Voskresensk Karandash Fabrik
I have been wanting to write a bit more about the Voskresensk Russian pencil brand ever since I bought my first few specimens from Ozon back in the fall of last year. I had an awful experience with their aquarelle coloured pencils (nearly all the leads were shattered in the woodcases on their journey from Moscow). But the graphite pencils were amazing - heavy, dark and draggy leads the likes of which I would gladly pay the hefty exchange and transport fees again.
I recently found a Russian art supplies shop, Leonardo, which carried a huge variety of their products. The shipment took forever to arrive, due to postal service delays in COVID times, but luckily they actually sent it by post rather than courier, which saved a lot on the exorbitant customs broker fees that FedEx, DHL and UPS charge. Alas, they sent the pencils mostly without their boxes, which I will try to rectify on my next order.
Voskresensk produces a very high-quality product. Despite the lack of packaging from my shipment, I can tell they have good designers as well, as the pencils themselves and the few packages I have examined show skills quite equal to other major European brands (except Viking, which just can’t be challenged here). This latest purchase also solved a bit of a question I had had since a recent find of some older, Soviet-era pencils: One of the specimens from old times contained a logo I have seen in Voskresensk’s materials, so I decided to finally read their whole story from their website. I’m sure most of my readers love companies who preen their own heritage like this as much as I do.
From what I can see they were one of just three major pencil manufacturers to start before the Soviet era, and survive it. In the case of Voskresensk, they appear to be even thriving today (something not true about their Tomsk contemporaries). This thriving industry has birthed a brand new factory on the outskirts of Moscow, where these lovely sticks are made.
Among my recent acquisitions are a variation on the artist sets I acquired previously, called the “Academia”, with lovely black matte varnish and glossy end dips. Then there are the appropriately titled “For Office” pencils with their beautiful coloured bands, and a mark omitting the articles from their name just like Russian does from its whole language. One of the few boxed sets I received were some glossy red 3-grade Chertedgeniks, an imprint anyone who saw the Soviet post will recognize. And finally, some lovely metallic-varnished numbers called, ingeniously, “Metallic Shine”.
There is obviously a huge line of products from the modern company, for all sorts of purposes and uses. Devilishly hard to find in these years of political brinksmanship between the do-no-wrong West and the alien East, but I am determined to make this far from my last post about this brand.
