Readers of this blog know that we like the serious stuff, and don’t typically mention novelty or advertising pencils. But we’ll make an exception for this pencil from Clairefontaine, possibly (probably?) made in Japan. It matches a Clairefontaine notebook set.
Give us more!
I guess that this pencil is from ROC(Taiwan). Japanese use Chinese characters but they use Japanese own characters together. And there’s no Japanese character. The chinese characters on the pencil are not currently being used in China, so I bet on that it’s made in or designed by ROC.
Kent, thank you for the information. I think I may have to issue a retraction!
I bought this with a Clairefontaine price sticker, but I’ve been searching around for further information. While I haven’t found this pencil online, take a look here.
There are also other products with this pattern from Hong Kong company “Goods of Desire”. The pattern is said to be taken from an old Chinese newspaper.
So I think I’m going to relabel this the “Goods of Desire” pencil. I also said it matched a notebook set. This store isn’t handy, but maybe that’s a “Goods of Desire” notebook set.
Okay, I’m not losing my memory – this is indeed offered by Clairefontaine , as part of a co-branding effort.
And – these are apparently “adult classified” ads!
Wow, so cool. I pay my respects to your effort of giving people correct information.
There are only two countries those uses only Chinese character.
The first one is China and the second is Taiwan. As you know, Chinese character is very troublesome to write, so these days, Chinese people doesn’t use traditional characters on newspaper, but they use simplified characters. However, Taiwanese people still use traditional characters.
The characters on the pencil are traditional characters, so I thought it was made or designed in ROC.
After I read your replies, I searched more information about the character system in HongKong.
What I missed is, in China, traditional characters are being used only in HongKong. Wow.
A pencil, lets me to learn about history, and culture. I really like this. :)