Montegrappa Marconi Model 150 Fountain Pen (Limited Edition)

Coming July 2024

Montegrappa's Marconi Model 150 Fountain Pen pays tribute to an Italian icon and titan of technological achievement. 

The inventor of wireless telegraphy, Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) was a a Nobel Prize-winner whose curiosity and ingenuity led to one of history’s most consequential discoveries. Today’s connected world is built on Marconi’s groundwork, while the wealth and celebrity he enjoyed during his lifetime make him a notable precursor to today’s Silicon Valley overlords.

To commemorate 150 years since the inventor’s birth, the Marconi Model 150 is a period piece that elaborates Marconi’s work. Material, design, and engineering details return to the aesthetics of a pioneering age in editions of 150 fountain pens and rollerballs. Our design uses high-tech modular componentry, interactivity, and imaginative accessories to let owners share a profound sense of invention.

Brass is used as a principal material for the body and grip section and for framing modular segments made from palisander rosewood, braided wire, and polycarbonate. All brass elements are precision-milled on CNC-machines and use rose-gold electroplating to mimic copper ferrules, winders, and other details. A steel-wire pocket clip also uses a copper effect to simulate a vintage transmitter.

Mechanical complications provide additional highlights via a domed resin cap top with telegraph key haptics and a polycarbonate, particle-filled barrel segment – a reference to the coherer wave-detection device that was pivotal to Marconi’s discovery.

Fountain pens use a concealed Power-Push mechanism, and carry an 8mm, 18K rose-gold nib (EF, F, M, B, Stub 1.1) with an ebonite feed. On the nib, custom engraving reproduces wave forms on a copper-colored ground, and pens are supplied with a custom-engraved bottle of black ink.

Custom packaging is perfectly married to the edition’s theme, providing owners with a wooden work cabinet finished with steel plaques, mirrors and an acrylic lid. The design’s spring-loaded cap top allows it to be suspended between two Montegrappite nodes. Alternately, owners can dismantle the pen and use the bureau’s compartments to clean, charge and arrange the various components.