You don’t have to be a kid to use crayons

As I do research, more and more information comes out which leads me to another trail. I jokingly refer to it as going down the rabbit hole. Though there are times when I start researching one thing, then go down another, only to find hours later that I have even more to research later. It is my firm belief that I will stop learning when I die.

Being an artist of sorts (my bachelor’s degree is in criminalistics with a minor in photography, not to mention all of the arts and crafts I have done), there are still areas which I find fascinating. When we see the modern way things are made, often I wonder how things were made in the past.

One of the things that I delved into recently was the history of crayons. It surprised me to learn that crayons have been around in different forms since the mid 1500’s. Of course, they were not like what we use now. Let me tell you a bit about them.

In France, during the 16th century, the word crayon originally meant chalk pencil. It came from the word craie, meaning chalk.

The idea of using a form of wax, adding pigment to the wax, ages back to Encaustic painting, which used hot beeswax to bind the color to stone. Though the process is still used in some areas of the world, it is not as simple enough to make it convenient for use in classes or with children.

What is more in line with what we would call crayons came from Europe, and were made with charcoal and oil.  The art medium that is more in common with modern crayons, and date back to Leonardo da Vinci (1495) is referred to as Pastels. Coming from Paris is Conte crayons, an off shoot of a pastel and a usual crayon. This form of crayons came about in the late 1790’s, giving artists s method of drawing crayon. These were made with charcoal as a primary ingredient, though it changed into more powdered pigment replacing charcoal in the early 19^th century. In 1813, Jane Austen referenced crayons in Pride and Prejudice.

Joseph Lemercier, a French lithographer, made a variety of crayon and color related products prior to 1828. Later, he became one of the inventors of the modern version of crayons. It was found to strengthen the crayon by using wax instead of oil. At the same time as Lemercier was working on his type of crayons in Europe, others in the US were developing other varieties.

The Franklin Mfg. Co was founded in 1876 in New York, and was one of the first companies to make and sell wax crayons.  They had a display of crayons at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1883.

In the late 1880’s, some of the earliest records of using paraffin wax in crayons were from Charles Bowley, a stationery salesman, when he developed clumps of colored wax which had been used for marking leather. To aid in accuracy, Bowley worked at his home to form the wax into more manageable cylinder shapes which mimicked a pencil.  When he began selling them to his stationery customers, the demand soon exceeded how many he could produce, Bowley partnered with the American Crayon Company in 1902.

Long part of the coloring marketplace, Edwin Binney and C Harold Smith had been using a chemical works to make lampblack and carbon black, as well as their chalk products. It was Edwin Binney’s wife, Alice Stead Binney, who came up with the name Crayola, which combined the French word for chalk (craie) with the first part of the word oleaginous (a name for the type of paraffin wax used in making the crayon.

Binney and Smith started a line of crayons called Rubens Crayola in 1903, and the company competed with the Raphael brand in Europe. The Ruben Crayola company introduced their “Gold Medal” line of crayons, sold in yellow boxes and was referred to as dustless chalk when was displayed at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair.

From there, their business grew. Many crayon companies entered into field, though most are no longer in business. Crayola dominated the market in the US

Since then, there have been over 300 crayon manufacturers in the US and more in other countries. Current manufacturers include Rose Art Industries and Dixon Ticonderoga (which was the successor to the American Crayon Company.

In history, French artist Francois Clouet (1510-1572) used crayons in their early projects, using them for his modeled portraits. These portraits brought Clouet to the notice of Henry V, who knighted him, and made him the court painter for royalty.

What do you think? Does this give you a new look on crayons? It did me. Talk about some talented people with the images they made over the centuries.