Talk:Faber-Castell

Notability
The article does not assert any notablility and as such should be deleted. But the de-wiki counterpart makes a number of assertions a) being the the company that establishes "BleistiftNorm", b) their factory in São Carlos is supposed to be the pencil factory with the largest output in the world. Both claims would need to be sourced though. Agathoclea 07:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Faber-Castell.svg
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BetacommandBot 08:35, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Why does this article include paragraphs about the Castell family that seem to have no bearing on the company? I wanted to know a bit about the history of the Faber company. The details of people's social rank and such aren't even tangentially related. That kind of biographical information should be moved to a page about the specific person in question, or mentioned in passing rather than explained in detail. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.129.100.211 (talk) 08:14, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20091216162606/http://www.faber-castell.de/13123/Products/Office-Products/index_news.aspx to http://www.faber-castell.de/13123/Products/Office-Products/index_news.aspx
 * Added archive https://archive.is/20140812160555/http://www.faber-castell.de/en-DE/company/fc-logo to http://www.faber-castell.de/en-DE/company/fc-logo
 * Added archive https://archive.is/20140812160556/http://www.faber-castell.de/en-DE/company/fc-experience to http://www.faber-castell.de/en-DE/company/fc-experience

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External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Faber-Castell. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20091215112036/http://www.faber-castell.de/21364/Products/Products-for-Fineart-and-Design/ART-GRAPHIC/index.aspx to http://www.faber-castell.de/21364/Products/Products-for-Fineart-and-Design/ART-GRAPHIC/index.aspx
 * Added archive https://archive.is/20140812160047/http://www.faber-castell.de/en-DE/company/facts-and-figures to http://www.faber-castell.de/en-DE/company/facts-and-figures
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110714140128/http://www.faber-castell.us/19244/Products/Refills/index_ebene2.aspx to http://www.faber-castell.us/19244/Products/Refills/index_ebene2.aspx

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Confusing family stuff
1st, does all this genealogy need to be in the article? 2nd, if this is deemed a necessary inclusion, that last bit takes the cake. The way it's written doesn't ring right. A female of the family - who doesn't seem to have any connection to the business - is said to have married a grand-nephew (isn't the more common term great-nephew btw?) of one of Prince Philip's 4 sisters. Wouldn't the man then also be The Duke of Edinburgh's grand-nephew? Why is a random sister who is not terribly notable included?

Obviously this man is the great-grandson of either his sister Margarita or his sister Theodora, as Sophie is the one mentioned as the great-aunt, & his pregnant sister Cecile, her husband, & their 2 sons were killed in a plane crash during WWII, & their daughter, who was not with them, died a few years later of an illness, so Cecile left no descendents. Why not just mention which of the other 2 sisters the man is descended from, rather than going about this in such a convoluted fashion just to mention Prince Philip? It could just as easily say he was the great-grandson of [fill in the blank], a sister of Prince Philip, instead of mentioning one of the great-aunts at random.

I came here expecting to see more than a brief paragraph regarding the history of the Faber-Castell pencil industry, not to read a rather large & confusing section on the family. There needs to be more about the company & less about the rellies. A disappointing read for an encyclopedia entry. ScarletRibbons (talk) 08:39, 31 December 2018 (UTC)


 * PS>Was curious so did a bit of quick research. If the gentleman in question was a great-nephew of Princess Sophie of Greece, then it had to be via her marriage to Prince Christoph of Hesse, as she is the only sister of Prince Philip with any connection to Hesse. Therefore, the connection to Philip is tenuous at best, & certainly not notable. I'm going to remove the mention of this marriage as the lady in question has not been shown to be involved in the family business. ScarletRibbons (talk) 09:17, 31 December 2018 (UTC)


 * FactStraight, if you were going to revert the edit, it might have been nice to discuss it on the talk page. I do not agree that that last paragraph was necessary as there is no mention that these people are involved in the family business & they are not notable. I've done a bit of grammatical & structural tidying & removed copious WP:OVERLINK in the interim. Feel free to revert all that while you're at it. I don't do edit wars. I merely stumbled across an article that needed a bit of tidying. ScarletRibbons (talk) 10:03, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Seriously, FactStraight? I cannot believe you put all that WP:OVERLINK back in! See MOS:OVERLINK & MOS:REPEATLINK. You certainly are a little terrier with this article, aren't you? ScarletRibbons (talk) 10:23, 31 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I apologize for the edit conflict, which resulted in restoration of more material than I intended. The article is a history of a family which rose rapidly from commercial wealth into the Continental nobility through both business acumen and arranged marriages, and which continues to play a leading role in the international enterprise it founded. It is not just a history of the Faber-Castell company, nor an account of that corporation's current financial holdings and dealings -- although the article should, indeed, contain much more info on the latter matters, and I do not know why that has not been added. But this article belongs to the category of families like the Fuggers, Rothschilds and Thurn und Taxis, whose aristocratic status and marital connections distinguish them from the business tycoons whose descendants remained commoners, albeit rich. FactStraight (talk) 10:54, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

heavy chemistry???
In the section discussing the companies various manufacturing locations, a number of them mention "Products related to heavy chemistry," but it's not at all clear exactly what "heavy chemistry" means in this context...

