MONTEGRAPPA 88th Anniversary Limited Edition 888 Fountain Pen
Ref. IS88A3S0
Limited Edition: 009/888 (VIP number)
Year: 2000
Made in Italy
Created to honor Montegrappa's 88th anniversary, this pen boasts a more exclusive limitation that the 80th anniversary edition, and an even more pleasing design, which perhaps accounts for its popularity with collectors.
Crafted of sterling silver and enamel, this pen's harmonious composition reflects the symmetry of the lucky number 88.
Medium (M) 18K two-tone rhodium plated gold nib, finely etched with a Deco-style floral pattern.
Outer box, lacquered wood display box, booklet/papers. The pen has never been inked.
Excerpt from the specific leaflet:
MONTEGRAPPA’s 88th Anniversary Limited Edition
Montegrappa celebrates its 88th Anniversary with a unique limited edition of fountain pens in sterling silver.
Available only to select few (888 units for the sterling silver version)
Equipped with a flexible two tone 18K gold nib, finely etched with a Deco style floral pattern (M). A brass construction piston mechanism, with innovative features ensures a steady ink supply through a superlative hand turned ebonite feed.
The 88th Anniversary pen is brought together as a design by the Low Relief Engine Turned surface decoration, combined with synthetic enamel in Deco colours.
The whole pen should be seen as an integrated design concept.
The smooth curves of the ends of the pen are reflected in the enameled blue and amber icons which represent ink in symbolic quill pens.
In putting an image of many small pens on a pen, repeated diagonally, and then using a still smaller "Macro" version of the same curves, represents the upsurge of Fractal Mathematics in the 20th century and complements the numerological ideas behind the pen's conception.
The blue of the enamel matches the color of the resin used for all trims which includes minuscule silver flakes.
The three bands on the cap, barrel and lower section complement the pattern which is reproduced on the nib of the pen.
The unique clip, set with two genuine sapphires, holding the characteristic revolving sphere that distinguishes Montegrappa pens adds another touch of elegance to the personality of this pen.
Small areas of fine detail amid bold shapes and strong colors are often a feature of the Deco style.
When Art Deco separated it's symbolic umbilicus from Art Nouveau after the Great War, it represented everything that was new and futuristic about the Twenties and the twentieth century.
In using Art Deco to design their 88th anniversary pen in the year 2000 Montegrappa is clearly defining its role in turning the writing instrument into an art form in it's own right.
The exclusive 88th Anniversary fountain pen is encased in a beautifully inlaid briar wood box.
MONTEGRAPPA: the magic of numbers
The year 1912 : Montegrappa was born in Bassano
The year 2000: at the century's turning point the company of Bassano celebrates its 88th birthday with a special pen, an auspicious opening to the new millennium.
Special numbers applied to this Montegrappa pen offer themselves to a special reading or interpretation.
It is, however, intriguing to look at numbers, observing how in their presence or absence humanity has always seen a symbol, to the point of attributing their study with prophetic significance. In everyday life repetition or recurrence is always taken into consideration by observing time, measuring distance, even attributing a number to an event that in itself is not measurable and therefore making it into a symbol of something. The winning numbers of a state lottery are nothing other than a way of synthesising into numbers events, dreams and desires on which humanity is prepared to bet. With the lottery game known throughout the world one relies on numbers and hopes for good luck.
Numbers and numerology
Since ancient times, numbers apparently used only for counting, have been used to establish singular backing for symbolic formulation.
They therefore not only express quantity but also ideas and strength.
To number things and facts has great importance in itself, not only for instinctively attempting to understand the universe surrounding us, but to also have access to truly comprehending our existence and events.
Here we immediately enter into the field of interpretation, thanks to numerology, a discipline that has the same father as mathematics, that is Pythagorus, who lived in the VIth Century B.C. and according to whom " Everything could be explained through numbers."
He himself acquired his numerological knowledge from Egyptian priests, transmitting it thereafter to his own disciples.
In fact, traces of numerology have been found in all of the ancient civilisations.
By numerology one intends nothing more than that discipline that transcribes and interprets through numbers that which otherwise is expressed by word.
The Bible itself is a ciphered document.
Saint Augustine said that "The lack of numerological understanding impedes the comprehension of many figurative and mystical passages in the scriptures”.
The Jews, for their part, have transmitted their numerological knowledge by means of the Cabbal. Cartesian himself was also inspired by numerology to create his famous geometrical treatise.
The same is true for the other parts of the World, in Chinese thinking numerology is the key to harmony between the Macrocosmos and the Microcosmos, the key to the conformation to the rule of celestial law.
Numbers, therefore have a symbolic value, a vibration that possesses an active and attractive power, capable of influencing
events and offering an interpretation.
Eightyeight (88)
Could it be coincidence that Montegrappa's 88th anniversary falls at the turn of the new Millennium?
Tradition has it that, eighty-eight is a sign of good luck in far eastern countries.
A number also interpretable as a double eight, which even in the opinion of western cultures reinforces symbology.
Eight is universally the number of cosmic equilibrium from the Wind Rose to the spokes in the Buddhist Wheel of Laws, it is also the number of the petals of the Lotus, of the paths on the road of the I-Ching trigraph and the pillars of Ming-T'ang. In particular the octagon constitutes a sort of mediation between a square and a circle, a median point between Earth and Heaven.
Hindu iconography and architecture also donates ample space to the symbolism of the number eight.
