Pencils, eh
A virtual museum of the golden age of the Canadian pencil industry.
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Eagle Canadiana pencil crayons were made at the Eagle factory in Drummondville, Quebec. This factory operated under the Eagle brand from 1931 until about 1969 when the company changed its name to Berol, the shortened surname of the company's founder Daniel Berolzheimer. I've seen written that the first Canadiana pencil crayons were made around 1951.
 The boxed set of eight pencils above is an early set. In my opinion, this is one of the most beautifully made sets of colored pencils to have been produced in Canada. Check out these photos of a similar set from the Pencils and Other Things blog. The pencils inside don't have the white imprint or area for a signature that the pencils below have.    The version of these pencils shown above has a spot for you to write your name on them just like the Laurentien pencil crayons. I believe that the stylized letter E trademark seen on the pencils below started being used around 1960.
When Eagle changed its name to Berol in 1975, Canadiana pencils continued to be produced but now with the Berol brand name. The pencil crayons from Eagle appear to start at number 501 (with Crimson Red) while the Berol versions seem to start at number 551 (also with red). I know that Berol had a set of 60 colours. I'm not sure how many colours were available in the Eagle sets.
The packaging above was used from about 1975 to the mid-1980's. The set of pencils shown below is a more modern version. The pencils are the same but the packaging and the gold lettering are changed.
6 Comments
Juli
1/18/2024 10:03:57 pm
This article was very insightful! I come back to it occasionally when trying to recall details of the Canadiana coloured pencils (or dare I say, pencil crayons 😉). I found both an Eagle and a Berol set of Canadianas at different local thrift shops (Vancouver, Canada). You helped me figure out the year range that my pencils are from! I never realized how difficult it is to find information on vintage art supplies, until I tried scouring the web for some info on certain items. After hours of dead ends, I give up haha. Thanks so much for this! I found some more pencils recently and am trying to figure out the decade that they're from. I'll start my search here! Unfortunately, the ones I found are loose pencils (sans packaging) so I'll have to go off of whatever is printed on the pencils themselves. Wish me luck haha. And thank you for taking the time to write this blog post!
Juli
1/18/2024 10:06:18 pm
**when trying to recall details of the Canadiana colored pencils I own.
Julu
1/19/2024 06:09:11 pm
Hi Erick, thanks for your response! You know what? I will take you up on that. Your website helped me date some of my pencils, but not all of them. I'll reach out via email. Thank you so much!
Valerie
6/12/2024 02:56:39 pm
What a great site that I just discovered this afternoon. I found about 15 Eagle Canadiana coloured pencils at a thrift this morning and bought them immediately, but, typically, I wanted to know their vintage. I was so pleased to find out through your site that they are 1960s - ones I could very well have used in elementary school that decade. Thanks again! Leave a Reply. |
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