--- title: "Nuremberg's Pencil Makers: From 1662 to Faber-Castell" canonical: "https://stationerytimes.com/guides/nuremberg-pencil-makers/" description: "Why Nuremberg became the pencil capital: guild records from 1662, Stein's Faber workshop, Conté's clay lead, and how Staedtler, Lyra and Schwan-STABILO began." category: "Stories" published: 2026-10-21 updated: 2026-10-21 author: "Ellis Penhale" publisher: "Stationery Times" sources: 17 organizations: - name: "Faber-Castell AG" country: "Germany" founded: "1761" brands: ["Faber-Castell", "Graf von Faber-Castell"] source: "https://www.faber-castell.de/-/media/Faber-Castell-new/press-2021/PM_NeueInhaberstrategie_280721_DE_LH.ashx?sc_lang=de-DE" - name: "STAEDTLER SE" country: "Germany" founded: "1835" parent: "STAEDTLER-Stiftung" parent_since: "1997" brands: ["Staedtler"] source: "https://www.staedtler.com/de/de/entdecken/staedtler-zahlen-und-fakten/" - name: "Schwan-STABILO (Schwanhäußer Industrie Holding GmbH & Co. KG)" country: "Germany" founded: "1855" brands: ["Stabilo"] source: "https://www.schwan-stabilo.com/de/unternehmensgruppe/meilensteine" - name: "Johann-Froescheis Lyra Bleistift-Fabrik GmbH & Co. KG (LYRA)" country: "Germany" founded: "1806" parent: "F.I.L.A. Group" parent_since: "2008" source: "https://www.fila.it/de/en/history/" --- # Nuremberg's Pencil Makers: From 1662 to Faber-Castell > Nuremberg has more pencil makers because its trade is documented from 1662 and grew for 200 years. The city's guild rules limited the craft to twelve masters, so new workshops opened in villages outside the walls, such as Stein, where Kaspar Faber started in 1761. Staedtler (1835), Lyra (1806) and Schwan-STABILO (1855) grew from the same cluster. - URL: https://stationerytimes.com/guides/nuremberg-pencil-makers/ - Category: Stories - Author: Ellis Penhale - Published: 2026-10-21 - Updated: 2026-10-21 ![Timeline drawn as a long yellow pencil with eight short pencils standing on it: 1662 Staedtler, 1731 guild order, 1761 Faber in Stein, 1795 Conté clay lead, 1806 Lyra, 1835 J.S. Staedtler, 1839 Lothar Faber, 1855 Schwan](https://stationerytimes.com/images/raster/nuremberg-pencil-makers-16x9.png) *Eight milestones of the Nuremberg and Stein pencil trade, spaced evenly rather than to scale in time.* Original drawing (SVG): https://stationerytimes.com/images/nuremberg-pencil-makers-cover.svg. Drawings © 2026 Stationery Times, reusable with credit under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ## Key takeaways - The Nuremberg council first mentions pencil makers on February 28, 1662, when it refused Friedrich Staedtler the right to make pencils and assigned the craft to the joiners. - From 1731 the city's pencil makers had their own guild order, limited to 12 masters; from 1711 to 1785 only three family names held those places: Jäger, Jenig and Städtler. - By about 1785 only 3 pencil makers still worked inside the city, against 16 unlicensed workshops outside the walls in places such as Stein, Fürth, Schwabach and Gostenhof. - Conté filed his graphite-and-clay pencil patent in Paris on January 7, 1795; a Nuremberg Staedtler made trial pencils by the clay-based 'Viennese method' in 1820. - By 1882 the Nuremberg pencil factories employed 1,307 workers in 22 plants, 361 of them at A.W. Faber in Stein, according to an 1893 doctoral study. ## Why are so many pencil makers from Nuremberg? **Nuremberg has been a pencil town since at least 1662, and the trade's own rules pushed it to spread around the city instead of dying out.** The council's records name pencil makers that year, the craft got its own guild order in 1731, and when that guild closed itself to outsiders, new workshops opened just outside the walls, in places like Stein, where Faber-Castell still is. Four of the big German makers come out of that cluster: Faber-Castell (Stein, 1761), Lyra (1806), STAEDTLER (1835) and Schwan-STABILO (1855). Most of the early record comes from one source, an 1893 doctoral study by Eduard Schwanhäusser built on Nuremberg's council and craft-office minutes. He was the son of Schwan's owner, so where his account touches his own family's firm, we lean on other sources. | Year | What happened | Source | |---|---|---| | 1662 | Nuremberg council