A 'Yes You Can' set of uplifting quotes on pencils, made from incense-cedar and lots of other things
I thought I'd revisit some of my earlier posts on artists' materials and think about them from a sustainability point of view. A while ago I posted on graphite, it's most common drawing use is in the form of pencil leads, so I shall begin there.
Pencils, if they have attachments on the end are made from zinc and copper, as well as the lead's clay and graphite mix, and of course there is that eraser on the end which in the case of the Pink Pearl includes added pumice. The wood is though the material that appears to be the most obvious sustainability issue. My first question is what sort of wood is it? In the USA pencils are often made from incense-cedar. A reddish-brown wood with a fine, straight grain. I checked and this is not listed in the CITES appendices and is reported by the IUCN as being a species of least concern. Poplar (Populus tremula), and juniper (Juniperus excelsa) are also used extensively as wood for pencils. Poplar is not listed in the CITES Appendices but Juniper has been declining throughout the UK in range and abundance. It is not known exactly why it is declining, but it appears that the plants are unable to regenerate successfully.
Incense-cedar
IUCN: the International Union for Conservation of Nature is the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.
CITES: the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species, has three different levels of protection for species, known as Appendices.
Appendix I – This appendix represents species that are in the most danger and are considered to be threatened with extinction, and are consequently the most restricted in international trade.
Appendix II – This appendix contains species that are at risk in the wild, but not necessarily threatened with extinction. Species in this appendix are closely regulated, but are typically not as restricted as Appendix I.
Appendix III – This appendix contains species that a certain country (called a “party” within CITES), has voluntarily requested to be regulated in order to help preserve the species in question. Appendix III species regulation is only applicable for the specific party that has requested its inclusion, and is therefore much less restrictive than Appendix I or II.
As I started to research woods, I found this very interesting downloadable resource. It's a wood handbook that looks at wood from the point of view of what can you do with it. As I began to read through what is undoubtedly a fascinating document, I became more and more aware how we as a species really think of other species. The handout deals with how to cut, shape, fix, use and get the most out of each wood. It regards wood as being unique, but only in the sense of what we can do with it. No effort at all is put into thinking about the eco-relationship these wonderful things might have with the world around them and how they have evolved into the various niches that they have grown to fit, like the image above of incense cedar, each tree is isolated, its properties itemised and its use value assessed. The only times other issues are mentioned are when a particular tree resource seems to have been overused, so there are now no naturally grown stocks of it left, and the handbook usually then suggests that another type of wood is similar, so we should now use that.
So the trees that the wood comes from unless it comes from a declining juniper stock, are not according to my research endangered. However, the trucks used to transport the wood pollute the air by releasing carbon monoxide and burning hydrocarbons. Typically large stands of incense-cedar are grown far away from cities and manufacturing centres, so there will be a lot of transportation and associated pollution involved.
The wood once it gets to the factory is treated with chemicals to remove insect infestations, these chemicals often find their way into the surrounding environment. The tree trunks are then cut into blocks that are then cut into slats. Eight shallow grooves are then sawed lengthwise into each slat. The energy used to drive the machines that do this work is of course going to come from electrical power, that is itself produced by often non sustainable coal or oil burning processes.
Stages in pencil manufacture
Before the slats can be filled with graphite and clay these substances are mixed together in a large rotating drum. Rocks inside the drum crush the graphite and clay into a fine powder and water is then added, the mixture then has to thoroughly soak for up to three days. The mixture is than taken to another machine to squeeze all the water out leaving behind a grey sludge, which then has to dry out over four days. After drying, the pencil leads are put into an oven heated to 1,800 degrees F.
The shallow grooves in the slats are filled with the graphite clay mix and then another grooved slat is glued down on top of the first one.
Graphite and clay both need to be mined. I have looked at some of the problems that come from graphite mining and they can be severe. At night in areas around graphite mines, "The air sparkles" reported a Chinese farmer worried about his health and that of his crops. A lustrous grey dust settles over his fields, crops are stunted, food is gritty and the local water is becoming undrinkable. Since graphite mining has developed in his area, many of the local trees have died. Graphite is mainly used for lithium batteries now and pencil leads are only a small concern. I was not surprised at how easily a fine dust could spread out and pollute an area and although I have yet to find details of the working conditions of those people actually involved with mining graphite for pencils, I would suspect they are poor and because fine particles of dust are so bad for the lungs, I would also suspect their life expectancy is pretty short.
Yunshan graphite mine
Once dry the joined slats are machined in order to shape the individual pencils. Fast revolving steel blades trim the wood into round or hexagonal shapes, one side at a time. The pencils then have to be paint coated, printed with the company name and important technical details. Once the pencil has been painted, a metal band is wrapped tightly around one end of the pencil so that an eraser can be fitted.
I found this in the US patents list:
UNITED STATES PATENT Office
EBERHARD FABER, OF WEST NEW BRIGHTON, NEW YORK.
MEANS FOR ATTACHING RUBBER TIPS TO PENCILS.
SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 457,579, dated August 11, 1891,
Application filed March 26, 1891. Serial No. 386,422. (No model.) L
To all whom, it may concern:
Be it known that I, EBERHARD FABER, a citizen of the United States, residing at West New Brighton, in the county of Richmond and State of New York, have invented an Improvement in Means for Attaching Rubber Tips to Pencils, of which the following is a specification.
