Love for pencils: Record high lead levels

Bilal Asif’s childhood love for pencils turns into a record-breaking obsession.

These pencils weren’t made for writing. At least not the 20,000 assorted ones that Bilal Asif has collected and neatly stacked in air-tight boxes. They serve a greater purpose: to be modelled into statement jewellery pieces.

Asif started collecting pencils at the age of 10. Every day he would take a new one to school and eventually became the envy of the class. Now, he is 19 and his passion to collect them has been channeled into fashioning jewellery out of the wood and lead sheaths. He works with all kinds of pencils: glitter pencils, regular pencils, colour pencils, eye and lip liner pencils, sketch pencils, clutch pencils, pencils tipped with erasers.

“It feels good to collect pencils and to work with them,” he says. “I feel relaxed.”



At his house in Shadman Town in Karachi’s North Nazimabad, Asif arranges his intricate designs in all their colourful glory. From floral-patterned necklaces, hoop earrings, bracelets with pearl detail and chunky rings, Asif clearly has a refined sense of fashion. “Don’t they look beautiful?” he asks, admiring his work with a smile. “One can do wonders with such simple things.”

Unlike most other boys his age, Asif, a BSc student, spends his time making these beautiful pieces of art. According to him, the process is quite simple. He first shaves off the pencil skin and then dexterously reduces them to a stub with a sharp blade. He then gives them a shape and glues them together to form different designs. Lastly, to give his jewellery a finishing touch, he polishes the pieces with varnish and leaves them to dry for a day.

With pencils at the heart of every creation, one can safely assume that Asif’s ideal present is also a pencil — especially ones that are increasingly proving difficult to write with. His relatives and acquaintances are under strict instructions to return from trips abroad bearing only pencils. And as far as his travels are concerned, pencils are an essential part of his travel kit. He has even constructed a special six-feet tall pencil-shaped wooden case if he needs to travel with them.

Bilal Asif’s simple steps to make jewellery using pencils

The 9,365 pencils in Asif’s growing collection have no duplicates. “I have pencils from 15 countries,” he boasts. The pencil from China, strategically placed next to its red and white Canadian counterpart, is inscribed in Mandarin. His favourite, however, is the blue and red graphite sketching pencil that has featured in his collection for the past six years.

Taking his pencil penchant to new heights, Asif broke the 2006 world’s tallest free-standing pencil tower record held by students at Eisenhower Junior High School in Taylorsville, Utah, US. This year on July 6, Asif took three hours and 10,000 pencils to construct the tower that was 9 feet and 7 inches high, an inch higher than the previous tower, in the presence of Guinness World Record officials at the Karachi Expo Centre.

“When I saw the pictures of the [pencil tower] record that the Americans had made, I decided to break it,” he says. In his eagerness, Asif practiced constructing the tower tirelessly for five years. “To get more stamina, I would go without food and water for five hours before working on the tower.” But his yearning to reach the pencil pinnacle is nowhere close to fulfillment. Next Asif aims to design a gigantic Pakistani flag, with pencils of course. “I want to make my country proud and showcase the talent Pakistanis have.”

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, October 27^th, 2013.