What is Faber Castell?

Overview of Faber Castell

Faber-Castell is a well-known German brand with a worldwide reputation and a history of more than two centuries of existence (in 2017 the company turned 256 years old). All products of the company can be divided into several groups: goods for the smallest; for children and schoolchildren; office tools; “creative studio” – a variety of products for amateur artists; professional series for those who use only the best materials; the “Design” series, which includes ball and fountain pens, as well as rollerball pens, created from unusual materials and having an aesthetic appearance. Premium products stand out separately – the Graf von Faber-Castell brand offers high-quality luxury products for the most demanding customers.

The assortment of the company will not leave indifferent even the most sophisticated connoisseur of “dry artist” tools: colored, pastel and watercolor pencils with a high level of lightfastness and high-quality pigment, art crayons and charcoal, a large selection of art capillary pens, as well as gift sets that will become a real gift for the most demanding artist.

FABER CASTELL

In 1761, carpenter Caspar Faber founded his own pencil factory in Stein near Nuremberg, laying the foundation stone for the current Faber-Castell group . In the 19th century, his great-grandson Lothar von Faber became the leader of the German pencil industry. Taking over the small company AWFaber in 1839, within a few decades he turned Nuremberg into the center of European pencil production. Lothar von Faber ensured the dissemination and fame of modern standards of form and quality of the pencil in all countries of the world.

In 1856, Lothar von Faber acquired a mine in Siberia, where the best graphite was mined at that time. The costs of transporting raw materials to Germany were high, but the quality of the products was above all else. Later, in his memoirs, Lothar von Faber wrote: “From the very beginning, I did everything to take a leading position, producing the best product in the world.”

In 1874, Lothar opened a sales office in St. Petersburg, demonstrating entrepreneurial flair long before the word “globalization” came into common use. By founding his fifth foreign division (after subsidiaries in New York, London, Paris and Vienna), Faber opened up eastern markets for his company, which later allowed him to trade in the Middle East and reach China.

At the same time, he had to protect his products from cheap fakes. The first fakes appeared in Moscow as early as 1856. He turned for help to the Bavarian embassy in St. Petersburg through the mediation of King Max II of Bavaria. However, the more successful the AWFaber brand was, the more it was copied both at home and abroad.

To protect the brand from a growing counterfeit market, Lothar von Faber asked the German government to protect the brand. The law went into effect in 1875. So, Lothar von Faber became the ancestor of German trademark law. In the same year, more precisely, on December 3, 1875, the AWFaber trademark was entered into the Russian trade register.

The Russian catalog of 1900 offered a wide range of products. At the same time, AWFaber released a collection of pencils in St. Petersburg, made of 14-carat gold and decorated with its own brand and emblem of the city.

FABER CASTELL

At the beginning of the 21st century, Count Anton von Faber-Castell decided to recreate some of the writing utensils of the last century, supplementing them with modern technology. This is how the “Graf von Faber-Castell ” premium instrument collection was born . Since 2003, this series has included a limited collection of exclusive pens.