refuses Friedrich Staedtler the right to make pencils and assigns the craft to the joiners (February 28) | Schwanhäusser 1893; STAEDTLER | | 1675 | Friedrich Staedtler gains Nuremberg citizenship | STAEDTLER | | 1731 | Pencil makers get their own guild order, separate from the joiners; 12 masters | Schwanhäusser 1893 | | 1761 | Kaspar Faber starts making pencils in Stein | Faber-Castell | | 1795 | Conté files his graphite-and-clay pencil patent in Paris (January 7) | INPI | | 1802 | Hardtmuth patents graphite-and-clay lead | KOH-I-NOOR HARDTMUTH | | 1806 | Johann Froescheis takes over a Nuremberg workshop, the start of LYRA | F.I.L.A. | | 1835 | Johann Sebastian Staedtler gets his factory permit (October 9) | STAEDTLER | | 1839 | Lothar Faber takes over the Stein factory | Faber-Castell | | 1855 | Großberger & Kurz get a royal permit to make pencils | Schwan-STABILO | | 1865 | Gustav Adam Schwanhäußer buys Großberger & Kurz | Schwan-STABILO | | 1882 | 1,307 workers in 22 Nuremberg-area pencil factories | Schwanhäusser 1893 | ## When did pencil making start in Nuremberg? **The first official mention of Nuremberg pencil makers is from 1662, though Schwanhäusser thinks they worked there earlier.** On February 28, 1662, the council ruled that Friedrich Staedtler's pencil making was part of the joiners' craft and refused it to him. The joiners argued that a pencil is a wooden case, so it was their trade. STAEDTLER's German history tells the same story from its side: Friedrich Staedtler, baptized on November 17, 1636, made wood-cased graphite pencils from about 1662 despite the council's ban. Baptism records for his children call him a "Bleiweißsteftmacher" (1662), and he gained citizenship in 1675. STAEDTLER calls him the first German pencil maker on record. ## How did the Nuremberg pencil guild work? **It was a closed craft of twelve masters, and in practice a few families held all of the places.** Detailed rules came in 1708, and in August 1731 the pencil makers got their own order and left the joiners. Only a master's son could become a master, a widow could carry on her husband's mark, and from 1711 to 1785 only three names appear as masters: Jäger, Jenig and Städtler. Joining cost more than 33 gulden in fees, plus proof of 100 gulden in assets. Every master could stamp the city eagle next to his own mark to show "Nuremberg work". From 1757 the pencil makers were a full sworn craft with their own sworn masters. ## Why did pencil making spread to Stein and Fürth? **Because the guild shut new makers out, they set up just outside the city walls, where its rules didn't reach.** Schwanhäusser counts only 3 pencil makers left in the city by about 1785, against 16 unlicensed workshops ("Stümpler") outside. He lists Gostenhof, Wöhrd, St. Johannis, Schweinau, Stein, Fürth and Schwabach. Outside the walls, makers could employ women and children and hire as many workers as they liked. Schwanhäusser sees this as the reason they, not the city masters, improved their methods. Stein is where Kaspar Faber, his wife Maria and their son Anton Wilhelm began making pencils in 1761. Anton Wilhelm later bought land at the edge of the village, and the company has had its headquarters there ever since. ## How did Conté's clay lead change Nuremberg pencils? **Mixing graphite with clay let makers use cheaper graphite and set the hardness, and Nuremberg took up the method from 1820.** France's patent office, INPI, says Nicolas-Jacques Conté filed his patent for "crayons artificiels" on January 7, 1795, when war cut France off from English graphite. More clay makes a harder lead and more graphite a softer, blacker one. KOH-I-NOOR HARDTMUTH, now in České Budějovice, says its founding Hardtmuth family patented graphite-and-clay lead in 1802 and graded pencils by hardness. Schwanhäusser says the two methods appeared "at the same time", so who came first is disputed. In 1820, a Nuremberg Städtler made four grades of trial pencils by the "Viennese method" for a local society that promoted industry, and from then on the clay process spread through the city. ## What did Lothar von Faber change? **Lothar Faber turned the Stein workshop into an exporter by selling graded, branded pencils.