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The pencil: a short history of an ordinary object

The story usually begins in the 1560s in Borrowdale, a valley in the north-west of England, where an unusually pure deposit of graphite was found. Local shepherds are said to have used lumps of it to mark their sheep. At the time, nobody understood what the substance was; it was widely believed to be a form of lead, and the name ‘lead pencil’ has survived ever since, even though modern pencils contain no lead at all.

Borrowdale graphite was so valuable that the mine was guarded, and at times flooded deliberately to prevent theft. Because the deposit was solid, it could be sawn into thin sticks, which were then wrapped in string or sheepskin to keep the user’s fingers clean. Later, craftsmen began to insert the sticks into hollowed-out pieces of wood, creating something close to the pencil we recognise today.