Lyra Art Design 669

A pencil iirc I picked up maybe in Paris. It is labelled ‘Art Design’, so I’m guessing this is aimed at artists, but it does not have some of the characteristics you might expect from an art pencil (quite often they have a slightly thicker body and thicker lead).

The company

Lyra looks to be a German based company, now a subdivision of the Fila Group (an Italian company?). Lyra is/was Nurembergs oldest pencil manufacturer, founded in 1806.

The pencil itself

The pencil has a nice finish to it - it may not show too well in the picture, but it is a nice semi-matt finish that feels fairly good in the hand, and is a quite classy black finish.

The white text really pops out. The rounded painted tail cap is also quite nicely done, and is in a contrasting gloss to the body.

How does it write

First, I sharpened it. Most pencils when they get to the point of sharp automatically stop feeding themselves into my sharpener, but not this one. It just kept feeding in (the only other pencils I’ve found that tend to do this are the plastic wood based ones). In the case of this pencil, I think it is tha the lead is pretty soft, so did not ‘stop’ the pencil feeding in, but instead crumpled.

I liked using this pencil. The line is good and dark and writes nicely. The only issue is that the lead is pretty soft, so it does wear down pretty quick.

Sourcing

Despite me picking mine up in an art shop in Paris, it looks like these are reasonably available online. Cost is about £1 each for singles, which is not a ridiculous price.