Cumberland Graphite H

Not sure (as with many of my pencils), where this came from. For some reason thought this is an H and not an HB. That’s a little sad as not only do I generally prefer my pencils more on the softer, or rather darker, side, but it makes it not really fair to compare against most of my other reviews.

The company

Ah, now, I would have thought that with the Cumberland name, and some connections to Derwent and thus the lakes and the ‘home’ of the original graphite deposits (at Borrowdale), that the Cumberland pencil company might be ancient! In fact, not as ancient as one might think. Still pretty good, starting in 1832, but nowhere near as old as some other pencil manufacturers. It seems the company was purchased by Rexel, now known as Accu UK.

Cumberland and Derwent are very familiar names to anybody of my vintage who ever went into an art store - they were probably the most common and pencil brand of choice for drawing (rather than writing) when I was a boy.

The pencil itself

The pencil is fairly plain - the pain job looks a bit thin and knocked about (the knocked about is most likely that this pencil has been in my collection for some time).

How does it write

The pencil writes a bit hard for me - but then of course, it is a grade H, and not an HB. It wrote fine, and did not strike me as too scratchy or too soft.

Sourcing

I went looking to see if I could source some of these, as I’d quite like to mae a fair comparison and get hold of some HB versions and give them a go. It feels like this is an older model, and no longer commongly available. There are some grades available sporadically on the auction sites, but it does not seem they are widely available. There are other Cumberland/Derwent/Rexel pencils available, but of course there is no guarantee they will be of the same composition or perform similarly.