Fred Chambers and his pencils

Mr Fred Chambers was a foundry manager at Stanton Iron Works and Mr Brown was a timber merchant from Nottingham. Together they founded a pencil making company which in 1915 became F. Chambers & Co Ltd. The pencil works moved to an old lace factory in Stapleford where it remained until 1973. Chambers Pencils was bought by Lyra in 1991 and today is producing pencils for the souvenir and advertising trade.

One of their old pencils was found by Palimpsest in an old box and was investigated in Pencil Archaeology. It looked like one of the pencils manufactured during the war years. The post attracted some comments one of which came from a resident of Wirksworth, Derbyshire where F. Chambers spent his retirement years and where he is fondly remembered today.

The Chambers website does not mention the past pencil ranges that the company produced but Palimpsest discovered a set recently: 11 short sharpened Chamber's Raynbo coloured pencils just 9 cm long, unboxed. Date of production unknown but another example of getting-the-spelling-wrong-on-purpose. 

Available on Inklinks.