On the other hand in Italy in the fourteenth century much drawing was done with styles composed of a mixture of lead and tin; drawings that could be effaced with bread crumb.
Petrarch’s Laura was delineated by a contemporary in this manner and in the time of Michael Angelo the process was still in use. These styles were then introduced into Germany from Italy, under what particular name, we know not. In Italy they are called “Stile”, but even they never seem at any time to have been the universally acknowledged drawing material.
About the same period the pen came into use as a drawing- as well as writing-material, to which were added, in the most flourishing days of painting, black chalk and red chalk which enjoyed extensive use. The Italians obtained the best red chalk from Germany and the best black chalk from Spain. Vasari, speaking of an artist of the sixteenth century, especially remarks that he understood how to use style, pen, black chalk and red chalk with equal dexterity.
To this period belongs also the discovery of black lead and with it the production of an entirely new writing- and drawing-material—The Lead Pencil.
This invention, which conferred so many benefits not only upon practical life but also upon art, was made in England in the reign of Queen Elisabeth, for in the year 1564 the celebrated blacklead mines of Borrowdale in Cumberland were discovered. With the opening of this mine every element was present to render the developement of an extensive pencil trade upon English soil possible.
In the year 1565 the first lead pencils were manufactured in England. The mines of Borrowdale, at one time on account of the valuable nature of their produce exposed even to the predatory attacks of the inhabitants of the neighbouring mountains, supply the English down to the present day with the material for the best English leadpencils. The manufacturing of the lead obtained was simple, the material, as soon as it came out of the mine, being cut to the proper size with a saw and then without any further manipulation fastened into the wood and it is remarkable, that the first pencils made in this manner are acknowledged to be decidedly the best and down to the present day unsurpassed by any other manufacture in the softness and delicacy of the lead. Although the Cumberland pencils were soon in great request as being the first to really meet an exigency long felt, it is their excellent quality that has given them their lasting and universal reputation especially in the World of Art.
The Cumberland mine only remained open for six weeks in the year and yet the blacklead obtained in this short time is stated to have been of the value of £ 40,000 or One Million Francs each time.
The raw material was sent up to London just as it came from the mine and there sold by auction in the black lead market, these sales taking place on the first Monday in every month. The price averaged 36-40 shillings per English pound and the value of the good Cumberland black lead according to Dufrénoy was 400 Francs per Kilogramme.
The fact of the English Government having considered it expedient rigorously to prohibit the export of black lead in any other form than that of leadpencils goes to prove of what importance these mines and the manufacture of leadpencils in connexion with them was to England. In spite of the fact however that the mines only remained open for six weeks in the year and that no blacklead might be exported from them, the working of the mines, continued as it was for upwards of a century, at last began to have the effect of diminishing the yield, until at last nothing was to be obtained from them but an inferior and impure material no longer adapted as before for the manufacture of pencils.
In order to protect themselves from the consequences of a failure of the Cumberland blacklead mines, the English strenuously sought in every direction for new blacklead deposits, but down to the present day without the desired success. There remained therefore nothing but to look about for some means whereby the impure refuse still obtainable could be purified.