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Pencil Scrolls
These may look like normal pencils (almost!), but they are actually paper scrolls - surprise! They began as a tactile way to present a poem I wrote about a pencil. (The text of the poem is at the bottom of this page.) You can purchase pencil scrolls with the poem inside, or blank ones so you can fill them with your own creativity. Idea: write a letter on one and drop it in the mail.
$16 per pair
Pair of pencils - poem inside Pair of pencils - blank inside
Read the blog post about Henry Thoreau's family's pencil company: The Poetry of Pencils
"The Pencil" by Lea Redmond
Sometimes when I’m holding a pencil I imagine that it becomes a thin twig. This twig is connected to a thin branch, and then a thicker branch, a thicker branch, and a trunk. I imagine that all of the little twigs on this tree are pencils, each in a particular person’s hand – a group of someones that don’t know each other. Apparently nearly half a billion Dixon Ticonderogas are produced a year. That’s a lot of someones. And each pencil can draw for 3 miles. That’s a lot of ground. Joseph Dixon’s pencil, introduced in 1913, was named after Fort Ticonderoga, a military post in New York. The name comes from the Mohawk “tekontaró:ken,” meaning "it is at the junction of two waterways.” This is what it feels like to write – and to live. We come to a small rushing junction with each word – with each moment. Sometimes we choose and sometimes we cannot. Sometimes we are swept away by the current, and sometimes desperately paddling back upstream. Pencil lead is the sap in the trees on the banks – the trees with the twigs that so many someones are holding on to. The sap is under the surface…Waiting. Tap it! Collect it in the tin pail of your heart. Boil it down till it’s thick – till it’s you.
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