Yesterday was Canada Day so am sharing a bit of Canadiana – the classic Canadian school supply, Laurentiens coloured pencils (or pencil crayons as we call them around here). Although they are no longer made, their past popularity makes them an easy thrift store find.
I couldn’t find out when Laurentiens were first introduced by the Venus Pencil Company but it was probably in the early 1950s. By the 1960s, they were packaged in the familiar vinyl pouches. Originally called Laurentian, the spelling was changed to the French “Laurentien” in 1972, in an apparent attempt to increase sales in Quebec. A year later Faber-Castell bought Venus which was sold again in 1994, this time to Eberhard Faber. At some time after that, Laurentien pencil crayons began to be manufactured in the United States under the Sanford brand until they were discontinued in 2012.
All the pencils were numbered and given colour names – some puzzling to me like Sky Magenta, a light purple. I don’t remember anyone having sets of more than 36 pencils when I was a child in the 1970s (I only have 21 different ones now), but Wikipedia has a list of 72 colours so they must have added to them over the years. Some of the colour names changed giving a clue to their age but I didn’t discover exactly when this happened. For example, Sarasota Orange and Midnight Black are the older names and the bilingual labels are newer.
The formula may have changed over time as well. It seems as if the leads in the newer ones break more easily and one, Blush Pink, became lighter in both the barrel colour and the lead.
The white space on the shaft is to write your name on. Not a bad idea when everyone had the same ones but I don’t remember anyone in my class doing that.
If Laurentien coloured pencils were people, they would be a classroom of students happily colouring maps of the world.