** In Paris in 1837 he launched the "Polygrades" pencils, black-polished and stamped in gold; Faber-Castell quotes him claiming no maker had sold several lead hardnesses in one case before. He took over the factory when his father died in 1839. Faber-Castell's English history says he stamped the company name on his pencils, "creating the first brand-name pencil", which is the company's own claim. He opened a New York branch in 1849, then London in 1851 and Paris in 1855, secured rights to a Siberian graphite mine in 1856, and petitioned for a German trademark law in 1874. We found no Faber-Castell page that dates a standard pencil length, thickness or grading system to 1839, a claim often repeated online, so treat it as unverified. His granddaughter's 1898 marriage to Count Alexander zu Castell-Rüdenhausen created the Faber-Castell name, and the [Castell 9000](https://stationerytimes.com/guides/faber-castell-9000/) followed in 1905. ## How did STAEDTLER, Lyra and Schwan-STABILO begin? **All three started as Nuremberg pencil shops in the first half of the 19th century.** Johann Sebastian Staedtler, Friedrich's great-great-grandson, made a sharpenable red pencil public in 1834 and received his factory permit on October 9, 1835. His 1860 catalogue lists colored pencils in 100 shades, and STAEDTLER registered the Mars trademark in 1900; the [Mars Lumograph](https://stationerytimes.com/guides/staedtler-mars-lumograph/) and the [Noris](https://stationerytimes.com/guides/staedtler-noris/) carry it on today. F.I.L.A. says Johann Froescheis took over a Nuremberg workshop in 1806, and his son started mass production in 1848. LYRA registered its lyre trademark in 1868, and F.I.L.A. has owned it since 2008. Schwan-STABILO dates itself to 1855, when Georg Conrad Großberger and Hermann Christian Kurz received a royal permit to make pencils. In 1865 the 25-year-old Gustav Adam Schwanhäußer bought the struggling firm for 32,000 gulden; the company says it had been valued at 70,000 two years earlier. The STABILO name followed in 1925 for a thin-core colored pencil, and the [point 88](https://stationerytimes.com/guides/stabilo-point-88/) fineliner arrived in the 1970s. ## How big did the Nuremberg pencil industry get? **By 1882 it was a factory industry: 1,307 workers in 22 plants, and 1,651 by 1892.** The 1892 figure splits into 1,033 men and 618 women, and home workers came on top. A.W. Faber's Stein factory alone accounted for 361 workers in that count. Faber-Castell's July 29, 2021 release reports more than two billion graphite and colored pencils a year, about 6,500 employees and 555 million euros (about US$622 million) in sales for fiscal 2019/20. STAEDTLER reports about 2,000 employees and 361 million euros (about US$404 million) in 2023 sales. Schwan-STABILO reports about 5,300 employees and about 800 million euros (about US$896 million) as of June 30, 2024. If you want to see the result in your own pencil case, our guide to [pencil grades](https://stationerytimes.com/guides/pencil-grades-explained/) explains the hardness scale these makers built, and the [Polychromos](https://stationerytimes.com/guides/faber-castell-polychromos/) and [Pitt Artist Pen](https://stationerytimes.com/guides/faber-castell-pitt-artist-pen/) guides cover two of Stein's best-known art lines. The Museum Industriekultur in Nuremberg has a pencil workshop rebuilt from old engravings and runs demonstrations in it. ## Frequently asked questions ### Why is Nuremberg famous for pencils? Nuremberg's council records mention pencil makers from 1662, and the craft had its own guild order from 1731. Faber-Castell, Staedtler, Lyra and Schwan-STABILO all started in or next to the city between 1761 and 1855, and all four are still based in or near the city. ### Which pencil company is the oldest? Faber-Castell is the oldest company still run by its founding family: it dates itself to 1761, when Kaspar Faber started making pencils in Stein. Staedtler's family history reaches back to Friedrich Staedtler around 1662, but the company counts its founding from 1835. ### Is Faber-Castell from Nuremberg? Faber-Castell is based in Stein, a separate town on the southwest edge of Nuremberg. The company's own history calls it 'Stein bei Nürnberg', and it has had its headquarters