As well as the Staedtler WOPEX, the 2009 Paperworld show saw another innovative pencil announced – the Lyra Colorstripe.
This slightly oversized triangular colour pencil has a rounded rectangular core exposed on one side! The “stripe” (coated to preserve the pencil and your hands) is visible along the length of the pencil.
The Colorstripe’s designer, Formidable, has won several high level awards for the product.
About one year after the announcement, the product seems to be available in sets of eight and sixteen, as well as singles, in Europe, North America, and Asia. I would like to thank Gunther from Lexikaliker for kindly sending me this set of eight.
The pencils are visually amazing. They are triangular, weighing about 6.8 to 8.5g depending on the core colour – quite a variation.
The black dyed wood is marked with silver lettering on one side with the bar code, EAN number, “Germany”, CE symbol, a model number depending on the pencil’s colour, and “COLORSTRIPE LYRA”. A bit busy, but I think the silver looks very nice on the black wood.
On Strathmore Bristol 300 Series 260g/m2 vellum, the tones seems quite satisfying.
With black-dyed wood, a triangular shape, and having a cross section around 8mm, I was wondering about sharpening. Fortunately, Lyra provided a sharpener meant for this diameter. Thanks to an informative post at Bleistift, I recognize the “E” with crown symbol on the sharpener, indicating an Eisen product.
There were no problems, and the pencil sharpened easily.
Well, there was one problem. When I started to use the pencil, it seems the lead core had been dislodged and unattached itself from the pencil. This is with the gold pencil. I haven’t had any issues with the other colours.
Has anyone out there had this problem? I hope the issue was just with this individual pencil.
See also: Lyra Colorstripe