Caran d'Ache

Caran d'Ache Art Supplies Online in India

The name is a pencil joke. The Geneva company took it in 1924 from the French caricaturist Caran d'Ache, whose own pseudonym came from karandash, the Russian word for pencil. A century later it is still one of the very few manufacturers making its pencils entirely in Switzerland rather than outsourcing the leads.

Why Luminance is different

Almost every coloured pencil range carries some fugitive pigments that shift within a few years of daylight. Luminance 6901 was built to answer that: the whole range meets ASTM D-6901, and 81 of the colours carry the highest LFI rating, so finished work is expected to hold for around a hundred years. That single fact is why conservators and artists selling original coloured pencil work pay the premium. The core is wax-based and buttery, not oil-based, and it is not water-soluble; Supracolor is the water-soluble line.

The sharpening machines

Soft wax leads are exactly what handheld sharpeners destroy. The desk machines here use a helical cutter with an adjustable tip setting, so you set the point taper instead of accepting one fixed angle, and the cutter itself is replaceable. They take round and hexagonal barrels from 4mm to 10mm. The Alpine Frost and Cosmic Blue are finish variants of the same Swiss mechanism.

Shop the range

Caran d'Ache now runs across the whole studio. Go straight to watercolour pencils (Supracolor, Museum Aquarelle, Prismalo), colour pencils (Luminance 6901, Pablo), Neocolor and Neopastel pastels, Grafwood and Technalo graphite, Gouache Studio, Fibralo pens, paper pads and books or the special and collector's editions.

Also worth comparing

If Luminance is beyond the budget, the sensible grades below it are Caran d'Ache's own Pablo and Prismacolor Premier, both stocked. Browse the wider categories at Colour Pencils, Pencils and Sharpeners & Erasers.

Stationerie has supplied artists, students and studios in Kolkata for 25 years and ships across the country. See Art Supplies in India and the full list of brands we stock.