Carl Barks and Faber-Castell

Faber-Castell Higgins Ink, used by Carl Barks (Image © Helnwein)

You might remember my blog post about Carl Barks. I just made an exciting discovery linked to Carl Barks that I’ve got to share with you….

If you follow Sean’s Contrapuntalism blog you already know about his visit to Faber-Castell’s headquarters. He was kind enough to get me one of these magazine, as they can’t be bought in shops. After travelling from Germany to the USA ‘my’ magazine made a trip back to Europe. This time to Great Britain.

In the ‘Tool for the Creatives‘ section the anniversary magazine is giving examples of artists who are using Faber-Castell products. One exciting discovery I made is that Carl Barks was using Faber-Castell products.

As far as I can tell this photo has been taken by Gottfried Helnwein. You can read about his talks with Carl Barks on one of his web sites.

 

The image of the Faber-Castell Higgins Ink has been taken from Faber-Castell’s 250th anniversary magazine. The magazine indicates that the copyright for this photo is with Helnwein. I believe that the use of this image in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

Faber-Castell Videos

In their anniversary year Faber-Castell have been featured in a regional, Franconian television programme. The good news: you can watch these videos outside Germany. The bad news: the videos are in German and there are no English subtitles.

The GvFC Perfect Pencil I always carry in the pocket of my jacket.

 

This short video shows the factory and includes a few scenes showing how Faber-Castell tests the pencils for poisonous and unwanted components to make sure they are absolutely safe. If you like Lexikaliker’s museum posts you will be delighted to see some old catalogues and products in the video, too …and even our favourite count, Count Anton Wolfgang von Faber-Castell makes an appearance1.

Another video, similar to Lexikaliker’s old Staedtler video, gives a glimpse of pencil manufacturing 100 years ago. There is also a radio report about pencil manufacturing. The radio report mentions how Lothar Faber became a member of the aristocracy and why the name changed from Faber to Faber-Castell.

  1. I wonder whether his family got invited to the royal wedding. His niece is married to a relative of Prince Philip. [↩]

Quick on the Draw

What a nice surprise. I was just just driving home from work when I turned the radio on and heard the end of “Quick on the Draw“, a programme from Radio 4′s In Business series of programmes. This programme picked up two topics that The Economist covered over the last few months: Staedtler vs. Faber-Castell and the Mittelstand. Today’s Radio 4 programme featured an interview with Axel Marx, Managing Director of Staedtler, and Count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell. Axel Marx talked about the Wopex and Count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell talked about the perfect pencil and the luxurious Graf von Faber-Castell collection. I only heard the second half, but hope to listen to the whole programme on the BBC iPlayer soon1. I am not sure whether the content can be accessed outside the UK, though. If not: the programme will be repeated on Sunday, 17th May 2011, at 21:30 on BBC Radio 4. Even if you are outside the UK you should be able to listen to Radio 4 live over the Internet.

You can also read comments about this programme from the presenter Peter Day on his In Business page.

Two more comments:

  • It was nice to hear people speaking with a Franconian accent on the radio, even though the accent was not very strong.
  • I was not surprised to hear Count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell in this programme. He is the one who is often representing Faber-Castell in the media. Last month there was a rare chance to see his brother – in a children’s programme on the TV channel of the public broadcasting authority for the German Freistaat (Republic) of Bavaria. The programme (“Ralphi”) explained how pens and brushes are manufactured and Faber-Castell was represented by …not Count Anton, but Count Andreas von Faber-Castell, who settled in Australia in the 1970s.
  1. According the the information currently displayed on the BBC iPlayer page the programme will be available online until 2099, if I access the programme with my phone the programme is said to be online for about 300 more days …but usually programmes are only available for a week, so I would not be surprised if this programme will disappear from the iPlayer [↩]

Two articles

David O. just posted two comments with links over at pencil talk’s. They are linking to  great1 articles and it would be a shame to miss them because are hidden in the comments, so I thought I post them here.


One article is from the economist, focussing on Faber-Castell and our favourite nobleman.

The other one is from the Wall Street Journal and is looking at the rivalry between Staedtler and Faber-Castell. To be honest I always thought they get along perfectly fine: selling name rights to each other, having joint press statements, …   but the article portraits a much darker image. I am not sure whether they exaggerated a bit to make the article more catchy.


Thank you David O. for posting the links at pencil talk.

  1. great because they are about the pencil industry, I am not sure what to think about the content [↩]