Pencil

Note Profile

Abstract

About

Pencil is an object accord, not a material: the smell of a sharpened wooden pencil, which is cedar shavings first and chalky graphite dust second. Three sources reach for the same two words without copying each other, and both words are in the vector.

Scent Profile

Dry woody is the note and every source leads with it: 'cedarwood and graphite', 'woodyness from the pencil shavings', and the brand's own 'Pencil Shavings'. It is the particulate, fresh-cut kind of wood, not a resinous or oily cedar. Mineral is the second half of the object and is unusually well corroborated for a note this thin: the brand prints 'White Chalk' as the neighbouring note, and a Parfumo reviewer who was describing her own impression reached for 'chalky' independently. Powdery is the dust that both the shaving and the chalk produce, distinct from mineral because it is texture rather than the alkaline blackboard smell. Sweet vanillic and clean musk sit each, from the encyclopaedia's statement that the note serves as a foundation for paper, musky, green and sweet accords, and from one reviewer's 'perfect amount of sweet'. Both are company more than description, so both stay at trace. Smoky: graphite is scored smoky in its own row, but no pencil source says smoke, and borrowing it would assert something nobody claimed.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeBase · ~10h lasting

Family Woody & Earthy, Elemental

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

No manufacturer publishes a material called Pencil. It is reconstructed, and every source that names an underlying material names cedar. The wood in a pencil was historically Juniperus virginiana, sold in perfumery as Virginia cedarwood, which is a separate published note. The lead is graphite, also published separately. Pencil is the composite object, and the perfumes using it treat it that way: Universal Flowering's Burst! lists 'Pencil Shavings' directly beside 'White Chalk' in its own note list.

Usage in Perfumery

Fragrantica records 6 placements. Parfumo records none under this exact term. The note encyclopaedia indexes two perfumes, Universal Flowering's Burst! and Hilde Soliani's Scrivimi Amore, and in both it sits with chalk or paper rather than with ink or rubber. In Burst! it is the woody counterweight to yuzu, rhubarb and apple skin, which is how the note is normally used: a dry, dusty anchor under bright fruit.