Renesans
Whilst browsing Artistica, a Swedish stationery site, I came across a brand called Renesans. A Polish brand with two lines of Polish-made graphite pencils, one of which is only available in artist sets of 12, some extra digging brought me to the site of Polish art supplier Dekoret, who offered to ship me some of these.
Renesans’s two lines of graphite include the mid-grade Schizzi, with nice varnishes and what appears to be quality build. Whilst the soft grades have a grey varnish and maroon end-dip with black banding, the harder grades have gold banding and lighter red and grey varnishes. Of course, I would likely not have known this latter detail since my order was for a box of my typical preferred grades of 4B-HB, but the shop was kind enough to throw in a few extras.
The Schizzi had a nice weight and feel. The wood is too light to be cedar, more likely linden, coloured the hue I saw with the Russian pencils from Voskresensk. One pencil, the 10B stick included in the “extras” mentioned above, had some failed adhesive and the slat was separating when I tried to test it out. Not a promising sign, but so far all the others seem fine. We’ll see when I start to put more of them to use.
The more premium line, the Magritte, named as it is after the famous creator of the painting from which its own packaging is inspired, has either a different type of wood or the wood has been dyed to darken it and bring out its grain.
The end-dip is a thick matte silver, and the pencils nestled securely in their tin. The comparative graphite quality between the Magritte and Schizzi is difficult for me to discern, but the feel is definitely noticeable: the Magritte pencils with their round form and unvarnished or very lightly varnished natural finish definitely feel more premium, even if the marks they make aren’t noticeably different than the more standard ones.
These are among what seem to be a few obscure brands manufactured in Eastern Europe and oddly invisible elsewhere, along with Toz in Croatia. I would love to learn more about these and why they don’t seem to be more widely distributed. Any Easterners who’d like to lend a hand helping me obtain more, get in touch.
