Description
CretaColor Sketching & Drawing Travel Tin Set of 8. This compact charcoal drawing set for sketching and drawing contains one each of the following: soft charcoal pencil, black chalk pencil and Nero extra soft carbon pencil, sketching charcoal, Nero stick, compressed charcoal (soft), natural charcoal 4mm and a 75 x 75mm polishing leather, all presented in a re-usable metal storage box.
This set is of true artists quality and is ideal for all types of sketching, drawing, landscapes and portraiture. This particular selection extends the range of artists working in charcoal or graphite and complements work in watercolour, paste and ArtGraf soluble pigments. Wonderful for the travelling artist and the studio artist alike.
The brand CretaColor by Brevillier Urban & Sachs combines the ambition and traditions of two spirited individualists: Carl Brevillier and Hans Wolfgang Hromatka. It is notable that the history of Brevillier is intertwined by way of family and association witht he history of Hardtmuth which ultimately gave us Blackwing Pencils, Faber Castell and Koh i Noor. The history of mergers, splits and aquisitions within the various companies reflect a dynamic family history set against the rumblings of the Austro Hungarian Empire, the Prussian Wars and ultimately the division of Germany into Eastern and Western blocks in the last Century.
The history of Cretacolor’s products dates back to 1790 when Joseph Hardtmuth, a Viennese architect and inventor, developed the first graphite pencil. Composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert, both giants in their age, were sponsored by Joseph Hardtmuth, who was a lover of music and the arts. The mind boggles when considering all the famous musical compositions written using pencils manufactured by Joseph Hardtmuth. Queen Victoria herself was said to be thrilled when, in 1889, she first used a pencil made in the Cretacolor factory.
Later 1863 the industrialist Carl Brevillier founded the Zeus graphite pencil factory, which opened writing and drawing to a large wide customer base. At that time drawing and writing instruments supplies were handmade, of poor quality and at the same time very expensive, Brevillier pursued his vision to produce high quality tools en masse for people who wanted to write or draw. The result was that many people who would not have previously been able to buy high quality drawing implements were able to take up art. There was an artistic boom in Vienna, students of art history will immediately recognise the implications.
Brevillier is still with us today thanks to industrialist and avid pencil collector Hans Wolfgang Hromatka, who in 1996 managed to combine his passion and work and at the same time prevented the shutdown and closure of the company. By the end of the 1990s the earnest collector of old pencils continued this historical brand under the name CretaColor. In 2008 through the acquisition of Brevillier-Urban, the company holding the legacy of Carl Brevillier’s pencil factory, Hans Wolfgang Hromatka obtained the know-how to make art materials even more efficiently. At his request, the name of Brevillier was added to the CretaColor logo and through that, the company Brevillier Urban & Sachs was born and the intertwined history of Viennese pencils continues its creative journey.