The entry for the Peru factory, for example, reads:

"Products related to heavy chemistry (erasers,rules and writing equipment) and markers (finetip and colour pens)"

Of course some chemical processes are involved in producing erasers, rulers, and other writing equipment, but is this chemistry "heavier" (whatever exactly that means here) than that which goes into making markers?

I did a Google search for "heavy chemistry," but didn't find anything relevant. Most of the results were for a movie. I suppose certain more difficult, energy-intensive, higher-temperature, or hazardous/toxic chemical processes might be described as "heavy," but again, the meaning is not at all clear, and doesn't seem to be in widespread use.

A better description might simply be something like "school and office supplies." -2003:CA:871E:36A9:55E2:1B0D:61D2:165F (talk) 23:54, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

History Section Additions
Hi all. I'm new here so let me know if I'm doing anything wrong!

I redid the History section of the article, and it seems a significant enough change that I'm posting it here before putting it in the article. If anyone's paying attention to this page, hopefully you all can help make any fixes/improvements/comments/whatever.

Here it is:

History Faber-Castell was founded in 1761 in Stein, Germany, by cabinet maker Kaspar Faber (1730–84) as the A.W. Faber Company. It has remained in the Faber family for eight generations. The company expanded under Kaspar Faber's great-grandson, Johann Lothar Freiherr von Faber (1817–96), and his wife, Ottilie. Lothar opened branches in New York (1849), London (1851), Paris (1855), and expanded into Vienna (1872) and St. Petersburg (1874). The company also began offering products other than pencils, opening a factory in Geroldsgrün, Bavaria, where slide rules were produced, a slate factory in Geroldsgrün, and producing ink and paint in Noisy-le-Sec, near Paris.

To combat counterfeit A.W. Faber products, Lothar petitioned the Reichstag to put in place trademark protections in Germany. As a result, the Act on Trade Mark Protection came into effect in 1875, and protections were expanded in the 1894 Act on the Protection of Trade Marks. Lothar's first trademark was registered in 1894, with the registration number DE 43. Outside of Germany, the trademark was also registered in the United States (where it was one of the earliest ever registered), Russia, England, Spain, France, and Italy during Lothar's time at the head of the company.

In 1898, Lothar's granddaughter and heiress, Ottilie "Tilly" von Faber, married Count Alexander zu Castell-Rüdenhausen, and the couple took on the surname of Faber-Castell. Seven years later, the company began producing a new range of pencils; this line was called "Castell", and it gained a recognizable brand image, including the green colour of the pencils (chosen because it was the colour of Alexander's regiment), a logo depicting a sketch of a castle, and the motif, used on packaging and in advertising, of two jousting knights. This last motif originated with a painting, commissioned by Alexander, of two knights jousting with pencils, and would eventually become the inspiration behind the company's current logo. 1908 saw the release of the Polychromos coloured pencils, which continue to be made and widely used today.

As a German company, several of the Faber-Castell's foreign subsidiaries and branches in Allied countries were confiscated during World War I. Among them, the Faber-Castell properties in New York and Paris were eventually sold off. Nevertheless, the company survived and saw further growth following the war with the construction of new, expanded manufacturing facilities and new company acquisitions. The company's name was also officially changed following Alexander's death in 1829, becoming A.W. Faber "Castell" Bleistiftfabrik (Pencil Company). Alexander's son, Roland von Faber-Castell, took over as head of the company after his father's death, at the beginning of the Great Depression of the 1930s. To mitigate the effects of this downturn, the company entered into an agreement with Johann Faber, the eponymous pencil company founded by Lothar's brother, in 1932. The two shared resources in an effort to operate more efficiently and bring down their costs. In the following years, Roland gradually bought up shares of Johann Faber until it was fully acquired (along with its Brazilian subsidiary) in 1942. Johann Faber was the company which originally produced the Goldfaber line of colored pencils, which were made by Faber-Castell following the acquisition. Faber-Castell also acquired the fountain pen maker Osmia during this period. Also in 1942, the company went through another name change, becoming A. W. Faber-Castell.

In the years following World War II, the company expanded internationally into Ireland, Austria, Peru, Australia, and Argentina, as well as re-acquiring several subsidiaries which had been lost in wartime. It also began offering new products, such as a mechanical pencil, ballpoint pens, plastic slide rules (instead of wood), and an India ink drawing pen. The Faber-Castell logo was changed in 1950 to an oval design, incorporating the Faber-Castell family crest and the green color which the company had been using since 1905.

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.

I removed this:

"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."

...because I couldn't find any good sources for this, and the reference it links to here doesn't actually support it, and sort of seems to contradict it. But if I'm wrong here or I've missed something, please let me know!\

I never thought I'd spend this much time thinking about the history of a pencil company, yet here we are :)

LittleGoldenFlower (talk) 12:39, 11 December 2022 (UTC) LittleGoldenFlower (talk) 12:39, 11 December 2022 (UTC)


 * It's been a while... some bits still sound awkward to me, but I can't quite figure out how to fix them right now, so I'll go ahead and add it in. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, I guess :P

--LittleGoldenFlower (talk) 00:11, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Connector pen into Faber-Castell
Connector pen marked for WP:PROD, but may have content that can be merged to Faber-Castell company article. Ost (talk) 14:49, 28 February 2023 (UTC)