Eastern Red Cedar, officially called Juniperus Virginiana, is “soft, red, fine-grained, fragrant, and decay-resistant, often used for fence posts.”
And as Musgrave fans already know, it was what our founder James Raford Musgrave originally used in our pencils. As our company history shares, Colonel Musgrave would swap old, dried-out fence boards from farmers for metal fencing, using the perfectly dried wood as pencil slats.
But fast-forward to the '60s and '70s — we phased out cedar pencils made from Eastern Red Cedar and replaced it with the more abundant and easier to use California Incense Cedar. And while today Musgrave is able to work with a handful of different varieties of wood from all over the world, we had never worked with the original Eastern Red Cedar until now!
Just read about this pencil in the latest issue of Smithsonian and it brought back such great memories of the pencils I used as a child…the fragrant smell of the cedar and the great practicing of my ABCs over and over with this great pencil. I didn’t realize how much I missed them until reading the article. I now want my own supply again!
I just purchased a dozen round Tennessee ceder pencils. I look forward to receiving them. Do you still sell the ones in the ceder box?
Your Tennessee Red box set is currently out of stock. Do you know when it will return?
Are these pencils currently available in February 2023? Thanks!