You never know what a small city art supply store will offer. Last weekend, I found some pencils for sale from a long defunct Connecticut pencil manufacturer.
Ruwe Pencil Co. was purchased by Dixon in 1988, and I had only heard of them from collecting sites like Brand Name Pencils, so it was surprising to see some Ruwe pencils for sale at retail.
This pencil, the 205 No. 7S, is a “Polyester Drafting Film” pencil. For those of us (including myself) who don’t regularly work with specialty architectural and drafting films, this is a type of matte surface film with a number of properties that support drawing. You can see it for sale at Dick Blick for example. Staedtler and others do mention that their pencils work on drafting film.
The pencil also has markings from Keuffel and Esser, an engineering and drafting supplies firm. Perhaps the pencil was made for them.
A page at the Smithsonian website suggests K&E’s demise was in 1969, so this pencil might be much older than 1988.
A nice link to the past for only thirty cents.