The wood in the pencil comes from cedars growing in western America, sawn down with steel made in blast furnaces and finished in workshops. It is milled into slats and dried and dyed and dried again, and the slats are grooved and glued into place. The lead in the pencil’s core is graphite mined in Sri Lanka, refined and mixed with clay from Mississippi, alongside chemicals made from animal fat and sulphuric acid. The wood and lead of the pencil are coated in lacquer made from castor oil derived from castor beans, resins are used to label it, and it is capped on its base with brass made from
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