“The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.” – Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
Montegrappa has unveiled its latest limited-edition writing instrument, honouring great American writer Ernest Hemingway.
The Traveller is part of The Hemingway Pens collection announced earlier this year. The range features four ‘chapters’: The Soldier, The Writer, The Fisherman and The Traveller, each featuring fountain, rollerball and ballpoint pens.
The Hemingway assortment is, in turn, part of a series called Mightier Than The Sword, which joins the brand’s Cult and Icon collections in honouring individuals of great cultural impact and influence.
The series’ name is a reference to the popular saying ‘The Pen is mightier than the sword’, words coined by novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his 19th century play Cardinal Richelieu.
Writers, politicians, national heroes and other notables are among the subjects of the Mightier Than the Sword range. Hemingway Pens form the first ‘family’ in the series, saluting the life and works of the author, who wrote with Montegrappa pens.
Each model is a limited edition of 100 pieces, totalling 300 pens for each subject. All pens in the series are in sterling silver or celluloid with sterling silver trim.
In addition to the silver editions, ten examples of each of the three pen types, in each of the four chapters, are trimmed with 18k gold.
Packaging has been inspired by the notebooks used by reporters during the First World War [Arguably Hemingway’s greatest novel, A Farewell to Arms, is set during the Italian campaign of WWI -Ed].
The Traveller is said to “evoke the spirit of voyage” and is “reminiscent of an era when travel was an adventure”. Its design aims to echo Hemingway’s own wanderlust. The pens, in sterling silver and Charcoal Black celluloid, highlight 11 locations associated with the writer and feature airplanes, maps and passports.
The design references the airport nearest to Hemingway’s Illinois birthplace and that closest to his place of death in Idaho. The cap top is decorated with a compass. Other details include a repeating airplane motif on the clip and barrel, a sea light tower on the barrel end and a boat steering wheel.
