Koh-i-Noor refill holder, 2 mm refill

Lead holders, mechanical pencils and mechanical pencils have two main advantages over wood-cased pencils: 1. they are available with a wide variety of lead formats, which in turn are intended for a wide variety of purposes - from technical drawing to large-format sketching and signing, and 2. they can be used many times over because they are refillable.

This clip-reinforced mechanical pencil has been manufactured unchanged at Koh-i-Noor in the Czech Republic since 1958. Practical: a sharpener is integrated in the pusher of the pencil. But no matter how often you sharpen and shorten, the clutch pencil retains its length and therefore always fits comfortably in your hand. You can also find replacements for the 2 mm lead in our range.

The history of the renowned pencil manufacturer Koh-i-Noor dates back to the 18th century. Throughout the world, Koh-i-Noor became known through the innovative invention of Joseph Hardtmuth, who in 1792 developed a novel method for pressing and baking pencil leads - mines did not have to be cut from the solid stone any longer. This innovative ability has been preserved at Koh-i-Noor to this day.

”A pencil – if you should produce it from scratch! Imagine humanity is gone, and you have to make a pencil yourself – it’s magic!“ (Arno Schmidt)

The history of the modern pencil begins with the discovery of the first English graphite mines in the 17th century. However, with success came a problem: The pencil leads were cut from massive material, and the resulting pieces were a luxury. That changed when the Frenchman Nicolas Jacques Conté and the Austrian Josef Hardtmuth developed a ceramic process to produce pencil leads. At the end of the 18th century, they began to mix graphite dust with clay and fired the leads in an oven, with the amount of clay and length of time in the oven determining the hardness of the lead. The advantages of this mixture made history: With the high level of stability, it became possible to write with a vertical tip, with satisfying smear resistance, that was relatively impervious to fading. And a welcome opportunity for the writer emerged: upon sober reconsideration, one could erase what one had written.