A Gap Wider Than The Atlantic

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 4; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy this article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

Note: this is the second installment in a series of articles documenting the history of the Eberhard Faber Pencil Co.  Part one of this series is posted at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/01/so-many-fabers.html).

After the death of Eberhard Faber, founder of the American Faber pencil operations, his two sons – Eberhard, named for his father, and Lothar, named for his uncle, head of the German firm of A.W. Faber – really grabbed the bull by the horns.   According to the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District Designation Report prepared by the New York City Historic Landmarks Commission, only two of the surviving buildings which now form the Faber industrial complex were constructed prior to the firm’s relocation to Brooklyn in the summer of 1872: 100 West Street, into which the company first moved, and 98 West Street, built according to the Commission around 1870.   Beginning in 1881, the brothers embarked on building projects which eventually filled an entire city block with the company’s facilities:

As the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company’s star rose – literally, as the star within a diamond logo was placed all over the firm’s buildings – tensions were building between the American and German operations.  Although I haven’t found a record of exactly what those tensions were, developments in the Germany contingent certainly suggest what happened..

In 1881, Lothar Faber was ennobled by the Kingdom of Bavaria and thereafter was known as Baron Lothar Von Faber – at least in Germany.  In 1893, the Baron lost his only son, Baron William von Fabe:  for the first time since 1761, there would be no male heir to whom the great A.W. Faber pencilmaking concern could be passed:

Just three years later, on July 26, 1896, Baron Lothar von Faber died, and already, details of the German company’s history are becoming confused (note that A.W. Faber, not Kaspar, is credited with establishing the firm, and the year is wrong):

Next in the royal Faber line, set to inherit the fortune of the house von Faber and assume command of the company, was Lothar’s granddaughter, the 19-year-old Baroness Ottilie von Faber, born in 1877.  According to Wikipedia, in order to keep the pencil works in the hands of the Faber family, a marriage was arranged with Count Alexander Friedrich Lothar von Castell-Rüdenhausen.  Count Alexander, given a choice between nobility and control of the Faber family fortune, renounced his title like a hot rock and was awarded a new title of the Count von Faber-Castell.  Even though he and Ottilie divorced in 1918, it was Count Alexander von Faber-Castell, who kept the company and even the Castle Stein.

I have a hard time writing the preceding sentences without sarcasm.  Assuming that Eberhard and his progeny had any American qualities rub off on them, it’s not hard to see the widening rift fueled by the German side of the family increasingly acting royal, culminating in 1898 with an outsider assuming control of the company for the first time in more than a century and, with all of the pomposity of a nineteenth-century European patrician, making some very royal sounding, easily ignored pronouncements.

One of the first of these was that, while the German firm changed its name to Faber-Castell to reflect the family’s new title, the American firm could not use the name “Faber” alone in connection with the sale of pencils.  The royal pronouncement was embodied in a legal contract, drawn up by A.W. Faber and signed by A.W. Faber and John Eberhard Faber, as a copartner in the Eberhard Faber partnership, on March 16, 1898.  The Eberhard Faber Pencil Company was formally incorporated in 1898.

To illustrate how much of a gap had developed between the two houses, though, a legal dispute arose over the meaning of the contract, the source of which was in the translation of the agreement from the original German into English.  The American Fabers thought that it was permissible under the contract to stamp “E. Faber” on the company’s products.

The German house, however, insisted that preceding the word “Faber” with just the initial “E.” violated the contract, and sued Eberhard Faber for the alleged infraction in 1904:

Note that after a mere six years of marriage into the family, “Alexander von Faber-Castell” is already described as “the sole surviving member of the copartnership of A.W. Faber.”  In 1904, he was initially awarded a permanent injunction prohibiting John Eberhard Faber  from stamping pencils “Faber” or even “E.Faber,” and also awarded all profits from pencils stamped “E. Faber.”

On appeal, the Courts reversed this decision in an opinion published May 28, 1905.  “We think, however, that irrespective of the alleged inaccuracy in translation the defendant fully complied with the contract when he stamped his manufactures E. Faber,” the Court held.

