Cedar Pencils — HB

Twelve pencils in a slip box, cased in incense cedar — the wood a good pencil is meant to be, because it sharpens to a clean point without splintering and carries that faint cedar scent as it does. An HB graphite, the true middle: dark enough to read, hard enough to hold a point.

Left unlacquered, so the cedar shows its grain and takes a name written on the barrel. A plain, honest pencil sold by the dozen, meant to be sharpened down to a stub and replaced, not kept in a drawer as an ornament.