France and mechanical pencils

General Mechanical Pencil Discussion
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While spending my time hunting for good auctions on Mercari, I came across a listing for two elysee pens. It made me curious, I’ve seen many French bands involved with pens, all across the spectrum, going from the ultra cheap BiC to the obscure executive companies like elysee and the luxurious market such as Waterman.

What about pencils? Besides BiC of course… The most I’ve found were offerings from Waterman. I know that Germany is the western “home” of the mechanical pencil but I expected France to at least have some interesting daring/artistic smaller manufacturers like Italy with parafernalia.

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I have seen some “Renoma Paris” pencils when going to old stores in Japan, usually next to the Parkers. But the models I saw were all of subpar quality, so I didn’t buy any.

Waterman is probably the biggest name in here. I wonder if they did anything interesting in the MP world. For those that don’t know, the reason why Waterman is famous is because they invented the first functional fountain pen (called the Waterman “Ideal” Fountain Pen) and I think they mostly followed that route. Their pencils seemed to me like sidekicks just to complete the pencil/ballpoint/fountain pen sets, kinda like mont blanc. But maybe I’m wrong. I’d love to be shown some nice vintage Waterman models.

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Elysee has made some very nice pens, but their pencils are always loaded with mediocre mechanisms.

Waterman was a USA company that then got bought out by a French interest. They did well with the brand. Waterman never made a drafting pencil, but their executive models can be nice. Mostly analog twist type for the top tier. They did make some repeaters… fairly nice, but really more to be companions for ballpoints and fountain pens.

I agree with RPD, Renoma is nothing to write home about (no pun intended!).

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Renoma’s (or at least some) were manufactured by Pentel. That is why you see them showing up in Japan and on the Japanese auction sites.

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Good to know. I had just one Renoma and I wasn’t impressed. It may have not been of Pentel manufacture… or I was just unlucky to get a problematic example.

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Elton is a big Elysee fan and has compiled his own version of a catalog. I will check if he’s willing to share.

I believe the factory for Elysee was bought over by one of the other big fashion labels.

Personally, I find Elysee to be more focused on craft, materials and finishing as compared to design in terms of form and function.

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I see. Ive only seen few models pop up on YAJ and eBay. I hope he is willing to share as the few pens I saw were gorgeous.

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I’ve asked Elton and he’s cool with sharing the file. I wanted to upload it here but the 25MB size was a no go. I tried reducing the filesize to 16MB but it still wouldn’t upload… should I put it on Google Drive?

BTW, the file was compiled by another Elysee collector – N. Dean Meyer… and Elton got it from him.

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Please place it on drive and tell Elton I thank him and I’m also thanking Meyer.

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OK, I’ve made an entry in the Catalogs section for easier searching in the future…

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Thanks for the catalogue, it is indeed a “real” book.

But how did Elysee land in the France department? It’s a German company which was based at Pforzheim (as many others like Waldmann or Hutt) and was later bought (and closed down) by Staedtler.

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I mentioned it in the start and thought it was French… At least now I know it’s not.

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I didn’t know either… I read it in drifand‘s file.

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