Pencils from BrandNamePencils.com. Image from BoingBoing.net

If you’re like me, you practically worship the ground that BoingBoing treads on. Like the rise in sales when Oprah Winfrey features a book or a product, the BoingBoing “bump” will get you multiple thousands of hits in less than 4 hours. I’ve been linked to by BoingBoing on a couple different occasions (once when I blogged about Field Notes, and once from a review of a Blackwing 602), and my stat counter went through the roof.

Anyway, Mark Frauenfelder, a co-founder and regular blogger at BoingBoing (and a personal hero), linked to Brand Name Pencils, perhaps the most complete resource for pencil brands on the web. Bob Truby, the proprietor and curator has a truly amazing collection. I mean, a really amazing collection. I was excited to see him linked, and I realized that I’ve never mentioned that site on my blog!

Bob and I did a trade a couple years ago — I sent him a few Blackwing 602s, and he sent me a whole score of other unusual pencils, in brands I’ve never heard of, and colors that are amazing. I will post some pictures of those sometime soon.

Anyhow, his site is an incredible resource. You can look up makes and models of pencils by country of manufacture, brand, year, or even pencil type. The site has a top-notch design, and my eventual goal is to lay out Woodclinched sort of like his — a simple, clean, page design that looks like it was especially made for displaying images of pencils.

I’ve used his site as a resource for pencil history for a long time. If you have any pencils laying around in the back of a drawer that are unusual looking or are a brand you don’t know about, check out his site. I bet he has some information up about it.

Brand Name Pencils