High end Swiss pencil

Here we have a high end Swiss pencil. I’ve been looking forward to using and reviewing these for quite some time. It took me a little while to find the right time and place to acquire some, and when I came across them for sale individually, I snapped a few up.

The company

CARAN d’ACHE have been in Geneva since 1915. They are the primary Swiss pencil manufacturer, and I’m not sure if I know if there is another Swiss manufacturer.

They are a high quality manufacturer. I’m not even sure they make an economy or basic pencil.

The pencil itself

Technically, these are artists pencils. Sometimes I wonder what defines a pencil as either for writing or art. Sometimes there are some obvious differences, and a few of them show up here. But, I’m not always convinced those differences make a pencil less suitable for writing…

First off, the most obvious thing you will notice is that these pencils are somewhat larger in diameter than your normal writing pencil.

In my hand they don’t actually feel that much larger, and I didn’t find them uncomfortable to use. One annoyance for me though is that they would not fit in my pencil sharpeners! Barely any of them! In particular, I could not find any of my assorted longpoint sharpeners that they would fit in. Funny, as the literature says they will fit normal sharpeners, and there is even a post out there listing the sharpeners they will fit in. But, alas, I did struggle somewhat to get a decent point on them. Not because the wood is bad (it is excellent), or that the lead is fragile (far from it). Purely because I didn’t have a good sharpener to hand that they would fit in.

Along with the thicker pencil overall, these (I believe, I forgot to closely check) will also have a thicker lead itself, as is the way with ‘artists’ pencils.

I purchased three pencils, two HB and one B. Then looking more closely, I found that the two HBs were slightly different.

I think I’ve managed to get an older style and newer style HB.

And that shows off a characteristic that I think is fairly unique to the Grafwood. They paint the pencils a slightly different shade depending on the hardness grade - the softer the lead the darker the tint of the paint.

How does it write

These write well. Very well. They are dark, they are smooth, and the lead wears very slowly. Even when I erratically sharpened this and the sharpener left a very warped fragile looking point, that point worked well, did not flake or crack or shatter, and held up completely. These are very strong leads.

If I had to use these pencils every day, I think I would be quite happy. Well, OK, I would have to find a good way to sharpen them with a long point!

Sourcing

These are reasonably available, online and in art stores. Not everywhere, but common enough. They are definitely not cheap. You are looking at something like £2.75 per pencil. They do do some nice sets, if you are feeling particularly flush - such as 6 grades for £16, or you could go for the smaller graphite boxed set, for only £137, or the full on pencil set with colours as well for (cough) £225 !!!