WORDS
Peter Howarth
‘My first Montblanc was given to me in 2002 or 2003,’ says Marco Tomasetta, the Italian creative director of the famous German maker of writing instruments. ‘It was a Meisterstück Leonardo and I still use it today. I guard it closely because I feel that everybody would like to steal it from me!’
We are sitting in Los Angeles, where Tomasetta has come to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of Montblanc’s hero piece, the Meisterstück pen, with a screening of a film specially made for the occasion by fellow Montblanc aficionado, Wes Anderson. If you haven’t seen this yet, check it out on the brand’s website. It’s stylish and funny. And very Wes Anderson.
Montblanc evidently appeals to creatives. Tomasetta’s gift was a present from his then boss Alessandro Michele when both men were working for Gucci designing leather goods and accessories. Michele would go on to revolutionise Gucci’s fortunes as its creative director, while Tomasetta progressed via Louis Vuitton to the same role at Montblanc. ‘I was jealous of his pen,’ says Tomasetta today. ‘He was drawing with it so beautifully and I was always staring at it. So when he saw that, he decided to gift me one.’ The Leonardo is actually a mechanical pencil rather than a fountain or ballpoint pen. ‘It was created originally, I believe, for architects as a pencil to sketch with,’ explains Tomasetta, who cites sculpture and architecture as his great passions. ‘When I draw, I draw with a pen; many artists, they need contact with a pen. I also need a computer to organise things… but then I believe the computer was first designed with a pen.’
He explains that in the age of the keyboard, handwriting has an important role to play. ‘Handwriting is a meditation. It is a way to still be able to connect with ourselves. Computers don’t have the ability to do this. And a written letter is much more permanent than a phone call. We have handwritten letters dating from 400, 500 years ago on paper. And my telephone – my iPhone 12 – I got rid of it. It’s obsolete!’
For Tomasetta, the classic Montblanc Meisterstück fountain pen is a beautiful piece of design (as an Italian ‘we are used to making things beautiful’, he says). In fact, he believes it is so beautiful, it cannot be improved upon: ‘This pen is perfect. It is very difficult to modify, to add or subtract something [from it]. I feel the same way about it as I do about many sculptures: they are sublime. You don’t need to do anything to them [to make them better].’ And so instead of messing with the design of Montblanc’s iconic product, Tomasetta has used it as inspiration for a completely different category of design – leather goods.
The Meisterstück collection of bags uses design cues from the pens: nib-shaped fastening clips, zip pulls and leather details, a glossy leather to mimic the resin of the pens’ bodies and, as a recurring design motif, the white ‘snowflake’ found on the cap of a Montblanc pen.
All this is inspired by a writing instrument that debuted in 1924 and acquired its current recognisable form – cigar-shaped, with 4810, the height in metres of Mont Blanc in the Alps, engraved on the gold nib, plus three gold rings on the cap, which is topped with a white snowflake emblem – in 1952. And, though Tomasetta hasn’t touched that formula, he has launched a small collection of new versions to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the model. Meisterstück The Origin Collection introduces designs from the archive that were not put into production.
‘Timeless pieces can give you certainty. They can give the new generation, the new genius, the new artist, certainty,’ says Tomasetta. ‘We are in 2024, and we celebrate 100 years of the Meisterstück, and it will exist for the next 100 years. Because it will always be at the service of the human spirit. It’s an object of great power.’