“I must have been very young, but I have a clear memory of drawing on a cream brick wall… with wax crayons,” A famous Australian graphic designer Robert Ingpen once said this. Almost all of us have the same colorful childhood memory of crayons.
Crayons are simply colored wax, chalk, charcoal, or other materials used for drawing or coloring. Those made from oiled chalk are called oil pastels and those made of pigmented mix with wax are called grease pencil or china marker.
Crayons are very easy to draw with, less messy, and are not harmful to kids. Thus made it a must-have elementary school essential.
Crayola was the first brand to sell kid’s crayons. Crayons were invented by two cousins, Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith. The brand’s first box of eight Crayola crayons was made in 1903. It cost a nickel. The word Crayola was created by Alice Binney (wife of Edwin Binney). She added the French words craie (which means chalk) and oily (oleaginous) and combined them.
Europe is known to be the birthplace of modern crayon. The first contemporary, cylindrical stick crayon is considered to be a mixture of charcoal and oil. Later, it was replaced by powdered pigments of various hues. Then wax was substituted by oil in the mixture made crayon sticks sturdier and easier to handle.
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