It's not hard to see why from an aesthetic point of view. It's an attractive pencil, with it's distinct replaceable eraser design, dark line, and rather classy looking stamping on the sides of the pencil. It looks good in the hands of an artist, and even lends itself well to being used as a prop, as evidenced by it's use on camera in the AMC series Mad Men.
California Cedar, since buying the rights, name and history of the Blackwing, and resurrecting it under their Palomino brand, has done some good work in trying recreate a classic. However, they have attempted to take what was already a classic and attempt to improve on what was already regarded to be a good thing. Their original Blackwing, more of a homage to the original is a fine pencil, though still not up the the standards of the original (too dark, supposedly). Their version of the legendary 602, a fine pencil, is close enough to the original that most, though not all, of it's original fans, have acknowledged it to be close enough to the original that they've adopted it as a replacement. However, Palomino now has added a new Blackwing to the fray, the Pearl, which should make some new fans of the legendary pencil, while again sparking up the debate as to how close it is to the original.
First, let's get the obvious monkey in the room out of the way. This is in no way an attempt to try and replicate the original Blackwing, but more of an attempt to try and further the new Blackwing Brand. As such, if you're looking to see if this particular Blackwing is another try at replicating the original, I'd advise you to refer to my earlier Blackwing 602 review. However, if you are looking to see if this is a quality writing instrument, and how it performs, then by all means, keep reading.
The Pearl is meant to serve more as a sort of middle ground, an attempt to combine the darkness of the standard Palomino Blackwing, while keeping the firmness of the 602. As such, this can be looked at more as a middle ground of the two. Aesthetically, it's a lovely pencil. It's semi-glossy white finish is very attractive to look at, and the choice of using simply flat black for the wording on the shaft is a solid choice. The finish itself looks quite nice, and very much like a pearl, but it also makes the pencil feel somewhat different, as well. It's hard to describe it, but it feels like you are able to keep a better grip on the pencil, to unelegantly put it. I'm not kidding, if you try and hold onto the 602 and the Pearl with all the pressure you
However, the key question here, and it's the bottom line of how any pencil performs, is how does the thing write? Well, in the case of the Pearl, it performs very well. Like the resurrected 602, this pencil also has a really smooth line, with very little of the "scratchiness", or lack of a better term, that is seen with traditional pencils. It's even smoother than that of the new 602, which is kinda hard to believe considering how easy that pencil would write. However, when compared to the 602, the Pearl produces a much darker line. Many websites, such as Jetpens and Amazon, describe the Pearl as a sort of halfway point between the original Palomino Blackwing and the 602. As far as where I would pinpoint this on the lead grade scale, if the 602 was meant to be a 4B, I would probably peg this around the 6B range, which makes me entirely curious as how the regular Palomino Blackwing writes (I don't have a box, but I might pick up a box of them if I've exhausted enough of my pencil stock by Christmas.)
However, the Pearl does have it's faults. For starters, I took a Pearl with me to work to serve as my standard work pencil for a week. While it does produce an incredibly smooth line, because it is of a softer lead grade, it does have the annoying tendency to lose it's point quicker than the standard Number 2 (HB). As such, though it does produce a nice line, and is rather easy on the land, it does mean that this probably isn't the pencil for you if you want to have a standard everyday work pencil. However, it does lend itself very nicely to sketching, as I have found out one evening at a livedraw event, I guess if you were composing music, or even jotting down something simply and quick, like a song lyric or two, the Pearl would work well in that instance. Another problem that is had with this pencil is that it does have some smearing issues. While the smearing isn't quite as bad as some other pencils I have used, smearing is still a problem if you are trying to use it for journal writing or for any sort of lengthy lyrical composition. Finally, as with all darker leaded pencils, you do have some ghosting issues if you are trying to erase the Pearl's leaded imprint, although it's not too much of an issue if you have a lighter touch than most (such as I).
So, all in all, would I recommend the Blackwing Pearl? Yeah, I would. Despite it's shortcomings, it is a very good pencil. However, like the majority of the Blackwing line in general, it is more of a niche product than something that you would be able to use on a daily basis. It has it's uses. As an art pencil, it rocks, and it's got style in spades. However, it is a limited product in terms of a daily use pencil, and for that reason alone I would advise you to buy the 602 if you absolutely have to have a Blackwing as a daily use pencil.
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