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The founder Kaspar Faber (b. 1730, d. 1784)

 

The cabinet-maker Kaspar Faber produced his own pencils in Stein and sold them in the market at Nuremberg from 1761. This date is considered to be the founding of the company.

 
 

Anton Wilhelm Faber (b. 1758, d. 1810)

 

In the second generation of the company was known as A.W. after Kaspar's son Anton Wilhelm who took over in 1784. The little family firm flourished; Anton Wilhelm was able to buy land and increase the rate of production. This was a phase of expansion. 

 
 

Georg Leonhard Faber (b. 1788, d.1839)

 

Georg Leonhard Faber headed the pencil factory from 1810. These were very difficult times, politically and economically, and he was unable to prevent business from falling off. 

 
 

Lothar von Faber (b. 1817, d. 1896)

 

Following the death of his father Georg in 1839, Lothar Faber took over the pencil factory in Stein at the age of 22. After gaining experience by working for stationers in Paris and London, the major international trading centres of the day, he began to put the family business on quite a new footing. He was a visionary possessed with an iron will. His goal: "to rise to the highest position by producing the best that can be made in the whole world". 

 

It was he who developed the modern quality pencil, defined standards for length and grades of hardness that still apply, and was also the first to make hexagonal pencils. He marked his pencils with the name A.W. Faber - and so the world's first branded writing implement was born. 

 

Lothar was the first pencil manufacturer to travel to all important European countries, returning with full order books. With one eye to the future, he visited the New World, founding his first sales company in New York in 1849. There followed subsidiaries in London (1851) and Paris (1855) and agencies in Vienna (1872) and St. Petersburg (1874).

 

By acquiring a graphite mine in Siberia in 1856, he secured the company a source of the best graphite then available. Five years later he celebrated the centenary by opening a factory in Geroldsgrun in north Bavaria. This originally made school slates but later became one of the world's major producers of slide rules.

 

The A.W. Faber range now gained world-wide recognition, thanks to the international sales network that Lothar successfully set up in the course of a few decades. As a result, there were many cheap imitators. Lothar submitted a petition to parliament in 1874 "for the creation of a law to protect brand names"; he thus counts as a pioneer of manufacturers' rights. He also made a name for himself as a co-founder of the Bavarian Trade Museum in 1869 (now the Trades Institution), the Union Bank of Nuremberg in 1871, and the Nuremberg Life Assurance in 1844 (now the Nuremberg Insurance Group).

 

Surviving records also show that he had a high degree of social commitment. In 1844 he founded one of the world's first company health insurance schemes, and in 1851 one of the first children's kindergartens in Germany. He also financed the building of apartment blocks for his workers, schools, and a church, amongst other projects.

 

In 1867 Napoleon III sent a delegation of experts to Stein to study Faber's exemplary social foundations. In recognition of his services to society and the economy, Lothar von Faber, as he now became known, was given a life peerage in 1861 and made a hereditary baron in 1881. In 1865 he was nominated privy councillor to the Bavaria crown, that title also becoming hereditary in 1891. 

 

 
 
 

Wilhelm von Faber (b. 1851, d. 1893)

 

Lothar von Faber's only child Wilhelm entered the company in 1873 and was designated successor in 1877. He lost his two sons Lothar and Alfred Wilhelm at the ages of three and four. Wilhelm, a sensitive and artistically inclined person, suffered greatly from this loss and himself died tragically young at the age of just 42. He left a widow, Bertha, and three daughters: Ottilie, Sophie, and Hedwig. His elderly father Lothar again had to take over control until his own death in 1896. Then the A.W. Faber company was run by Lothar's widow Ottilie until the turn of the century.  

 
 

Count Alexander von Faber-Castell (b. 1866, d. 1928)

 

In 1898 Wilhelm von Faber's eldest daughter and designated heir Ottilie von Faber (b. 1877, d. 1944) married Count Alexander Alexander zu Castell-Rudenhausen, a member of one of Germany's oldest noble families. Her grandfather Lothar had stipulated in his will that all his successors must bear the name Faber. And so the new company name Faber-Castell came about. Count Alexander took over the business in 1900.

