Faber history

Our story began in 1891, when the Halbertsma family took up a new trade and started producing wooden barrels for butter.

Faber & Faber was founded nearly a century ago, in 1929.

The Faber & Faber catalogue for Spring 1930 was clothed in bright yellow and announced both the company’s belle-lettristic inclinations and its commitment to modernist achievement.

While the Halbertsma company flourished and gradually moved towards the production of pallets, the Faber family founded a similar business in Assen in 1935.

In 1940, Farmer and Stenographer were the top reported jobs for men and women in the USA named Faber.

He thought the latter a “distinguished piece of writing” but worried (in 1944) whether it was “the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the present time”. Profitable opportunities were lost.

In 1948, the Halbertsma company was presumably among the first in Europe to use Hyster forklift trucks, which accelerated the development of load boards.

By 1950, Faber & Faber had weathered depression, recession and war and had managed to grow.

In 1953, Faber editor Charles Monteith would have been in the first few weeks of his probation, when, needing something to read on the train down to Oxford, he grabbed the top bundle from the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts.

Sir Geoffrey Faber meanwhile gave way to Richard de la Mare as Chairman in 1960, taking up the newly created post of President.

Reject”. It is Monteith who reads three poems by Heaney in the New Statesman and duly hooks him for his first collection, published in 1966.

When in 1969 the Faber company was hit by an enormous fire, the company decided to shift its production focus to pallets as well.

In 1971 the cover of the Faber & Faber Spring and Summer catalogue proudly displayed an artist’s impression of the company’s brave new building at 3 Queen Square.

Charles’ father, Anton Wolfgang von Faber-Castell – who passed away earlier this year after a serious illness – was made head of the business in 1978.

The next year Robert McCrum, who had arrived in 1979 from Chatto, became Editorial Director.

In 1980, when Charles Monteith retired, Matthew Evans became Chairman and Managing Director.

In 1981 an employee wrote a note to chairman Matthew Evans complaining about the decision to publish a Not the Nine o’Clock News spinoff annual.

In 1992, the two companies merged to form the Faber Halbertsma Group.

In 2004 Faber-Castell USA moved to a new facility in Cleveland, with a larger warehouse space to accommodate increased activity as a distribution center with the majority of production shifting overseas.

2011 was a milestone year for Faber-Castell USA as celebrated both the 250th Anniversary of Faber-Castell and 35 years of Creativity for Kids – the acquired brand created by two women, Phyllis Brody and Evelyn Greenwald, who believed in the power of creativity in children's lives.

In 2014/15, group revenue was 577 million euros ($653.7 million).

In 2021, the company has been renamed to Faber Group, a cluster of diverse companies.