Blancpain regularly peers outside the box of tradition, seeking challenge, inventiveness and even provocativeness in the design of its watches. So it isn’t surprising that the watch brand decided to team up with another provocateur, pen maker Grayson Tighe, to produce a collection of limited edition pens. This is the origin of the Tighe Blancpain pens, starting with Series 1.
Montegrappa announces a four-line collection of writing instruments, each of which represents one of the key families in the popular ‘Game of Thrones’ series: Stark, Baratheon, Lannister, and Targaryen.
Italians have the gift of making even the most common object look great. They can even make a coffee grinder with enough sex appeal to make Tom Jones jealous! For a relatively small country, Italy still has quite a few fountain pen manufacturers. And I think that I have tried products from almost all of them!
A watch brand adding writing instruments to its repertoire is not breaking news, but it is notable when a company focuses the same amount of attention and care on its pens as it does on its watches. Such was the case when almost ten years ago now, Blancpain engaged Canadian pen designer and maker Grayson Tighe to produce its writing instruments.
The new Montblanc commemorative Rouge & Noir line comprises a variety of editions within the Montblanc Heritage Collection, including some ultra-limited high-jewelry versions that really show off the company’s craftsmanship in areas we don’t always think about in pen making – like engraving and stone setting. But for us mere mortals, there are some quite spectacular options in the Heritage Collection Special Edition and Limited Edition 1906 lines.
Founded by Armando Simoni in 1925, OMAS is one of Italy’s preeminent pen makers, and it celebrates 90 years of operation this year.
OMAS, whose name is actually an acronym standing for Officina Meccanica Armando Simoni, continues to build upon one of Simoni’s favorite expressions: “A pen must make writing pleasurable.”
So with this goal front and center, he led the way to creating truly beautiful – and highly functional – pens that are found in some of the best writing instrument collections around the world.
There’s no doubt that the M is a Montblanc pen, due in part to its glossy black body and crowning snowcap. But the similarity ends where the transcendence begins, thanks to Australian designer Marc Newson’s signature biomorphic style. For the first time in Montblanc’s history, a fountain pen’s gold nib is plated in two tones using rhodium and ruthenium. But that’s not all.
Dante Del Vecchio’s love of culture and innovation led him to found Visconti, an Italian brand with a remarkable assortment of pens, watches and accessories. Each of the collections tells a story – about art, archaeology, philosophy, literature or history – through the eyes the founder and, of course, his chosen city: Florence. Historically used as the material for creating sculpture, architecture, and objets d’art, Visconti is now using marble for its latest pen collection, Millionaire. Crafting a marble pen, however, is not simple.
Krone, founded in the United States in 1997, has made its name by producing commemorative limited edition pens as a tribute to people, events, and things that helped shape history. Editions have included such topics as Thomas Edison, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Duke Ellington. The most recent honors Vincent Van Gogh, featuring a beautiful hand-painted representation of his famous work Starry Night in miniature on the barrel.
I really can’t talk about Edelberg products without talking about the people behind them as I’ve known father-and-son-team Carlo and Samuel Naldi for years. Edelberg writing instruments wield an ergonomic, high-style character that is somehow both trendy and classic and cutting-edge yet familiar.