When I first heard that there was a store in New York City devoted to the humble pencil, I assumed that it was in Brooklyn—the home of all things artisanal. But surprisingly CW Pencil is located on Forsyth Street in the Lower East Side. Launched about four months ago, the shop has more than just pencils—that’d be silly—there are erasers, sharpeners and notebooks too.

Pencil entrepreneur Caroline Weaver explains the shop this way:

“My love for pencils stems from many things. I was definitely influenced by my mother’s obsession with nice pencils but mostly I just grew to appreciate them on my own. In school it’s cool to use a mechanical pencil, but most of them are cheap, the lead breaks and they’re generally just truly awful. I made it a point to always have an arsenal of freshly sharpened pencils with me from a young age and grew to appreciate the feeling of writing with something so tactile. The smell of the wood, and the sensation of sharpening—nothing beats it, really.”