A Pencil Case From Rimowa’s Suitcase Factory in Cologne

Rimowa pressed a grooved aluminum case around 120 Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils and a platinum-plated sharpener. Its suitcases carry a lifetime guarantee. This one gets two years.

By Chris Force

Objects·November 3, 2026

The pencil most people picture is a Faber. Lothar von Faber was 22 when he took over his father’s workshop in Stein, outside Nuremberg, in 1839. He decided how long a pencil should be, how thick, and how hard, and he gave it the six sides that keep it on the desk. By 1849 he had an office in New York. Faber-Castell turned 265 this year. The ninth generation of the family still owns it.

Loose Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils scattered on a white surface. — Faber-Castell has made Polychromos since 1908. The pencils’ cores are oil-based, so the color lays down without smudging, and the full range is 120 colors, every one of them in the case.

Open Rimowa x Faber-Castell Artist Case seen from an angle, with the upper tray of colored pencils raised above the lower tray. — The lower tray holds the greens and the upper tray lifts clear of it, so no pencil hides behind another. The label inside the Artist Case’s lid reads Made in Germany, which covers both halves: the shell from Cologne and the pencils from Stein.

Rimowa, founded in Cologne in 1898, got its grooves in 1950, borrowed from the corrugated skin of the Junkers F13, the first all-metal passenger plane. The Artist Case puts one inside the other. It’s anodized grooved aluminum made at Rimowa’s Cologne factory with the Classic collection’s polished corners, TSA locks and a leather handle in Faber-Castell green. A two-level tray unfolds to show 120 Polychromos color pencils, custom 2B graphite pencils grooved to match the shell, and a platinum-plated sharpener and eraser with Rimowa’s name on them. It went on sale September 17 at $3,100 in the US and €2,400 in Europe, through Rimowa worldwide and Faber-Castell’s own stores in Germany and online in Austria, France, Germany and Italy. The UK sold out in October.

Three grooved Rimowa graphite pencils beside a platinum-plated sharpener and round eraser on a lilac surface. — The graphite pencils are 2B, printed with Rimowa’s name and cut with the shell’s grooves, and the platinum-plated sharpener and round eraser sit beside them. The eraser unscrews into two halves so the rubber can be replaced.

Close-up of the dark green leather handle and the Rimowa and Faber-Castell nameplate on a grooved aluminum case. — The handle is leather dyed in Faber-Castell’s green, with both names on the plate above it. Rimowa carries the handle, the TSA locks and the polished corners over from its Classic collection.

Rimowa has been moving its aluminum off the carousel for a while: a storage collaboration with Lehni in Milan in April, and the design prize Sixtysix covered in July. We think this is the most convincing of those moves, because the contents are working tools rather than a gesture. Who it is for: not the illustrator, who buys the tin. It is for someone who already owns the luggage and draws on planes.

rimowa.com

$3,100 from Rimowa