The Pencil Perfect: The Untold Story of a Cultural Icon

Description

Intimate and individual, pencil and paper are a personal touch in a digital age. The pencil is our direct connection between mind and page. We tell the story of an overlooked cultural icon with anecdotes, unexpected facts, and hand-drawn pencil-and-paper illustrations. This book features profiles of pencil crafters, anecdotes about famous writers and their favorite pencils, and essays about the surprising role of pencils in world history and culture. The Pencil Perfect explores the culture, heritage, manufacture, and meaning of the pencil. The humble instrument is now more relevant and romanticized than ever because it reconnects us with a simpler time. More and more of us are putting down the smartphone--and picking up a pencil. This small, every day object brings us back to the simple and the tangible.

Caroline Weaver is a life-long pencil obsessive who owns a shop dedicated solely to wood-cased pencils, new and old, from all over the world in New York City. As a child she coveted a set of Caran d'Ache Prismalo colored pencils and proudly sharpened six early-2000s-era black Ticonderogas before school each day. From there, her love of the pencil and knowledge of the subject flourished. After traveling the world in search of the finest pencils still in production, she opened her shop in 2015. Caroline lives in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan and has a tattoo of a pencil on her forearm.

"There's nothing quite like buying brand new school supplies, and for Caroline Weaver, one tool in general has always stood apart from the rest: the pencil...She's telling the backstory of the simple writing utensil like it's never been told before." -Sweet