When the Sharpeners Hit the Fan

The inevitable has occurred: my pencil sharpeners have all been taken off their shelves and packed away into boxes. While I am still technically living in my old apartment, with the sharpeners now gone, for all practical purposes the space is dead to me.

When I embarked upon this journey of collecting pencil sharpeners back in 2014, I did not imagine just how important they would become to me. It all started from an idle realization that I had six different handheld pencil sharpeners scattered amidst my art supplies. Living at the time in an apartment devoid of adornment, I decided to line the sharpeners up in a row on the bathroom window sill over my toilet.

The original collection as seen in 2014.

And here I find myself ten years hence, spending multiple hours lovingly packing up over 400 unique handheld pencil sharpeners and feeling adrift without them anchoring my walls.

Excerpts from the collection as seen in 2024

Now before you go calling me crazy, please realize there are rules that govern my collection. I am no mere horder of any device that sharpens pencils. That would be ridiculous. Instead, before any sharpener is even considered for inclusion, it must pass two tests. Test #1: Does it have a repository for pencil shavings? And test #2: is it a novelty item? If the answer to either of these questions is “yes,” then I’m not signing the adoption paperwork–sorry, all you bronze-encrusted souvenir sharpeners shaped like Abraham Lincoln and the Liberty Bell.

Surprisingly, using this criteria reduces the amount of eligible sharpeners by ninety-nine percent. This has the strong advantage of limiting the scope of my collection to a reasonable size–yes, I say that in full denial–and it makes the hunt for unique sharpeners all the more exciting.

So here I find myself sitting in my old apartment staring at these empty shelves while participating in an involuntary sharpener fast and hoping I have the fortitude to make it till moving day.

A photograph of denial.

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Drawing the Collection

The A. W. Faber Janus 4046: the greatest sharpener of them all.

In addition to collecting pencil sharpeners, I also greatly enjoy drawing them, especially the older ones. There is something about holding these small objects and examining them from every angle that I find compelling. Or rather, it provides a pretty good distraction from everyday anxieties.

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Cemetery Saturday

Collapsed tombstone in Hermann City Cemetery, Missouri.

I visited this cemetery a couple of years ago with a friend. While it isn’t a cemetery on a grand scale, it is located on a large hill which gives you are great view overlooking the old town. This hill also gives the cemetery a disconcerting feeling with the angled ground juxtaposed against all the tombstones. Furthermore, in the oldest section of the cemetery, there are a couple of good death’s-heads on tombstones, which are quite a rarity for midwestern cemeteries given their youth compared to the cemeteries of New England.

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From the Archives

Note the reappearance of the Janus 4046.

You didn’t really think you were going to get through this without more pencil sharpeners, did you? Whetting Engines is a small book I put out in 2019 that was inspired by one of my favourite silent Edward Gorey books, Les Passementeries Horribles. In Gorey’s book, humans are threatened by a variety of gigantic tassels that ominously hover nearby. Given my inclinations, I decided to attempt something similar with pencil sharpeners. Incidentally, this little book was one of my favourite projects I’ve ever worked on and given how my collection has grown since 2019, I’ve been daydreaming about Whetting Engines II for quite awhile now.

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State of the Desk

The state of the soon to be desk in my new studio.