Ilsa 4000 Antillana
Earlier this year we had a trip in the North of Spain. That gave me the opportunity to do a little bit of pencil hunting…
I identified a couple of potential ‘targets’ to shop at. I ended up at Jugueteria RIVAS in Salamanca, which although translates as ‘toy store’, is more of a school and art supplies shop.
They had the usual european pencils out front and centre - the Staedtler and maybe some Faber. The very helpful lady behind the counter had little English, and we had little Spanish, but we muddled through and I managed to explain I had a small pencil collection and was looking for anything more unusual. She turned around and reached back to some dusty shelves behind the counter, to where I suspect the old stock from pre-Staedtler days was still sat, and haulted out a handfull of unusual pencils - yay!
From that stash I purchased (and, I wish I’d purchased probably two of each, but alas I did not):
- A Faber Janus 2160 red/blue
- A Johann Sindel 888 ‘SOMBRAS’ (which translates as ‘shades’) - for a later post…
- and the ‘ILASA 4000 Antillana No.2’, which we will discuss here.
The company
I can find very little out about the company ‘ILASA’. There are a few hints on the internet, and they point to them either being in Argentina or Barcelona. I’d have to hedge towards Barcelona here, as I’m not quite sure how an Argentinian pencil would end up in the middle of Salamanca.
The pencil itself
The pencil, is shall we say, a bit rough. That is, in manufacture. In fact, I think it is the roughest pencil I have in my whole collection. Fit and finish is a bit rudimentary, and I think one half of the wooden blanks in my sample was a particularly bad sample, and we can see a strong colour variation down the blank (possibly a mix of heart and sap wood?), and some tearing where they meet and have been through the cutting machine. Not good!
If we take a look at the end we can also see the lead is not centred very well.
So, overall, this is not up there in the quality stakes externally. I will also note, being a round bodied pencil, it has a tendency to try and Lemming itself off of the table!
How does it write
Right, let’s get her sharpened up…
First impressions - wow, this is a hard pencil. No way is this a No.2 (HB). I’d be putting this a good few notches up the H scale - at least 2H, maybe more.
Having said that, it writes satisfactorily on the pad, making a reasonably dark mark. It’s not gritty or scratchy, so the lead is actually not bad. Being so hard, I have barely had to sharpen this pencil over the space of maybe 7 weeks of use at my desk. It’s not annoyed me too much, but it is just a bit hard for my daily use.
Sourcing
Well, I don’t have a receipt, but I think I only paid a euro or two for this. Having a look on the internet, there are one or two Ilasa pencils popping up here and there, and then I did find a set of 12 ‘Antillana’s on one Spanish website for E20 - in fact, I think that might also be from a seller called ‘RIVAS’, so could be from the same source! Good luck if you go hunting though.