A pencil from the MAAT

This is a pencil I picked up in the shop at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology MAAT in Lisbon. We were on a trip through Europe, and I was collecting pencils along the way. This fell into the checkout basket.

The company

I’ve no idea who actually made the pencil. There are no maker marks on the pencil. The Museum had a few interesting exhibits in it though.

The pencil itself

The pencil on the face of it feels like the finish is maybe a little cheap. It looks like it is meant to be white, but is almost like it is a little bit ‘dirty’, like it is covered in dust. I’ve a feeling it doesn’t travel too well when maybe rubbing against its neighbours.

The pencil came with a very blunt tip:

But sharpened up pretty well.

At that point it was being quite nice to use, and then after a little while…. the tip broke off:

and continued to break for some number of re-sharpens, even to the point where I switched to a shorter point sharpener to see if it was the lead.

After a while I got back to a useable point, but the pencil had shortened somewhat. Maybe the pencil got dropped at some point, who knows. It’s not often I come across a pencil with broken lead in this day and age.

How does it write

The pencil was surprisingley dark. I would say this was more like a B grade pencil than an HB. It wrote nice and dark and fairly smooth. I didn’t mind using the pencil, it made nice marks.

It’s a shame the point broke on me a few times - hopefully it was just one sample that had had a bad travel experience.

Sourcing

I’m pretty sure the only way you can get these would be to travel to Portual, go to Lisbon, and visit the MAAT shop.