Thursday 12 April 2012

Stationery Archeology 11


It has been some time since we had a pencil post here on Stationery Traffic, so here's one I found recently in my loft. Yes, it's an IKEA pencil. "What are you doing, Stationery Traffic, showing us IKEA pencils? We grab handfuls of these every Saturday afternoon when we go down to the nearest branch for some köttbullar and a packet of coathangers." Things get slightly more interesting if you compare this old pencil with a new one.



Comparing the old IKEA pencil to a contemporary example, we can see that the current version has "www." and ".com" clumsily applied either side of the brand name. It's still the same unfinished wood pencil stub that writes like a nail, though. I prefer the older pencil: darker wood, and with just the name stamped in. These things turn up in all sorts of places; in the community band I play with, the bass clarinetist who sits beside me uses an IKEA pencil to mark up band parts. I prefer a Staedtler tradition 4B.

7 comments:

  1. You play in a band AND you like pencils. Awesome. I play clarinet, sax, and bassoon for my school's various bands. What do you play? :)

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  3. I've never been to an IKEA store. Are these given out there, or are they for sale? They remind me of the carpenter's pencils that my father used when I was younger. I still have a few carpenter's pencil stubs banging around the house with their rectangular-ish barrels and fat, flat lead. Lovely.

    S

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