Faber-Castell


Faber-Castell is one of the world's largest and oldest manufacturers of pens, pencils, other office supplies and art supplies, 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 7,000 and does business in more than 100 countries. The House of Faber-Castell is the family which founded and continues to exercise leadership within the corporation. They manufacture about 2 billion pencils in more than 120 different colors every year.

Offices

There are about 16 manufacturing plants which mainly manufacture writing instruments.
CountriesPlant NameYear IncorporatedProducts Manufactured
Costa RicaNeily1996Pencils
PeruLima1965Products related to heavy chemistry and markers
ColombiaBogotá1976Wax crayons and drawing accessoires
BrazilPrata1989Nurseries for pine trees and sawmill
BrazilManaus1989Products related to heavy chemistry
BrazilSão Carlos1950'sPencils,makeup,school line technical and fine arts line,office line,notebooks and creative papers
IndiaGoa1998Products related to heavy chemistry and markers
AustriaEngelhartszell1963Highlighters and Permanet Ink Markers
MalaysiaKuala Lumpur1978Research & Development,Asia and Pacific office Sales, school line
NigeriaEnugu1961Makeup Products
ChinaGuangzhou2000school line
IndonesiaBekasi1990Pencils
GermanyStein1761Research & Development, global sales and marketing office,school line,
premium line

Corporation

Faber-Castell was founded in 1761 at Stein near Nuremberg by cabinet maker Kaspar Faber as the A.W. Faber Company, and has remained in the Faber family for eight generations. It opened branches in New York, London, Paris, and expanded to Vienna and St. Petersburg. It opened a factory in Geroldsgrün where slide rules were produced. It expanded internationally and launched new products under Kaspar Faber's ambitious great-grandson, Lothar.
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, combining the Faber motto, Since 1761, with the "jousting knights" of the Castells' coat-of-arms. A.W. Faber is the oldest brand-name pencil continuously sold in the US, having begun sales in 1870.
Today, the company operates 14 factories and 20 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 7,000 and does business in more than 100 countries.

Products

Beginning in the 1850s Faber started to use graphite 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 and manga artists such as Adam Hughes, emit an India ink that is both acid-free and archival, and comes in a variety of colors.
The following chart contains all the Faber-Castell product lines.
CategoryProducts
Professional Art and Graphic Pencils, pastels, charcoals, erasers, sharpeners
Kids & School Art and Graphic Pencils, watercolors, brushes, markers, crayons, erasers, sharpeners, modeling dough, oil pastels, papers, connector pens
Technical Drawing Mechanical pencils, refills
PensFountain pens, ballpoint pens, refills
Luxury PensFountain pens, ballpoint pen
PapersNotebooks, diaries, creative papers, reams, calendars

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.

Gallery

Family

The immensely wealthy Lothar Faber was ennobled in 1861 and made Baron von Faber in the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1881. The sons of his only son Wilhelm having died young, a marriage for his granddaughter and heiress Ottilie was arranged with a scion of one of Germany's formerly ruling comital dynasties. Yet in the conservative German Empire of fin-de-siècle Europe, the marriage of a Faber into a family of the high nobility was regarded as too bold a leap upward socially. A morganatic marriage would have been required, and the Faber pencil works could not have remained in the hands of their descendants because trafficking in commerce was still considered an act of social among members of the Hochadel.
To resolve this dilemma, the chosen groom, Count Alexander von Castell-Rüdenhausen renounced his birth rank prior to the marriage. The Castell family had been Imperial counts in Franconia, known since the 11th century. When the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved under pressure from Napoleon I in 1806, the Castell lands were annexed by the Kingdom of Bavaria. Although deprived of sovereignty, in 1815 the Castells were mediatized, their rank with the reigning dynasties of Europe being formally recognized, and family would be granted the hereditary title of Prince.
Count Alexander, a younger son of the first prince, married the pencil heiress, Baroness Ottilie von Faber, in 1898. He was granted the new hereditary title of Count von Faber-Castell in Bavaria for the descendants of their marriage. Although Alexander and Ottilie divorced in 1918, the Faber business trust had transferred headship of the company to Alexander, who even kept the Fabers' renovated palace at Stein.
In 1927 Alexander resumed his original name for himself, his second wife, and their son, Count Radulf. His issue by the first marriage had never been considered dynasts of the House of Castell, but they inherited the vast Faber fortune and continue to include Castell in their name with the comital title.
Various branches of the family continued to flourish, but the Faber and Faber-Castell corporate holdings usually passed to the eldest male of the patrilineage. Alexander and Ottilie's only son, Count Roland von Faber-Castell, inherited headship of the Faber-Castell companies from his parents. His eldest son, :de:Hubertus von Faber-Castell|Hubertus von Faber-Castell left the family business after a dispute with his father and was succeeded by his younger brother, :de:Anton-Wolfgang Graf von Faber-Castell|Anton-Wolfgang. As the first born, Count Hubertus inherited the majority of the family's assets, yet sold most of his company shares to his successor, after leaving the company. Count Hubertus joined his maternal family business Sal Oppenheim. The company stakes made Count Hubertus von Faber-Castell a billionaire. Count Anton Wolfgang von Faber-Castell, who left a son, Charles Alexander von Faber-Castell of his 1986 marriage to Carla Mathilde Lamesch. His widow, Mary Hogan, continues as managing director of Faber-Castell's cosmetics division. His three daughters, Countess Katharina Elizabeth, and twins Countess Sarah Angela and Countess Victoria Maria, succeed him.
Hubertus's daughter, Countess Floria-Franziska von Faber-Castell, was married at Kronberg on 17 May 2003 in a much-publicised wedding attended by members of Europe's reigning families, to Donatus, Hereditary Prince of Hesse, a great-grandson of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and a grand-nephew of Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark, sister of Britain's prince consort Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. His second daughter is German-Swiss philanthropist Caroline von Faber-Castell, who is married to Düsseldorf-based entrepreneur Michael Gotzens. Patrick von Faber-Castell publicly married German actress Mariella Ahrens in Faber-Castell Castle, near Nuremberg.

Family members