Undaunted, Alexander von Faber-Castell appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which issued a terse, one-word decision on December 4, 1905: “Denied.”   Von Faber-Castell v. Faber, 199 U.S. 609 (1905).  That was, literally, the final word.  Whatever fuzzy family relationship existed prior to 1898 between the German house of A.W. Faber and the American Eberhard Faber Pencil Company was gone.

The next installment in this series is posted at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/01/end-of-dynasty.html).

So Many Fabers

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 4; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy this article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

Note:  this is the first in a series of articles documenting the history of the Eberhard Faber Pencil Co.

I’ll admit to neglecting Eberhard Faber in my collecting.  Sure, they had offices and a factory in New York, but I keep telling myself I limit my collection to American pencils . . . and after all, Faber is a German company, right?

During my research regarding the “Faber Skylines” from yesterday’s article (http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/01/maybe-even-closer-than-we-think.html), I’ve finally figured out how Eberhard Faber, A.W. Faber and Faber-Castell are all related to each other.  The story is confused by the fact that all factions of the Faber clan were involved in the family business, all had a propensity to name their kids after themselves (at least four “Eberhards” and two “Lothar/Lothairs”), and all were at times trying to be confused with each other and trying not to be confused with each other – whenever it was convenient to do so.

According to Faber-Castell’s website, the Faber family got into the business of making pencils in 1761 when cabinetmaker Kaspar (sometimes spelled Caspar) Faber began making pencils in Stein, Germany.   Upon Kaspar’s death, his son, Anton Wilhelm Faber, took over the business, which is where the “A.W. Faber” name comes from.

Georg Leonhard Faber, Anton’s son, took over control of the company, but he continued to do business under the A.W. Faber name.  He ran the company until his death in 1839; at that time, one of his three sons, Lothar, took over the company.  A second son, Johann, worked alongside Lothar in Stein.

And then there was the youngest . . . Johann Eberhard Faber, born on December 6, 1822, who came to New York.  The official story, from the other side of the Atlantic, is that Eberhard was sent here in 1849 to set up American offices for A.W. Faber, but I doubt that official version.  If it were true, you’d expect to see trade announcements and listings in the New York directories beginning in 1849 or at least, in 1850.  There aren’t.  In fact, the first mention I can find of Eberhard in the new world is an announcement of a limited partnership he formed in 1852 with a man named John R. Boiken, for the manufacture of “Pocket-books”:

He does appear in Trow’s 1852 directory selling lead pencils at 133 William Street, but there’s no indication he’s selling on behalf of A.W.:

The 1853-1854 Trow’s directory lists him at 113 William, which I think might be a misprint, but there, for the first time, he’s listed as the sole agent for A.W. Faber’s pencils . . .

. . . as well as selling other stuff.  If Eberhard Faber was in the U.S. solely at his older brother’s beck and call to sell A.W. Faber’s pencils, it doesn’t look like Eberhard got the memo – or if he did, he was far enough away to ignore it.  In 1855, whether he was reined in by the family or otherwise, advertisements start appearing for the A.W. Faber “manufacturer’s depot” at 133 William Street:

When the American Civil War began in April, 1861, shipping from Europe became more complicated.  All the sources I read agree that in 1861, Eberhard Faber “built” a factory in the United States, on the site of what is now the United Nations; one source indicated new import tariffs might have been a contributing factor in that decision, and George Petrosky’s “The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance” suggests that the factory was built with the financial support of the German Fabers and manufactured only those grades of pencils which were more heavily taxed, with the more expensive grades being imported.

Although sources after the fact hailed this as the first pencil manufacturing facility in the United States, there doesn’t appear to have been much fanfare at the time about its establishment or operation.  In fact, I found nothing about Faber’s first facility until the New York Herald reported that the factory burned down on the morning of May 29, 1872:

The article indicates that Faber lost $150,000.00 in equipment and stock, and that Faber had 261 employees working in the 100-foot-square, four-story building – that he was renting from a “John Ahsbahs.”