 

Three years later the foundation stone was laid for the grand Neues Schloss (new castle), to plans by Theodor von Kramer who was the director of the Bavarian Trade Museum. This is now a unique monument to the architectural styles of historicism and art nouveau. It was built within sight of the factory and linked by a tower and arcade to an existing smaller mansion. The Altes Schloos (old castle), a much-modified renaissance villa, had been built for Lothar Faber in 1845 by the Bavarian court architect Friedrich Burklein.

 

In 1905 Count Alexander introduced the famous green Castell 9000 pencil. As a symbol to a new high quality that would hold its own against all comers, he chose the picture of the 'jousting knights' of the pencil. In stylized form they are again part of the Faber-Castell trademark.

 

After the Great War the Faber-Castell subsidiary in the USA was confiscated and auctioned off. Similar fates befell the sales organizations in London, Paris, and St. Petersburg. In 1920s Count Alexander built an extensive new production plant in Stein. The three-storey complex, light and airy, was an exemplary modern factory.     

      

 
 

Count Roland von Faber-Castell (b. 1905, d. 1978)

 

After the death of Count Alexander in 1928, his son Roland succeeded as head of the company. In 1931/32 Faber-Castell took over the Johann Faber pencil factory that had been founded by Lothar von Faber's brother Johann, and with it the Brazilian subsidiary Lapis Johann Faber in Sao Carlos. In 1950 Faber-Castell acquired the Osmia company and began selling fountain pens under the Faber-Castell name. However, production ceased in 1975.

 

New foreign subsidiaries were founded from 1960 to 1977, including a sales company in France (1960), factories in Austria and Australia (both in 1962) and in Argentina and Peru (both in 1965). Two years later Count Roland was able to buy back a majority share in Lapis Johann SA of Sao Carlos, which had been confiscated in the Second World War. This is now the largest factory for colour pencils.    

 
 

Count Anton Wolfgang von Faber-Castell (b. 1941)

 

Count Anton Wolfgang von Faber-Castell took over in 1978, and the same year began producing wood-cased pencils for the cosmetic industry.

 

The next two decades saw the founding of a series of foreign subsidiaries and factories, including Malaysia (1978), which has since become the world's largest india-rubber eraser factory (1980), a production plant in Indonesia (1990), and a logistics centre in the Czech Republic (1996). 

 

In 1997 Faber-Castell acquired a majority holding in Tecnacril, a manufacturer of technical drawing instruments in Colombia. In India it set up a sales company in Mumbai (Bombay) and a factory in Goa. A manufacturing and packaging centre in Canton, China, became the 15th Faber-Castell production site in 2001.

 

Environmental aspects are coming more and more to the fore in company policy. A unique forestry project was initiated in south-eastern Brazil in the mid-1980s and has since been consistently and logically developed into a model project in both ecological and economic terms. In 1992 Faber-Castell became first (and still the only) pencil manufacturer to introduce environment-friendly water-based paint technology in German. Six years later the company set up a production site in Costa Rica for slats and pencils made of ecologically certified timber.

 

In 1993 Faber-Castell introduced a new strategic plan for its corporate and brand-name image, restructuring the range into five logical fields of competence. With the "Playing and Learning" field becoming increasingly significant all over the world, in 1999 Faber-Castell acquired "Creativity for Kids", the US market leader in creative kits. This extended the range of products and also provided new retail outlets. In March 2000 Faber-Castell and the IG Metall trade union jointly signed an extensive social charter, applicable world-wide and following the guidelines for the ILO (International Labour Organization). In July 2003 Faber-Castell joined the United Nations' Global Compact schemes. This aims at providing common global standards, among employers, especially in the fields of human rights, factory standards, and the environment.