Criterium 550 HB

About Conté

The roots of French brand Conté go back to the late 1700's when Nicolar-Jacques Conté — a painter, chemist, physicist, and hot air balloonist — invented a method for developing different hardness levels of graphite. In 1979 the brand was acquired by French manufacturer BIC which has continued to produce colored pencils with the Conté name. Separately, there has been a somewhat recent revival of the original brand name, Conté à Paris, which is now manufactured and sold by Colart, a London-based company owned by the Swedish firm Lindéngruppen. Two Conté brands, two different companies.