Faber, though was anything but down.  The following day, he published a notice about his future plans:

“An impression is conveyed,” Faber says, “that my 300 employees will be out employment.  This I desire to correct.”  Faber indicates – just two days after the fire – that his new factory was “already secured and which will be in running order in a few weeks.”  The man was true to his word: he acquired the building known as 100 West Street  from Francis N. Gove on June 24, 1872, according to the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District Designation Report prepared by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.  By September 8, 1872, the facility appears to have been operational, and the H.H. Seavey arrived at the Port of New York from Faber’s lumber production facility in Cedar Keys, Florida, laden with cedar logs destined to become pencils:

Eberhard Faber died in 1879.  His obituary was picked up in the national press – here’s a copy from the Janesville, Wisconsin Daily Gazette:

This is where Faber’s history becomes really confusing.  True to tradition, the American Faber business was handed down to Eberhard Faber’s sons.  The older, named Eberhard Faber after the head of the American Fabers, took over the sales and marketing; the younger, named Lothar Faber after his uncle, the head of the German Fabers, became president of the company, according to this biographical sketch in the 1910 Cyclopedia of American Biography:  

Note that while Faber’s obituary says Eberhard Faber first operated “as an agency to the main house in Germany,” the 1910 sketch says that he “established himself in business under his own name.”  I believe both are true.  However, as his children developed and grew his business in the decades to come, the distance between the two families would widen.

Part two of this series is posted at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-gap-wider-than-atlantic.html.

Just Because It Exists

Condition is everything, some will say. Pass on an example with issues and wait for a clean one – so goes the conventional widsom. "They didn’t just make one," I’ve even been known to say.

But when it’s just a buck or two in a junk box, and it fills in a little bit of a story I’d like to tell, I don’t play according to Hoyle:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 3, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

One Whale of a Pencil

I’ve had this one for a couple of years, with no leads (that’s "leeeds," not the stuff you put in the thing) to date:

The mechanism is Victorian, with a simple slider and a screw drive. If it weren’t made of something that appears to be bone, I’d suspect that the works were made by the Eagle Pencil Company.

In addition to the different barrel material, this one has an interesting imprint:

"Melville’s Patent Solid Ink."

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 3, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

. . . And The Ones I Left Behind

I didn’t buy everything I liked at Andy Beliveau’s table in Philly that I wanted to, for two reasons. First, I couldn’t afford to. Second, some of them weren’t for sale. This one fit into both categories:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

The Fabers That Slipped Under The Radar

In general, between Joe, Mike and I, we were pretty successful in obtaining the key pencils we wanted from Tanya Hile’s listings. But when it came to anything made by Eberhard Faber, all three of us were generally skunked; someone out there in cyberland likes their Fabers, even more than the three of us did. And it wasn’t just one person – several different bidders were really liking the Fabers! So while I’ve got a lot of weird and wonderful things to show you, I don’t have much in the Faber department.

Not much, that is, that’s actually marked Faber . . . Take this one, for example . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

These Slither

There's a lot of plastics that have been nicknamed "snakeskin" or "lizard skin" by collectors.  But Eberhard Faber takes the cake with these . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

Now THAT'S What I'm Talking About!

Remember my tired little Faber Pony Clip?  Well, at the Scott Antique Market in February, I finally found one that was intact - in fact mint - shown here alongside a smaller version found at the Baltimore Show . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

This One's Got Something for Everyone

One of the questions Paul Erano asked me during my recent interview for the Pennant magazine was about how pencil collectors are different from pen collectors.  My response was that they are no more different than a Sheaffer collector is from a Parker collector; while a Sheaffer collector understands and appreciates a Parker collector's passion, Parkers just aren't a Sheaffer collector's cup of tea.

Among pencil collectors, there are a few cups of tea that rarely get shared.  I'm primarily a mechanical pencil guy -- I get a kick out of the goofy and complex varieties of machines designed to push lead out of a tube.  

I distinguish mechanical pencils from "leadholders," which in my mind are cases which grip a piece of lead but have no means other than gravity or the push of a finger to propel the lead.   Leadholders tend to attract the scientific and technical drafting types.  Check out http://www.leadholder.com/ for more information.

A third group of pencil fans are the wood pencil collectors.  At wood pencil shows, I'm told you can see displays of things built out of the pencils, like Lincoln Logs.  I've never been to one of these shows but I'm going to have to.

There's just not much overlap in the interests of mechanical pencils collectors, leadholder-philes, and wood pencil guys.  Any given pencil will usually appeal to only one out of the three groups. 

Except, perhaps, for this one . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company