Wufnik – even after the pencil went away, I’ve been able to find the erasers all over the place. Pretty much every office supply store has them, or did the last time I needed to buy them – my employer has been able to order them from office supply catalogs every time I needed them. It’s the Pentel PDE-1 refill.

I am an ardent fan of the practical as art. Practical items are not always pretty, but life doesn’t get any better than when delightful form meets effective function.

I have no trouble seeing some automobiles as works of art, not only in their visual presentation but the entire package of idea to execution. If the engineering isn’t art, it is at least artistic. I’ll argue with anyone that a Mercedes Benz 300 SL is art from top to bottom and front to back.

Of course i’m a form follows function kind of guy, though many people define “art” as form without concern for function. So for me, Brian’s thesis rings true. I think he feels about that pencil the way i feel about my truck, and i often consider that art. It isn’t just functional and well made, but both to the point of being far superior to any other thing like it. That makes something like a pencil art.

The Platonic form like, if you will. Or maybe just artisanal. We’d be better off if we had a higher percentage of things that approached art and appreciated them as such.