Recycled Wood Pencils: Vermilion Red

These recycled wood pencils are Tombow's Ki-Monogatari — Tree Story — series, built from the offcuts left behind by other manufacturing runs. Short lengths of salvaged cedar are fused edge to edge with a fine finger-joint technique, then finished in a thin, transparent lacquer that leaves the zig-zag seams on show rather than hidden — a clean, minimalist grain pattern built entirely from recycled material.

The red graphite core is recycled too, milled from the same by-product stream as the wood — vermilion red, or shu-iro, the reddish-orange long used in the Japanese editing and proofreading tradition — and sharpens to a fine, clean point. In 1992, Ki-Monogatari became the first pencil series in Japan to earn the country's official Eco Mark certification for sustainable manufacturing, a distinction the line has held onto ever since.

View our entire collection of pencils Well-Designed Writing Instruments.

Part of our Japanese Minimalism collection.