Mole with pencil. Why? Why not?

Now that the great mystery DSL outage is over, we can get back to business as usual.

On a whirlwind trip to New York this weekend, we checked out the daguerrotypes. The one that fascinated me most was by Jean-Pierre Alibert, who was not only a merchant and photographer but also a pencil mogul. The caption for picture in question (alas, I can't find it online) noted that the modern pencil as we know it, with names like "Mongol" and "Koh-I-Noor" and painted yellow, is packaged with inspiration from Asia. Maybe this is common knowledge in pencil circles (I am more of a Bic girl) but it fascinated me and the art hipsters behind me as well.

Hard-hitting Internet research yields even more pencil lore. This article refers to a book review that cites a "pencil expert":

He brings limitless curiosity to pencils. He wondered why, of the 14 billion pencils the world uses every year, about three-quarters are yellow. He discovered that in the 19th century, when European pencil makers began using graphite from the Far East, they painted the wood on their pencils yellow because the public associated that colour with Asia; they also gave them Oriental-sounding names such as Koh-I-Noor, Mikado and Mongol (the Mikado was hastily renamed the day after Pearl Harbor).

More on the history of the pencil can also be found here. And fascinatingly, there's even an online drafting pencil museum.

And I did not make a single pencil pun. What self-restraint!