The Eberhard Faber Pencil Company

The Eberhard Faber Pencil Company traces back to 18th century Bavaria, where carpenter Casper (Kasper) Faber began crafting and selling lead pencils in the small town of Stein. Casper’s son Anton Wilhelm (A.W.), took over the business in 1784, renaming it the A.W. Faber Company.  

In 1790, French scientist Nicholas Jacques Conte developed a method for heating a mixture of graphite and clay to form a superior writing tool that could be made softer or harder depending on the amount of heat provided. The Faber family didn’t begin using this process until after 1839, when A.W.’s son Johann Lothar observed the process during a trip to France. The lower cost of production and consistent quality propelled the small family business into a national brand.

Casper’s great-grandson Eberhard Faber was born in 1822. Initially attending school to study law, Faber joined the family business was sent to the United States in 1849 to establish a North American branch of the A. W. Faber Company. Faber set up a small office and store at 133 William Street, selling stationery and A.W. Faber pencils. He was also tasked with setting up a cedar mill to supply the European factory with wood. He purchased a parcel of land and set up a mill in Cedar Keys, Florida. According to the 2007 Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District Designation Report, there is no current evidence that the Florida mill used the labor of enslaved people, however, it is established that the workforce of mid-century Florida sawmills was majority enslaved persons and that much of the wood produced from those mills were shipped to factories in Europe and North America.

In 1858 Faber set up a rubber factory in Newark, New Jersey that produced erasers and rubber bands, and in 1861 he opened the country’s first pencil factory on East 42nd Street. In an effort to compete with the European market, new machinery was brought in to help keep labor costs down. The factory was employing approximately 300 people in May 1872, when oil-soaked sawdust caught fire. The factory went up in flames. Eager to continue production as quickly as possible, Faber acquired an existing factory in Greenpoint and resumed operations by September 1872.

Eberhard Faber died 1879, leaving the business to his sons, Eberhard (handling sales) and Lothar (handling manufacturing and production). The brothers quickly cut ties with the German branch of the company, first incorporating as E. Faber Pencil Company in 1898 and finally as Eberhard Faber Pencil Company in 1904.

The company quickly expanded, manufacturing the first pencil with a trademark tip (No. 482 Mongol), the first colored pencil sets, and cosmetics. The factory employed hundreds of people, many of whom were women, often sponsoring picnics and trips for employees and their families. A 1910 company picnic had an attendance of over 800 people. 

As the business and workforce grew, the Greenpoint factory also expanded, covering two square blocks by 1924. The company’s product list also increased, offering over 120 items by 1940. Faber’s impact was evident not just to their neighbors, employees, and customers, but to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, who wrote in their July 16, 1941 issue that the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company ”contributed in no small extent to the advancement of Brooklyn as a community and industrial center.” While Brooklyn was home, Faber was looking to expand globally. Sales and marketing representatives were put in place all over the country, and factories were opened in Argentina, Canada, and Bavaria. The “business pencil of the world” was also a favorite of students, artists, and discerning notetakers everywhere.

Like many areas of Brooklyn, Greenpoint suffered from a post-World War II industrial decline. The company made the choice to move operations out of Brooklyn to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, eventually selling the business to A.W Faber-Castell, a German company still in the hands of another Casper Faber descendant.

The former Greenpoint factory was designated as a Historic District in 2007. The report noted that the district “contains buildings and other improvements which have a special character and a special historical and aesthetic interest and value, which represent one or more eras in the history of New York City”.