Just got this little bovine Grossberger & Kurz (precursor to Schwan) 1.5mm twist lock leadholder- stamp reads ‘REGr. JANr. 8. 1867’, so just a few years after Faber patented their identical moveable lead pencil mechanism. The stopper tail is a feature to allow the pencil to be stowed and easily removed from the spine of a pocketbook, when such things were a thing. Takes a Faber Castell 1.4mm refill nicely.
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That’s a very nice item!
The merchants Georg Großberger and Hermann Kurz began manufacturing pencils in 1854 near the old imperial castle in Nuremberg using methods that were modern and factory-like by the standards of the time. In 1865, Gustav Schwanhäusser took over the business and, in keeping with his name, made the swan (German: ‘Schwan’) the trademark of his pencils; from then on, the company traded as ‘Schwan-Bleistift-Fabrik, Schwanhäusser vorm. Großberger & Kurz’ (Schwan Pencil Factory, Schwanhäusser formerly Großberger & Kurz). – By the way, the Stabilo brand was registered in 1926.
Here’s a catalogue page from 1880:
How is it that the catalogue from which the page shown originates still bears the name ‘Großberger & Kurz’, even though the company had already been operating under the name ‘Schwan-Bleistift-Fabrik’ for 15 years at that point? The reason for this was the considerable effort and high costs involved in converting machines, printing templates, etc. at that time, and so the catalogue mentioned and the products shown in it remained virtually unchanged until around 1900. The swan was already featured on Großberger & Kurz products, which were still available well into the 20th century; it only gradually emerged as an independent brand.
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How hard is it to find 1.5mm lead, if I may ask? I managed to get a cardboard tube of a few lead cores for the Faber-Castell DS-9450, but that diameter always seems so impossible to come by.
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Very nice…they did do the typical 2 mm of the day as well…I sometimes think they all ( the various Fabers,etc) had one factory for the points then made their own barrels…or the whole thing came from one place with six different imprints and finishes
…
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Grossberger & Kurz also sold drawing instruments, for example:
https://planimetrica.jimdofree.com/mathematical-instruments/germany-lz/grossberger-kurz/
These were perhaps better known as the “Key” line that they supplied to Keuffel & Esser in the United States. As the drawing sets also bear the Jan. 8, 1867 registration date, I assume this relates to the Key trademark itself, not any specifically pencil-related design.
It would be good to know if Grossberger & Kurz made all their own mechanical pencils and/or drawing instruments. Certainly the size of their factories illustrated on the Planimetrica page above suggests that they had significant manufacturing capabilities in their own right.
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This is a classic design form factor homogenisation I always assumed, from the many forms that had previously evolved, Faber’s moveable lead patent suddenly resolved so many issues that everyone adopted it? An anology might be the way in which so many designs for cellphones and flip phones with buttons suddenly collapsed into the ubiquitous smartphone form factor after the touchscreen was patented?
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They are still a few old packs turning up most months on the online auctions- sometimes marked ‘VS’ which is one of a range of Victorian standard letter marks denominating various callibres for older pencils- you’ll see it marked on the noses of many silver and gold cased jeweler made mechanical pencils from that era. ‘W’ is the Victorian mark for almost exactly 2mm (1.95mm) leads, also, in that system. A.W. Faber Castell and some German makers also had a series of 1.5mm pencils that ran into the 1960s- Fabers was the DS 9450 pencil that took their 1.5mm 7/510 lead refills. But I find often the modern Faber Castell 1.4mm refills fit pretty well in many 1.5mm holders. (edit- jsut saw the DS 9450 was in your question! - The Haak and Everite (British ‘Haak Sparstift’ version) took 1.5mm leads and I’ve seen tubes of those come up for sale often too)
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Mmm… Interesting! Actually, I have seen listings for Haak lead tubes before, but they always were for their 1.8mm (not 1.18mm: 1.8mm), usually in the “copying pencil lead” version, mostly in green/blue/red colour, with some exceptions for purple or violet; I imagine the difference between 1.5 and 1.8 is negligible, especially in the case of a clutch pencil, but still, I only own one single tube reading 1.5 mm explicitly on the outer label (plus a reasonable amount of copying pencil lead in 1.8). Not that I would need more than that, but still…
I will look into that ‘VS’ denomination, it might open yet another rabbit hole for me. 
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