Eight, in fact, is the number of Vishnu's arms that represent the guardians of space. Eight in their turn are the number of Shiva's forms and when Buddha is found in a halo of rays at the centre of number eight, it represents the one who turns the wheel at the centre of the universe.
In Japan eight is actually the number used to say "uncountable". In fact, since far off times the archipelago of the Rising Sun has been called "Eight Great Islands", meaning a defined, but enormous quantity that is also uncountable.
But let's return to eighty eight, there are games that can be played at an interpretative level. If we add 8+8 we get 16, then 1+6 equals 7
If we multiply 88 by itself we get 7.744 an ulterior couple of repeated numbers, which in turn reinforces the meaning of 7 and 4.
Seven is the number of dynamic totality, the completion of the circle and of renewal, as in the seven days of the week.
Four for example represents wholeness, the supreme synthesis of all things, from the four elements that constitute the Universe to the cardinal points and the seasons. Multiply seven by four and we obtain 28, the number that represents the completion of the lunar cycle and marks the passage of time.
In short, in the number 88 it is possible to read everything or better still "all things" because the more one disassembles it or plays with the possibilities it offers, the more one returns to this concept of completeness and balance.
Art Dèco – A style that is worth a century
Let's just, for a moment, change perspective.
With the year 2000 a century has ended, the 1900's, and inevitably with this a cycle, Is there a style that can possibly in some way be aesthetically summarised and synthesised?.
Montegrappa has chosen Art dèco, a movement that, in decorative art and architecture has substantially earmarked the period between the two wars.
Already in embryo when the company of Bassano saw the first light of day in 1912, Art dèco witnesses, particularly after the end of the First World War the trend in art, towards a new order, that revalued 14th and 15th Century realism and therefore perspectives, towards pure volumes and plastic values. Some artists saw in this a return to order, a way to formulate a national style, whole others interpreted it as a way to recuperate local traditions.
Whatever, that which earmarks Art dèco is the precise features, the decisive colors and the resoluteness of form. Classical figures rich in archaisms are accompanied by Romanesque architecture, combined with a return to naturalism, to spatial and volumetric clarity.
Art Dèco owes it's name to the Exposition Internationale Des Arts Dècoratifs et Industries Modernes that was held in Paris in 1925, at which the style was exhibited as such for the first time.
Substantially it represents a modernism that makes fashion as distinguished from the luxury artisan goods, in as much as it was mass produced and united to an untraditional elegance that symbolises sophisticated richness. Admiration for modernity takes shape in the celebration of the machine, in whatever the machine may do and in the qualities that it may possess, at a design level using symmetric simplicity, with the constant repetition of the elements.
Art Dèco – A global style
It must not be forgotten that Art dèco accompanies an era thick with contradictions, from the roaring twenties to the consequences of the Great Depression in the thirties.
During that period the choice of a style that celebrated beauty and order, in this sense, harmony that offered a frivolous element to everyday life.
Just for this Art Deco was able to influence different circles transcribing the clarity of style that earmarks it according to a variety of cultures.
In the same way for example architecture celebrates the most famous New York skyscrapers in that they have become more than buildings, they have become monuments to the financial powers that created them. In Italy the architectonic design Dèco has been adopted for some time as regime.
Also in furnishings, rather than in industrial articles, exploiting ascribable shapes to the same aesthetics, utilising absolutely new and revolutionary materials. Plastic and Bakelite celebrate man's capacity to invent things that nature was unable to supply. The radio became mass produced, giving voice and rending world-wide popularity to musical styles such as jazz and swing and to sophisticated composers such as the Gershwin brothers. Fred Astaire immortalised tip tap, a dance that with its syncopated rhythm simulates Art Dèco's asymmetric order.
The numbers of this style quickly became world wide (remember Napier in New
Zealand a town that even today boasts the title City of Art Dèco) An absolutely new phenomenon in the history of mankind.
When Montegrappa chose Art Deco for the pen that celebrates its eighty-eighth anniversary, it reasonably saw a style that expresses totality by marrying symbology to aesthetics.
MONTEGRAPPA – Numbers of style
For Montegrappa the numbers seem to be proved right.
In 1912 (note that the sum of the digits is 1+9+1+2=13 1+3= 4 that is totality, entirety) the company of Bassano was the first fountain pen factory founded in Italy. Since then, in the large building adapted from an old hydro-electric plant that houses the company, pens have been made, that, if during the Great War gave a significant contribution to the writings of our soldiers at the front, also enjoyed the historical appreciation of Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos, the two famous American writers who worked for the Italian Red Cross during the Great War.
Countless models have been constructed at the firm in Bassano during it's history, always with an acute market sense and with particular attention paid to marrying technical reliability to refined elegance.
When in 1978 (1+9+7+8= 25 = 2+5 = 7, that is dynamic completeness, a cycle that closes and reopens) the Aquila family assumed control of Montegrappa, a winning phase was opened based on a strong premise, that is the love of the fountain pen, a highly skilled job that had for some time taken root in the Aquila family.
Consequently the brand Montegrappa became a symbol which in this sense is amply confirmed throughout the World.
On these foundations the Aquila family and Montegrappa have arrived to turn towards the Millennium and to the 88th anniversary, a synthesis of numbers and symbols that remain auspicious in order that past successes may be renewed, so subsequently valorising and confirming the extremely high quality and sophisticated brand in its rightful place at the peak of the World market.
Precious materials, accurate manufacture and untiring imagination in the projection of models demonstrate that Montegrappa has the right numbers to continue to be the ambassador to the style and the refined taste of the artisan from Vicenza to the World.
Nota Bene:
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