Buzz Poole
The genius pencil
From "Lolita" to "Looney Toons," the Blackwing has been used to create some of the world's most memorable art
(Credit: via Chuck Jones)
“I have found a new kind of pencil ― the best I have ever had. Of course it costs three times as much too but it is black and soft but doesn’t break off. I think I will always use these. They are called Blackwings and they really glide over the paper.” So said John Steinbeck, according to a Paris Review article (PDF) that pulled together quotations from the author over the course of his career. Steinbeck’s high praise for the Blackwing is just one notable voice in a choir of legendary figures.
In his autobiography, “Q,” Quincy Jones explained how he composed “Suite to the Four Winds” by running all over Seattle, “working it out bit by bit on every piano I could find. That piece was the most valuable thing I owned. I carried it around with me every day, like money, scrawling on it, fixing it, changing it, carrying it under my sweater with a Blackwing No. 2 pencil in my pocket to make continual fixes.”
Discussing a stay in Los Angeles, converting “Lolita” from a novel to a screenplay, Vladimir Nabokov wrote of his days: “After a leisurely lunch, prepared by the German cook who came with the house, I would spend another four-hour span in a lawn chair, among the roses and mockingbirds, using lined index cards and a Blackwing pencil, for copying and recopying, rubbing out and writing anew, the scenes I had imagined in the morning.”

Igor Stravinsky at work, via Blackwing Pages
Add to this list of luminaries dedicated to a specific pencil the likes of composers Duke Ellington, Johnny Mercer, Igor Stravinsky, Nelson Riddle, Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein, writers Truman Capote, E.B. White and Eugene O’Neill, and perhaps the most renowned Blackwing user of all, Chuck Jones of Looney Tunes fame.
via Chuck Redux
So what’s the story behind this fabled writing utensil? According to Charles Berolzheimer, the CEO of CalCedar and the primary instigator behind the pencil being relaunched, “It had two distinctive features compared to most other graphite pencils used for art and writing purposes in its era. It had a special formulation for its graphite core, which provided for a very smooth writing performance that was marketed with the slogan “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed.” The graphite performance was similar to Eberhard Faber’s premium Microtomic range of graded leads for artists and technical drawing purposes, but available only in one grade, which was never imprinted on the pencil or commonly disclosed. Additionally the Blackwing features a distinctive ferrule and eraser design with a removable and extendable block eraser that offered some improved utility vs. standard cylindrical erasers permanently fixed to the pencil.”
Eberhard Faber’s product left its mark, literally, on some of America’s most iconic 20th-century creative output, scrawled and smudged across scores, sketches and manuscripts. The company was bought and sold a couple of times starting in 1988 and while the Blackwing survived these transactions it eventually went off the market in 1998. On eBay, however, the pencils started selling for as much as $40. Fast-forward a few years: Enter Berolzheimer and Palomino, a division of CaliforniaCedar Products Co., “the world’s largest producer of wooden pencil slats,” according to the Palomino website.
Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.
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Reading, revolutionized
A poet/book artist and a programmer team up to create a book that unites the traditional and the electronic
(Credit: via Between Page and Screen)
“Between Page and Screen,” a groundbreaking collaboration between poet and book artist Amaranth Borsuk and programmer Brad Bouse, is truly a first: a book that only can be read when simultaneously using a codex book and a computer’s webcam. When placed in front of a webcam, the black shapes printed on the pages, sans words, trigger animated text on the screen, revealing a correspondence between characters P and S.
The impatient illustrator
A 22-year-old artist's disarming drawings are already gracing the pages of Wired and the NYT Book Review
Illustration for Bloomberg View, 2011 (art director: Vance Wellenstein) (Credit: Kelsey Dake)
Kelsey Dake doesn’t like to submit sketches, prefers conceptual assignments to literal ones, is bored by long deadlines, and loves same-day turnarounds. Her talent is apparent, but her impatience has served her well as a young illustrator. She moved to New York after graduating in 2010 from the Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, Calif., a woman on a mission. “It was all a matter of pounding the pavement and having zero shame,” she says. “I would call art directors on the phone, or email them, or leave them voice mails telling them my email address. And whoever was interested in meeting me I would go and see!” The assignments started rolling in, from Wired (an endearing Woody Allen) to Bloomberg Businessweek (a geoduck-cleaning guide).
The morphing visual landscape of Dubai
A new book explores the reinvention of the city's art and architecture

When, oh, when will someone invite me to Dubai? I’ve read about it, watched reports and talked to plenty of people who have spent time there. It’s a long flight from New York and unless someone was to send me, I’m not sure I’d ever choose just to go. Perhaps if I had a layover on my way to Australia I’d carve out a day or two, because the emirate fascinates me. My yearning to be the beneficiary of such a generous invitation has been renewed of late by Brusselssprout, a Dubai-based arts organization.
Inside the ultimate subway graffiti project
An exhibit uses an abandoned tunnel as its canvas -- and shows just how much street art has changed
(Credit: The Underbelly Project, We Own the Night, Rizzoli, 2012) via Rizzoli
On the copyright page of “We Own the Night: The Art of the Underbelly Project,” curators Workhorse and PAC include on their thank you list “all the people who know how to keep a secret and keep their mouths shut!” I’m one of these people, having been shown an early proposal for the book version of this extraordinary undertaking. An agent clued me in; a few days later I was at photographer Martha Cooper’s apartment and asked if she’d caught wind of “Underbelly.” She’d heard all about it and was hoping to receive an invitation to the underground gallery. It was summer 2010 and the project was wrapping up. In late October of the same year, the secret was out when the New York Times ran a feature about an art installation that very few people would ever see.
Continue Reading CloseThe beautiful evolution of maps
From ancient Egypt to modern America, these artifacts are a hallmark of civilization
I’ve got maps on my mind again, having recently found W.W. Jervis’ “The World in Maps: A Study in Map Evolution,” published by Oxford University Press in 1937. I discovered this book quite unexpectedly one recent afternoon, running errands in my Queens neighborhood. New York’s mild winter has teased out the book vendors who usually wait until spring before returning to the sidewalks with their tables. With an emphasis on Spanish-language titles and genre fiction, at first glance the books on offer appear mundane. But if you take the time to really look, something of interest is sometimes dug out of a box.
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