object · mechanical pencil, c. 1954 · context · renaissance scribe's pen tray · impossibility · drawn-steel ferrule, polymer eraser
a long walnut pen-tray, the kind that would have lived on a scribe's bench in the mid-cinquecento. three quills lie in it, two grey-goose, one swan, all freshly cut at the same angle for the same hand. between the second and third, a slender chrome pencil — knurled grip, brass cap, sprung clip, lead pre-advanced.
the proportions match the quills almost perfectly, length and weight. it is the kind of pencil a midcentury engineer kept in his breast pocket, with the slightly atomic-age cap that suggests the optimism of its decade. the scribe who owned the tray would have had no use for it. he would have had no lead to refill it with. the eraser is still pink.
the supposition: a recent assistant left it after a long shift. the supposition: it has been here the whole time. the supposition: the quills are the imposters — late copies of an older, leaded instrument the renaissance could not quite admit to.
field-note · the pencil's lead is the right hardness for vellum. nobody alive in 1954 was writing on vellum.
pen · drawer · pencils · museum · pencils · lead pencil · chair · 1762