Schwabach
4.75"x3.25"x.5"

Anton Franz Mörtel founded his factory in 1870 and it remains a family business today. They began as a chalk factory outside of Nürnberg but moved to Schwabach after WW II. Industrial crayons and other dynamic products were added in the 1960s. Oil pastels were developed in the 1920s in Japan in reaction to the educational theorist Kanae Yamamoto's suggestion of the need for color and individual expression in the classroom. This did not go down well with the Japanese authorities as they preferred a tamer environment and stuck to colored pencils, which by the way, are a German invention.