Note: The drawing shown here hangs in my office and was a gift to my father by a waitress/artist who once served him and the owner of one of our customers from Mexico, Lapicera Mexicana during a dinner in San Diego. She thought it was novel to come across interesting people working in the pencil […]
The second in a series of posts on California Incense-cedar, its historical and current use in the pencil industry; it’s conversion to pencil slats, finished pencils as well as other products; and important aspects of it’s growth and management as a timber resource in U.S. western forests. My last post covered the key reasons for […]
Note: This color pencil drawing of a California Incense-cedar tree comes from the cover of one of our California Cedar Products Company brochures dating to the early 1960’s. The artist is unknown. This post is the first of a new series dealing with Incense-cedar, its historical and current use in the pencil industry; it’s conversion […]
My last post covered some of the competitive developments in our industry as a result of the large growth in the Chinese pencil industry. While I mentioned that about 52% of the world’s pencils are now produced in China, the reality is that the Chinese share has grown to this level from about 22% in […]
The third in a continuing series of posts on international trade issues affecting the pencil industry. My earlier posts focusing on pencil Anti-dumping duties provided first, a primer on the purpose and structure of such duties, and next an update on current developments on US anti-dumping duties against Chinese pencils. Anti-dumping duties in the world […]
Photo: courtesy of our friends at Sanford Faber Venezuela. With the buzz of pencil talk going about the blogosphere recently I have seen several comments on the Mongol brand. These reflect preferences for it’s functionality and the inability to find this brand here in the US. The Mongol is of course a very famous brand […]
Photo Credit: C book Back to the creative side for a day. We generally think of the use of pencils to generate art. However, it seems the pencil itself is continually viewed as a source of inspiration for artistic expression in several media. Here are links to a few interesting examples: Photography Sculpting “Pencil Pricks” […]
This post continues a series of Timberlines articles discussing the impact various world trade issues and practices have upon the Pencil Industry. In my previous Primer on Pencil Anti-Dumping duties I covered the basic aspects and issues involved with Anti-dumping duties here in the U.S. against Chinese pencils. As previously noted pencil imports to the […]
The following is the first of a series of Timberlines articles to be posted in the coming weeks discussing the impact various world trade issues and practices have upon the Pencil Industry. Import and export duties, value added taxes, export credits or export VAT rebates, fixed currency exchange rates are all examples of factors that […]
Given my family history in the in the pencil industry it’s not too surprising I tend to have a wide selection of pencils stashed in desks, drawers, closets and cabinets around my house, my office and even the car. A few years back when redecorating my home office I spent some time actually going through […]
