Laurentien (originally Laurentian) was a Canadian brand of art supplies owned by Sanford Canada. The line of supplies included coloured pencils, markers and crayons. The line of Laurentian coloured pencils was discontinued around 2012 and their websites no longer exist. Laurentien was marketed in the United States under the name Paradise. [1]
Laurentien was originally owned by Venus Pencils [1] and was originally spelled Laurentian. During the 1960s, the packaging of Laurentien's products changed to become a portable vinyl pouch and the colour pencils now had space for labeling on the pencil supposedly to "deter theft from classmates". [1] In 1972, Laurentian's name was changed to Laurentien, supposedly in an attempt to increase sales in Quebec. In 1994, Sanford L.P. acquired Laurentien. In 2001, Sanford L.P. discontinued the vinyl pouch design and used a cardboard box instead. Laurentien's website stated that this was due to consumers being more likely to put the coloured pencils in a pencil case. [1] In 2012, Laurentien ceased the production of its coloured pencils.
Laurentien brand coloured pencils are also known as "pencil crayons" in Canada. [2] They were available in packages of differing sizes, (12, 20 and 24 being most commonly marketed to Canadian school children’s families.) Each coloured pencil was painted in a colour matching the lead, and labelled in white (Cotton White has yellow lettering) with both the name of the colour and a number assigned to each colour. Older pencils bore the colour name in English. They were later printed with the name colours in both English and French. Although not a feature of the earlier Laurentian pencil crayons produced by Venus, there was also a painted white blank space provided on each pencil (yellow paint on #23, where the owner’s name could be printed by the customer, by using permanent ink such as a ball-point pen or very fine-tip permanent marker. On the earlier “Venus” pencil crayons, the space where this feature was added, originally bore the words “-VENUS PENCIL CO. LTD.” with “MADE IN CANADA-“ beneath. These were written all in capitals, following the twice-as-tall font that said “Laurentian” (which was only capitalized at the start of the name). At that time, the white ink or paint used for labelling the pencils was fainter; significantly less contrasting against the colour each pencil was otherwise painted with to indicate its hue. The (next?) incarnation of these pencil crayons were painted in the brighter hues that Canadians who used / purchased “Laurentiens” between the 1970s and their discontinuation in 2012 would recognize, and printed with brighter, more clearly contrasting white (or yellow, on the white ones). Initially when the longer name for the Venus Pencil Company was dropped, in favour of creating space for the users’ names to be written onto them, these continued to bear the words “VENUS CANADA” in half-height font, that now appeared before the word “Laurentien”.
Not much changed in the appearance of the pencils after that, although the word VENUS disappeared from them while “CANADA” remained to the left of “Laurentien”. This was probably around the same time that Laurentians began to be manufactured by FaberCastell (Toronto, Ontario postal code M8W 4X5 and Montreal, Québec postal code J4K 2X2) instead of Venus. At some point, Laurentiens were known to be a “Sanford” product.
Following is a list of the colours associated with each pencil number. It may be of interest to note that a few names were changed over time. Some may have been in response to ideological shifts, such as #14 being switched from “Natural Flesh” to ‘Soft Peach’ and #21 “Indian Red” becoming ‘Roan Red’. (This change may have happened around the time that Canada adopted “Multiculturism” as an official policy at the start of the 1980s. Other colour names may simply have been shortened for convenience, or in preparation for labelling the names in French as well.
Past colours
Additional metallic colours were also available and appeared in a separate Laurentien Metallic Pencil Crayon Set in 2004. The colours in the metallic set were: