While I was searching for the manufacture of my what I thought was Japanese mechanical pencil I happened to stumble across this gallery of Japanese pencil carving artwork by Mizuta Tasogare and Kato Jado.
The rest are pretty awesome too.
Update: It seems that Boingboing mentioned this back in March. So much for discoveries.
Nice… at first, I thought they were some kind of Klingon Weaponry. I was only slightly disappointed to discover that that they were pencil carvings.