on Anton Wilhelm Faber's site there ever since. ### Who owns Staedtler? Staedtler says the STAEDTLER-Stiftung, a public foundation under German civil law based in Nuremberg, has held all shares of the STAEDTLER group since 1997. The company's current legal entity, per its imprint, is STAEDTLER SE. ### Who owns Lyra pencils? F.I.L.A. – Fabbrica Italiana Lapis ed Affini S.p.A., the Italian group, has owned LYRA since 2008. LYRA still makes more than 14 million wood-cased pencils a year in Nuremberg with about 100 staff, according to F.I.L.A. ### Who invented the modern pencil lead? Nicolas-Jacques Conté filed a patent for 'artificial pencils' of graphite and clay in Paris on January 7, 1795, according to the French patent office INPI. KOH-I-NOOR HARDTMUTH says it patented graphite-and-clay lead in 1802. ### Are Faber-Castell and Staedtler related? No. They are separate companies: Faber-Castell is owned by the Faber-Castell family and Staedtler by the STAEDTLER-Stiftung. Both descend from the same 17th- and 18th-century Nuremberg pencil trade. ## Sources - [Faber-Castell (Germany): Familien- und Unternehmensgeschichte (Kaspar Faber in Stein, Anton Wilhelm, Georg Leonhard)](https://www.faber-castell.de/corporate/historie/familie) - [Faber-Castell (Germany): Freiherr Lothar von Faber, fourth generation (brothers Eberhard and Johann, 1879 Johann Faber firm)](https://www.faber-castell.de/corporate/historie/familie/lothar) - [Faber-Castell corporate kit: 4th Generation 1839–1896, Baron Lothar von Faber (PDF, English)](https://www.faber-castell.com/-/media/Faber-Castell-new/Corporate/History/family/corporate-kit/EN/Lothar-EN.ashx?sc_lang=en-Glob) - [Faber-Castell (Germany): Limitierte „Polygrades“-Edition zu Lothar von Fabers 200. Geburtstag (Polygrades, Paris 1837)](https://www.faber-castell.de/service/presse/polygrades) - [Faber-Castell (Germany): Die Eroberung des Weltmarktes (branches 1849–1877)](https://www.faber-castell.de/corporate/historie/global-player) - [Faber-Castell (Germany): Gräfin Ottilie und Graf Alexander von Faber-Castell (1898 marriage and the Faber-Castell name)](https://www.faber-castell.de/corporate/historie/familie/ottilie-alexander) - [Faber-Castell press release, July 29, 2021: Familie Faber-Castell gibt sich neue Inhaberstrategie (founded 1761, nine generations, 6,500 staff, €555m sales FY 19/20)](https://www.faber-castell.de/-/media/Faber-Castell-new/press-2021/PM_NeueInhaberstrategie_280721_DE_LH.ashx?sc_lang=de-DE) - [STAEDTLER (Germany): Historie – Ideengeber seit Jahrhunderten (Friedrich Staedtler 1662, J.S. Staedtler 1835, Mars 1900)](https://www.staedtler.com/de/de/unternehmen/ueber-staedtler/historie/) - [STAEDTLER (Germany): Zahlen und Fakten (owner, staff, 2023 sales, production sites)](https://www.staedtler.com/de/de/entdecken/staedtler-zahlen-und-fakten/) - [STAEDTLER-Stiftung: Stiftung (all shares held since 1997)](https://www.staedtler.com/stiftung/de/stiftung/) - [Schwan-STABILO: Meilensteine (1855 Großberger & Kurz, 1865 Schwanhäußer, 1925 STABILO, 1929 edge stripes)](https://www.schwan-stabilo.com/de/unternehmensgruppe/meilensteine) - [Schwan-STABILO: 170 Jahre Schwan-STABILO (1855 royal permit, 1865 purchase for 32,000 gulden, staff and sales)](https://www.schwan-stabilo.com/de/170-jahre-schwan-stabilo) - [F.I.L.A.: LYRA history (1806 Johann Froescheis, 1868 trademark, F.I.L.A. since 2008)](https://www.fila.it/de/en/history/) - [KOH-I-NOOR HARDTMUTH: About us (founded 1790; graphite-and-clay lead patented 1802)](https://www.koh-i-noor.cz/en/about-us) - [INPI (French patent office): L'histoire du crayon Conté (patent filed January 7, 1795)](https://www.inpi.fr/l-heure-de-la-rentree-decouvrez-l-histoire-du-crayon-conte) - [Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg (digitized): Eduard Schwanhäusser, Die Nürnberger Bleistiftindustrie von ihren ersten Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (dissertation, Greifswald 1893)](https://online-service.nuernberg.de/viewer/api/v1/records/06193669/tei/en/) - [Museen der Stadt Nürnberg, Museum Industriekultur: Vorführungen in der historischen Bleistiftwerkstatt](https://museen.nuernberg.de/museum-industriekultur/kalender-details/vorfuehrungen-in-der-historischen-bleistiftwerkstatt-430/)