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Musgrave Pencil Company
Musgrave Pencil Company is an American manufacturing company of pencils located in Shelbyville, Tennessee. They produce their own line of products as well as custom and white label pencils for other brands. One of only three remaining American producers of pencils, the recently rebranded and family-owned Musgrave is experiencing a renaissance at the beginning of the 21st century.
Musgrave Pencil Company was founded in 1916 by Col. James Raford Musgrave. He situated his new facility in Shelbyville, Tennessee, where there were many cedar rail fences, which were perfect for making pencil slats. Because of its straight grain, light weight, ease of shaping, and ability to resist rot, Red Cedar was the preferred source of wood for the pencil industry, dating back to the 19th century. The largest crops of these desirable trees grew in the Eastern half of the United States. Musgrave cut the cedar fences into pencil slats and exported them to European pencil manufacturers in burlap sacks via the port of New Orleans, five hundred miles from land-locked Middle Tennessee.
From 1916 to 1923, Musgrave employed a team of workers whose job was to gather cedar fence posts and rails. The weathered wood was ideal for making pencil slats, being already dried and straight. In many cases, the farmers were happy to exchange their old wooden fences for new wire fences, installed for them by Musgrave workers. When the cedar trees needed by pencil manufacturers became scarce, this source of cedar kept Musgrave in business producing their slats for export.
Musgrave found still another way to make a profit from cedar shavings, in the form of cedar oil. Factory workers distilled the aromatic oil from the non-usable parts of cedar rails and scraps. The company used copper distillery pots to extract the oil and sold it to perfume companies for use in their products.
The First World War disrupted the American pencil industry, as necessary supplies became difficult to find for pencil production. Further, companies like Musgrave that relied on exporting pencil slats found that their customers were unreachable.
By the late 1920s, Tennessee Red Cedar became scarce, and the industry looked for a viable replacement. A Western species “incense-cedar, which grows abundantly in California and Oregon forests, was an ideal substitute for Eastern Red Cedar as a pencil wood due to the ease of machining, sharpening, lacquering, and imprinting.” The wood traveled via train to Shelbyville, where workers would place it to be stacked and dried before being cut into pencil slats. Incense cedar soon became the standard species for high-quality pencils.
In the late 1950s to early 1960s, the furniture industry's demand for wood drove up the cost of lumber. As a result, maintaining an operation cutting slats from logs became economically unfeasible. Musgrave, like other manufacturers, began to produce its pencils from ready-made slats shipped from the West Coast, a practice continued to this day.
Musgrave began to produce its own pencils in 1923. After the Treaty of Versailles brought an end to the first World War and opened up trade with Europe again, Col. Musgrave traveled to Europe and bartered his wooden slats for pencil-making technology from Europe. When he returned to the United States, he brought with him the machinery necessary to produce pencils of his own back in Tennessee. In nearby St. Louis, he found a German machinist who could operate the intricate machinery, and he helped Musgrave to set up shop in Shelbyville.
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Musgrave Pencil Company
Musgrave Pencil Company is an American manufacturing company of pencils located in Shelbyville, Tennessee. They produce their own line of products as well as custom and white label pencils for other brands. One of only three remaining American producers of pencils, the recently rebranded and family-owned Musgrave is experiencing a renaissance at the beginning of the 21st century.
Musgrave Pencil Company was founded in 1916 by Col. James Raford Musgrave. He situated his new facility in Shelbyville, Tennessee, where there were many cedar rail fences, which were perfect for making pencil slats. Because of its straight grain, light weight, ease of shaping, and ability to resist rot, Red Cedar was the preferred source of wood for the pencil industry, dating back to the 19th century. The largest crops of these desirable trees grew in the Eastern half of the United States. Musgrave cut the cedar fences into pencil slats and exported them to European pencil manufacturers in burlap sacks via the port of New Orleans, five hundred miles from land-locked Middle Tennessee.
From 1916 to 1923, Musgrave employed a team of workers whose job was to gather cedar fence posts and rails. The weathered wood was ideal for making pencil slats, being already dried and straight. In many cases, the farmers were happy to exchange their old wooden fences for new wire fences, installed for them by Musgrave workers. When the cedar trees needed by pencil manufacturers became scarce, this source of cedar kept Musgrave in business producing their slats for export.
Musgrave found still another way to make a profit from cedar shavings, in the form of cedar oil. Factory workers distilled the aromatic oil from the non-usable parts of cedar rails and scraps. The company used copper distillery pots to extract the oil and sold it to perfume companies for use in their products.
The First World War disrupted the American pencil industry, as necessary supplies became difficult to find for pencil production. Further, companies like Musgrave that relied on exporting pencil slats found that their customers were unreachable.
By the late 1920s, Tennessee Red Cedar became scarce, and the industry looked for a viable replacement. A Western species “incense-cedar, which grows abundantly in California and Oregon forests, was an ideal substitute for Eastern Red Cedar as a pencil wood due to the ease of machining, sharpening, lacquering, and imprinting.” The wood traveled via train to Shelbyville, where workers would place it to be stacked and dried before being cut into pencil slats. Incense cedar soon became the standard species for high-quality pencils.
In the late 1950s to early 1960s, the furniture industry's demand for wood drove up the cost of lumber. As a result, maintaining an operation cutting slats from logs became economically unfeasible. Musgrave, like other manufacturers, began to produce its pencils from ready-made slats shipped from the West Coast, a practice continued to this day.
Musgrave began to produce its own pencils in 1923. After the Treaty of Versailles brought an end to the first World War and opened up trade with Europe again, Col. Musgrave traveled to Europe and bartered his wooden slats for pencil-making technology from Europe. When he returned to the United States, he brought with him the machinery necessary to produce pencils of his own back in Tennessee. In nearby St. Louis, he found a German machinist who could operate the intricate machinery, and he helped Musgrave to set up shop in Shelbyville.