Derwent is another name familiar to artists and is another company with a long and interesting history. There is even an interesting Cumberland Pencil Museum to investigate on a tour of the Lake District. Graphite was first found in the Lake District near Borrowdale, Cumberland in the 1500's when a violent storm uprooted some trees and sheep farmers found the black material  discovered was handy for marking their animals.  It remains the finest and purest graphite in this solid form ever found. It was easily sawn into sticks.  Another  valuable use for the graphite was to line the moulds for cannon balls so the mines were taken over by the Crown and guarded. Then they were flooded to prevent theft until more was needed.  However, graphite was still smuggled out for pencils.  A famous smuggler of graphite was Black Sal in the 18th century. He raided the "wad mines" to make "wads"of money -probably  the origin of that term. Poor Black Sal was eventually hunted down by hounds. By 1832 there is the first record of a pencil factory in Keswick. In the 1850's William Morrow, in the  USA, developed a machine capable of making grooves in wooden slats for pencils. By 1851, there were four factories in Keswick. The name was changed to Cumberland Pencil company in 1916.
    There used to be a lot of "pencil extenders" around to make it easier  to use up pencil stubs. In WWII, Britain outlawed the use of the rotary pencil sharpener because it wasted so much wood and core. Hand-sharpening with a knife was the only allowed method. Today, many artists prefer to hand-sharpen  to acquire the type of point they prefer.
     There is often an assumption that a lot of the art supplies so common now have been around "forever", but it was actually 1936 when the first Derwent coloured pencils were made.  By 1938 this brand of fine art pencils was sold around the world. Through 1950 to 1960, they were reformulated to use non-toxic materials. In 1974 Britain passed a safety limit on the use of heavy metals in all pencils. Until the mid-20th century, many pencils used to have lead in the outside paint coating so it was possible to get lead poisoning from chewing on pencils. Now, non-toxic paints and lacquers are used. Cumberland pencil launched charcoal pencils in 1994 - and now many artists couldn't do without them! Another innovation, as recent as 2006, was Inktense, shown above - the first water-soluble ink pencil. It comes in pencil form but a brush and water yields watercolour effects with more intensity than regular watercolour pencils. Another recent development is the Onyx (2008) which is blacker than a 9B pencil.
     Today we are fortunate to have relatively inexpensive pencils in a variety of hardness, coloured pencils and water-soluble pencils all readily available for our use.