Pencil - External Colour and Shape of Pencils

External Colour and Shape of Pencils

The majority of pencils made in the US are painted yellow. According to Henry Petroski, this tradition began in 1890 when the L. & C. Hardtmuth Company of Austria-Hungary introduced their Koh-I-Noor brand, named after the famous diamond. It was intended to be the world's best and most expensive pencil, and at a time when most pencils were either painted in dark colours or not at all, the Koh-I-Noor was yellow. As well as simply being distinctive, the colour may have been inspired by the Austro-Hungarian flag; it was also suggestive of the Orient at a time when the best-quality graphite came from Siberia. Other companies then copied the yellow colour so that their pencils would be associated with this high-quality brand, and chose brand names with explicit Oriental references, such as Mikado (renamed Mirado) and Mongol.

Not all countries use yellow pencils. German and Brazilian pencils, for example, are often green, blue or black, based on the trademark colours of Faber-Castell, a major German stationery company which has plants in those countries. In southern European countries pencils tend to be dark red or black with yellow lines, while in Australia they are red with black bands at one end. In India the most common pencil colour scheme was dark red with black lines, and pencils with a large number of colour schemes are produced by various companies.

Pencils are commonly round, hexagonal or sometimes triangular in section. Carpenters' pencils (see below) are typically oval or rectangular, so they cannot easily roll away during work.