Lead-pencils have been provided with india-rubber erasers or tips at one end attached by bands or cylinders of metal or other material, and very frequently the cylinder that is connected to the pencil has been provided with a screw-thread in the sheet metal of the cylinder for screwing the rubber into or out of the holder. In practice it has been found that the rubber is liable to Work loose within the metallic tube or holder and fall out, especially when such rubber projects to a distance beyond the end of the metal tube. Paper tubes or holders have been made use of at the end of the pencil to connect the rubber to the same; but such paper tubes are liable to become injured and they are not easily kept clean and the paper detracts from the appearance of the pencil.
In the drawings, Figure l is an elevation of my improved pencil, and Fig. 2 a section, both being of magnified size.
In my present improvementsI make use of a narrow metal band A in order to lessen the expense and at the same time to maintain the proper appearance of the pencil, and I insert the rubber plug or eraser B into this band A. If these parts only were made use of, the rub her would be liable to separate from the band and the band to separate from the pencil. To avoid these two difficulties I roughen the metal band A on its exterior surface by pressing into the metal band peripheral grooves or similar indentations, and I apply glue at D between the inner end of the plug and the end of the pencil C in order that such glue may cause the rubber to adhere directly to the pencil and that the glue may pass into the grooves or roughening of the metal band, and thereby connect the rubber and the band and the band and the pencil, because such glue spreads into the grooves and by setting retains the band in position, although such glue may not adhere to the metal itself. Iinsure a firm hold of the pencil to the metal band and the rubber by this simple but efficient device.
I claim as my invention The combination, with the rubber tip or eraser and the pencil, of a narrow metallic band surrounding the junction of the two and having peripheral grooves or indenta' tions, there being glue or similar adhesive material between the rubber and the pencil end, which also passes into the grooves or rouehening of the metallic band for connecting the parts together, substantially as set forth.
Signed by me this 20th day of March,l89l.
EBERHARD FABER.
I don't think the patent was ever granted but I found the issue of ownership interesting. Someone wanted to own this just slightly different way of putting an eraser onto the end of a pencil. Just as in the wood handbook, the language used suggests the staking of a claim over things. I'm reminded of the land claims that the North American Indian tribes fell foul of. Some animals mark the temporary use of territory, they lay down scent trails or scratch claw marks into trees but only humans legally lay claim to ownership of the earth, its plants and other humans' thoughts and ideas.
The pencils are sharpened and then packaged. Pencils come in variety of packaging and many of them come in plastic bubble packs; pencils are no different from so many products in being wrapped in totally unsustainable, non biodegradable, petrochemical eco-disaster threatening plastic. I doubt I need to begin looking at any other art materials, the point should have been made. But remember it doesn't end there, what if you make a pencil drawing that is then sold to a famous gallery that now begins to exert great efforts in preserving this drawing, by framing it under glass, keeping it at a constant temperature under controlled lighting. This drawing may be shipped around the world to other galleries, that also spend energy on ensuring its safety and displaying it in such a way that its status is enhanced.
So why am I pushing this sustainability issue? I think it's because the older I get the more I see that everything is about relationships and how things are connected. Drawing is one area of art that escaped being seen as a finished product. It was historically seen as a process on the way towards something. You used drawing to plan, to work out what you were going to do, or to collect information such as how things looked, so that you could make paintings or sculptures from the information gathered. This meant that for many years drawing was little valued and paintings and sculptures were seen as the high points of art practice. However the more I think about how we are brought up to consume, the more I realise that consumerism teaches us to desire things and these things are usually objects separated from any sort of communal values other than the basic ones of I've got more and better things than you have. When objects are separated from their context, we can be sold them as answers to our desires and we can buy them without any concerns as to where they have come from and what went on in their production. So part of looking at the details behind the production of things is to try and get beyond their 'isolated object' status and to see things as part of a web of connections. If I am that bit more aware of where a pencil comes from and how its manufacture might impact on other things, perhaps it might deepen my understanding of where other things come from and how they are deeply inter-connected into the web of life. I realise I make compromises, and sometimes I use materials that I haven't thought enough about myself. But I do try to think through how everything is interconnected, how all the things I have done in my own life are threaded together. How what used to be called the wyrd can still be seen as a useful metaphor for life. These are small steps and when you look at the problems of global warming facing us all, it can appear to be so daunting that you just want to walk away and forget it all. But in reality at a microscopic scale we are all just vibrating patterns, patterns that seem to connect to each other in the most surprising ways. An acceptance to this and an awareness that it is desire that causes us unhappiness, might be a good first step to take, and then as we move on perhaps the work we do might have some wider relevance than just to the world of art.
One image still haunts me, the fact that at night in areas around graphite mines, "The air sparkles". The graphite dust settles over the ground and at night if the moon is shining very clearly the landscape will twinkle and softly glow, as the hexagonal structure of graphite reflects the moonlight, the tiny graphite particles, diamond like, glint in the dark, a presage of something to come, of a future not far away, or perhaps a future already here. It will be from the soil of images like these, that I suspect art will arise, and it will hopefully be art worthy of the subject.
If you now go back to the original post on graphite, one of the links I put in it was to the work of T. R. Ericsson, not so much because of the power of his images, but to highlight the technique he was using, that of pushing powdered graphite through the mesh of a photo-silkscreen. I would like to imagine a new work using the same process, but this time the photograph is of a snow twinkling landscape, one that we sometimes receive as a card near Xmas time, one that has all the sentimental associations of a snow covered rural countryside. Then to reverse the image, to make the negative into a very large silkscreen and to print off the image using Ericsson's graphite print method. You could then do the same thing with a photograph of the area that surrounds a real graphite mine. This could be the starting point for a new body of work.
The hidden tales of graphite mines
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