Most of the world’s well-known pencil makers have one thing in common – longevity. Take the four large pencil suppliers that continue to have their headquarters in the Nuremberg area. While Faber-Castell dates to 1761, Lyra, Staedtler and Schwan-Stabilo were founded in 1806, 1835 and 1855, respectively.

Dixon Ticonderoga, the large US pencil producer, has its roots in a business founded by Joseph Dixon, a US entrepreneur who devised an early form of stove polish based on graphite, in 1827. Two years later, Dixon moved into a new field by using graphite as the inner core inside his first pencils.