Pigment and Wood
7" long, set of 6
Schortens, GERMANY

Absolutely basic, totally generic, perfectly colored pencils. At the beginning, before a way to reconstitute graphite powder was found, England controlled the production of pencils as they had the only solid graphite deposit in the world. The Germans tried to break into the graphite pencil biz in 1662 but it was the Italians who made real headway in pencil development. By using juniper, they invented the wood casing we still use today. Colored pencils are a relatively new invention; they were launched at the beginning of the 20th century and were invented in, you guessed right, Germany!