Derwent
Derwent is one of the first lines of artist pencils I was exposed to, in the from of a well-used, worse-for-wear tin of medium-graded pieces my husband had been using for sketching and writing for years. Later when digging through moving boxes in our new house, we found another set, this one completely unused but already a bonafide vintage collection. In response, I explored a bit what Derwent offers today. The best place I’ve found for buying Derwent for delivery to Canada is CultPens.
Derwent is “the original” pencil company, being one of only two remaining British pencil manufacturers still operating within the realm of the old Borrowdale plumbago mine. They offer a fairly wide variety of artist materials, from two lines of graphite pencils, aquarelle graphite, various coloured pencils, pens and inks, mechanical pencils and various other stationery ephemera. As far as I can tell, only their woodcase pencils are still actually manufactured in the UK, and even these (like nearly all woodcase pencils around the world) source their slats in China.
Nonetheless, I really like their simple, classic-looking artist Graphic line of pencils, which has changed little in the decades since my husband bought his first set. The middle-aged set has the strange curiosity of carrying the name of “Graphic Sketching” despite being identical to the earlier line. The later set is little changed except for the characteristic red banding moving from an even perpendicular to an irregular diagonal.
The naming of the middle set as “Graphic Sketching” is even more odd as today the only other standard graphite line made by Derwent are its Sketching series. These round pencils with a slightly larger woodcase and very wide lead are interesting for their tactile grippy varnish, and for limiting themselves to only three middle grades: 4B, 2B and HB. I find this odd, as these are essentially the “writing” grades, but the pencils’ leads are honestly far too wide to be useful for writing (believe me, I have tried).
Derwent pencils were featured on several previous posts, notably Kommode’s stationery-heavy album cover for Analog Dance Music and in noting their less than intriguing packaging for their 12-packs when I discussed Voskresensk. I have not yet tried their coloured pencils, aquarelles or other artist supplies, but I have dabbled in their mechanical pencils, which appear to be a custom lot from the same Chinese vendor that makes numerous other global brands.
Over the years their national imprint has changed, too. As the United Kingdom has grown less united and slowly withdrawn from the world stage, so has the pencil’s national identity. Early pencils are marked “Great Britain,” whilst later ones moved to just “England” and today they display both “Britain” and simply “England,” depending on the line. A fitting story of nationalist ambivalence from a pencilmaker that has seen a lot of history in its time.
