GARDEN&GUN

Most people probably never stop to ponder the provenance of a pencil, but when gripping a Tennessee Red made by the Musgrave Pencil Company, it’s hard not to. “You see the discoloration, the natural pores and knots and streaks of the wood,” says Henry Hulan, the chairman of Musgrave, which has produced pencils from the same plot of land in Shelbyville, Tennessee, for the last 104 years. While Tennessee red cedar was the pencil material of choice for much of the early 1900s, California incense cedar proved a faster-growing alternative, and by the end of the century, some pencil production had moved overseas. Last year, the company resurrected the Tennessee Red, the original wood Hulan’s grandfather built the business on around World War I. A just-off-center lead core, a quirk courtesy of the red cedar from local slat mills, and a strong woodsy aroma lend the pencils a charming homespun quality.