Where it began...
My Grandfather Philip Hemingway was an engineer and draughtsman in his early career. Pencils like this one were not around when he was a draughtsman, but neither were pencils seen as disposable, valueless tools. The disposable culture we live in today encourages a valueless attitude to cheap material things. It is these cheap products that really cause a lot of the world's pollu
tion. Because of their large scale production they cost next to nothing. This not only makes them attractive to buy to the masses, but also produces a disposable and valueless mindset towards them and so many are thrown away without consideration for their real value and cost to the environment. I have a box that belonged to my grandfather of all of his tools and some of the pencils inside it have been sharpened all the way down to the rubber, in fact, I have a box of drafting tools from his grandfather William Hemingway too in which lies another almost fully sharpened down pencil which must be well over 100 years old. How often nowadays do you see the design life of a pencil lasting over 1 year? Of course they can last many years, but the point is, do we see a value in the pencil any more?
