Faber-Castell AG is a manufacturer of
pens,
pencils
A pencil () is a writing or drawing implement with a solid pigment core in a protective casing that reduces the risk of core breakage, and keeps it from marking the user's hand.
Pencils create marks by physical abrasion, leaving a tra ...
, other
office supplies (e.g.,
staplers,
slide rules,
eraser
An eraser (also known as a rubber in some Commonwealth countries, including South Africa from the material first used) is an article of stationery that is used for removing marks from paper or skin (e.g. parchment or vellum). Erasers have ...
s,
rulers)
[Faber-Castell International]
Office Products
and
art supplies,
[Faber-Castell International]
Products for FineArts and FineWriting
as well as high-end writing instruments and luxury leather goods. Headquartered in
Stein, Germany, it operates 14 factories and 20 sales units throughout the globe. The Faber-Castell Group employs a staff of approximately 8,000 and does business in more than 120 countries.
The
House of Faber-Castell is the family which founded and continues to exercise leadership within the corporation. Faber-Castell manufactures about 2 billion pencils in more than 120 different colors every year.
History
Faber-Castell was founded in 1761 at Stein near
Nuremberg
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
by cabinet maker
Kaspar Faber (1730–84) as the A.W. Faber Company, and has remained in the Faber family for eight generations. It opened branches in New York (1849), London (1851), Paris (1855), and expanded to Vienna (1872) and St. Petersburg (1874). It opened a factory in
Geroldsgrün,
Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total l ...
, where slide rules were produced. It expanded internationally and launched new products under Kaspar Faber's ambitious great-grandson,
Johann Lothar Freiherr von Faber (1817–96).
["History"]
Faber-Castell International. Retrieved February 18, 2019.
In 1900, after the marriage of Lothar's granddaughter and heiress with a
count of Castell, the A.W. Faber enterprise took the name of ''Faber-Castell'' and a new
logo
A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wo ...
, combining the Faber motto, ''Since 1761'', with the "
jousting knights" of the Castells'
coat-of-arms
A coat of arms is a heraldic visual design on an escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the latter two being outer garments). The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central element of the full heraldic achievement, which in its wh ...
. A.W. Faber is the oldest brand-name pencil continuously sold in the US, having begun sales in 1870.
[
Today, the company operates 10 factories and 22 sales units, with six in Europe, four in Asia, three in North America, five in South America, and one each in Australia and New Zealand. The Faber-Castell Group employs a staff of approximately 8,000 and does business in more than 120 countries.]
Products
Beginning in the 1850s Faber started to use graphite
Graphite () is a crystalline form of the element carbon. It consists of stacked layers of graphene. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Synthetic and natural graphite are consumed on la ...
from Siberia and cedar wood from Florida to produce its pencils.[
Faber-Castell is well known for its brand of PITT Artist pens. The pens, used by ]comic
a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicate ...
and manga
Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is ...
artists such as Adam Hughes
Adam Hughes (born May 5, 1967) is an American comics artist and illustrator best known to American comic book readers for his renderings of pinup-style female characters, and his cover work on titles such as ''Wonder Woman'' and ''Catwoman''. H ...
,[Coulson, Steve]
"Adam Hughes – Anatomy of a sketch, Pt3 – The Tools"
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
; May 15, 2006, Accessed September 8, 2010 contain an India ink that is both acid-free and archival, and come in a variety of colors.
The following chart contains all the Faber-Castell product lines.
From about 1880 to 1975 Faber-Castell was also one of the world's major manufacturers of slide rules, the best known of which was the 2/83N.
Manufacturing
There are about 16 manufacturing plants (in 10 countries) which mainly manufacture writing instruments.
See also
* Graf von Faber-Castell
* Faber-Castell family
References
External links
*
Graf von Faber-Castell – Luxury writing instruments
Faber-Castell slide rule collection
Faber-Castell: The future of the pencil
BBC visits Nuremberg in Germany to look at Staedtler and Faber-Castell's productive pencil rivalry. Audio, 28 minutes.
*
{{Authority control
Watercolor brands
Companies based in Bavaria
Companies established in 1761
Fountain pen and ink manufacturers
German brands
Office supply companies of Germany
Pencil brands
Writing implement manufacturers