I’d planned on writing about E Wolff & Sons’ ‘Pure Cumberland Lead’ pencils next, but a last-minute change and today’s post is about the rather fine E Wolff & Son Manufacturers, ‘Compressed Lead’ pencils instead. All advertisements I have come across for this model date from the 1860s, so let’s…

B.S. Cohen Ltd was one of the founding companies of the Royal Sovereign Pencil Co Ltd (via Arthur Johnson Ltd) along with E Wolff & Son Ltd.  Before B.S Cohen Ltd was incorporated in 1904, the company operated as a traditional partnership (stylised as ‘B.S. Cohen Maker’) and their pencils…

I have covered a lot of Wolff’s pencils on this blog, but I’ve held off on the biggie, the pencil that ended up becoming the new company name, the ‘Royal Sovereign’. I’ve tried to work out some date ranges for the various versions of the pencil, however, as you’ll see,…

  [This post was updated on 11 October 2020 to include new images and information.  I originally wrote the post after finding a single pencil, however, have since come across a box with a couple of different examples.] I’ve wanted to write this post for a while, but it was…

When I think of pencil graphite a few key historic sources come to mind: Borrowdale in England or the Alibert Mine in Siberia (named after Jean-Pierre Alibert for those that don’t already know) being two good examples. One other source that usually makes the list is Wolff’s “Spanish Graphite”, which…

This post is a slight segue from my normal ‘pencil specific’ posts, towards a ‘pencil-adjacent’ post. I don’t intend on doing this too often, however, should I come across something manufactured and/or marketed by any of my favourite pencil makers, it might find its way onto this blog. I have…