Cumberland Coral

The next pencil in my list, was this Cumberland. It looks and feels old, and I suspect I inherited this somewhere such as from a relative etc.

I think the pencil is called a ‘Coral’, but a combination of the faded colours and the fairly hard to read italic font means I can’t be 100% on that. That’s what we’ll call it here though.

The company

We’ve covered Cumberland (/Derwent/Rexel) elsewhere - a classic old English pencil company.

The pencil itself

The pencil itself is OK, A bit dented, a bit faded. I suspect this is going to be made of Cedar.

It’s hard to see the details in that picture, so we’ll go for some shots of the front and back ends more closely.

And here is the back where you can try and figure out if you think this is called a ‘Coral’ or not…

How does it write

For me, it’s a bit hard. As soon as I started to write with it I found it a little frustrating. Not quite dark enough, and a little too hard. The point lasts well, and does not wear down fast.

I didn’t think I’d last the week with this pencil, and started off hankering for which pencil was next to test… but, after a couple of days, it was fine. I used it all week, and rarely had to sharpen it. Not my favourite pencil though.

Sourcing

I had a brief surf around to see if I could verify or not if this pencil really was called a ‘Coral’. I found pretty much nothing. I can’t even verify exactly what pencil this is, so if you are looking to source one, I think the only way is going to be a combination of luck and some hanging out on the auction sites.