Cretacolor

My current favourite coloured pencils for art are from Cretacolor. Cretacolor makes a stellar line of pigment-rich, beautifully-marking sticks. Their graphite offerings are something I’d more like to discuss today, however.

Thanks to Matthias over at Bleitstift, I have learned some of the history of Cretacolor. One of two factories from the Hapsburg-era Koh-i-Noor, the Cold War divided them and the Austrian factory started producing (largely the same products) under the Cretacolor name.

Cretacolor seems best known for their Monolith graphite and solid graphite sticks, which are the most common products I see from the brand when perusing art and stationery seller sites and stores. As for woodcase pencils, they seem more focused on their aquarelle and pastel lines than the graphite or waterfast coloured selections. For writing and drawing, their Artist Studio and Cleos (160 or FAG as I like to call it) are the only standard woodcase graphite lines featuring on their site. According to Bleitstift, there is an additional line of 150 graphite pencils matching the design and range of Noh-i-Noor’s 1500 pencils, but I have thus far been unable to find any of these for myself (the sole online seller with these listed in stock thus far has been Austrian superstore Der Grissemann, who unfortunately do only local pick-up.

Any leads on how I could find these elusive Cretacolor 150s are greatly welcomed!