Faber-Castell

What they do

Faber-Castell makes graphite and coloured pencils, fine art materials, pens and premium writing instruments. The company was founded in 1761 by the cabinet maker Kaspar Faber in Stein, near Nuremberg, where its headquarters and the family castle remain. The family has led the business for eight generations.

Why it matters

In the nineteenth century Lothar von Faber turned a local workshop into an international brand, opening branches in New York, London, Paris, Vienna and St Petersburg and insisting on consistent quality and branded products at a time when pencils were often sold anonymously. In 1898 his granddaughter Ottilie married Count Alexander zu Castell-Rüdenhausen, creating the Faber-Castell line. The count launched the green Castell pencil around 1905, offered in finely graduated hardness grades, and it remains a reference tool for artists, architects, illustrators and draughtsmen. The Polychromos coloured pencils followed in 1908.

Products to know

• Castell 9000: the green graphite pencil introduced in 1905.
• Polychromos: artists' coloured pencils, launched in 1908.
• Graf von Faber-Castell: the premium writing instruments range.

The German angle

Faber-Castell belongs to the Nuremberg pencil tradition, a cluster that grew up from the region's craft guilds and access to graphite and cedar supplies. It is also a textbook example of the long-lived German family firm, run with a sense of stewardship over generations. The company, like many of its peers, carries a complicated twentieth-century history, including confiscations during the First World War and the seizure of Stein Castle under the Nazi regime.