CASTELL 9000 - THE EARLIEST MODEL
카스텔 9000 초기형
For a long time, I've always wondered how the historic Castell 9000 pencils looked like when they were first showed up in the world in 1905.
Such attempts could be found in my post of Castell 9000 made in 1911 to celebrate 150th anniversary of Faber Castell and the very early Castell 9000 tin case that existed at least in 1907 (I explained 1908 in the post, but I later found out it existed even in 1907.)
Now I'm pretty sure I've got quite close to one of the earliest Castell 9000 in the world.
Here's a living history!
One strange thing with early Castell series is the symbol of two jousting knights.
I described the story many times in my blog and it is a famous story as it is.
Faber Castell's symbol of two jousting knights, which is still used as Faber Castell's modern logo, was designed to symbolize the winning of Castell 9000 pencils over Koh-I-Noor's yellow pencils that largely occupied the market at the moment.
However, it seems this symbol appeared after some years of the advent of Castell pencils.
As you will see, earlier models of Castell 9000 didn't have two jousting knights anywhere.
Since we can find the symbol in the Castell 9000 made in 1911, I can narrow down the symbol was originated between 1908 and 1911.
Instead of two jousting knights, earlier Castell 9000 models only had the symbol of Faber Castell's castle.
The case explains the castle symbol represents the "Schutzmarke," which means the "trademark."
It's impressive to find out how the paper insert looked like for the early Castell models!
A.W. FABER. Oldest pencil factory since 1761. Made in Stein near Nürnberg.
There are 10 pencils in total with another paper insert.
Although two pencils are missing, it still preserves a very mint condition.
A.W. FABER "CASTELL" with castle symbols on the front side.
No leadgrade, no balance symbol, no made in Germany (or Bavaria).
These are features of the very early Castell pencils.
The initial documents of Castell pencils show the same style as well.
Sometimes, you may find a Castell pencil with the phrase "made by A.W. FABER in Germany (or Bavaria)" like the one in here.
Which one is older?
My personal preference finds it more natural that the simple "A.W. FABER" version is earlier.
My pure instinct says there's no need to have such a complex sentence from the beginning, though this might be enormously misleading.
Also, I find most early documents of Castell pencils having such notations.
Nevertheless, this essentially presents another question.
Then when was the notation with "made by A.W. FABER in Germany" used?
Also, some 19th century pencils have a similar notation.
Therefore, there are still some ambiguous points.
Lead hardness grade is located on the backside.
"THE FINEST AND BEST DRAWING PENCIL."
This sentence can also be seen in many paper inserts of Castell 9000 pencils.
Other types of pencils might have slightly different words like "copying pencil" instead of "drawing pencil."
This model has an English sentence, but as can be seen in this post, there is a German version too.
This lettering only existed on the very early Castell pencils and removed soon.
There's a leaflet inside.
One side seems to be the same as the top inner side of the tin case.
Castle trademark (not two jousting knights again!), explanation on the lead grades, and some merits of Castell pencils.
The backside contains some analogous stuffs.
Anyway, this kind of leaflet is new to me, so I found it quite interesting.
In summary, we have witnessed the very early Castell 9000 pencil in this post and analyzed some of its interesting points.
There could be older versions or this might not be original of course.
Thereby this post finishes with an open ending.
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