the pencil museum

three hundred and ten pencils, all of them used, kept in trays under glass in what was once the schoolroom of the academy. the collection rests on a single founding rule, written into the society's minute-book in 1934: a pencil is admitted only when it can no longer be sharpened.

the founding gift was the contents of one man's pocket — the schoolmaster ernst tilling, who, on the day he retired, emptied every drawer in the academy and brought the seventy-one stubs in a tin to the society. the society have added to them, slowly. the keepers are now a rota of four women, none of whom write much by hand.

each pencil is labelled with the last word it is known to have written, where the word can be recovered. therefore, perhaps, the, june. the longest such label, in tray nine, reads and the man who was looking at the sea. the pencil is two inches long.