The writing instruments in Montblanc’s Great Characters Editions have honored people such as President John F. Kennedy, Elvis Presley and Albert Einstein. The brand’s new release, however, celebrates a fictional character: Jay Gatsby, the mysterious millionaire of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“Choosing a fictional character as the focus of a Great Characters collection is a first for Montblanc,” Laurent Lecamp, Montblanc’s global managing director for watches and writing instruments, wrote in an email. “As we went through different options, it soon became obvious that ‘The Great Gatsby’ had the power to spark endless conversation among us, be it about our core values as humans or the elusive relationship that has always existed between wealth and happiness.”
(In 2021, The Times shortlisted the novel as one of the best books of the past 125 years, and the previous year a Critic’s Notebook on the novel by Parul Sehgal was headlined “Nearly a Century Later, We’re Still Reading — and Changing Our Minds About — Gatsby.” The 100th anniversary of its publication is next year.)
As Mr. Lecamp noted, “the influence of Jay Gatsby is tantamount to that of a real historical figure.” (The author has not been overlooked: In 2002, Montblanc dedicated a collection to Fitzgerald.)
The new collection comprises five designs including fountain pens, a ballpoint and a rollerball — with prices starting at $985.
Montblanc drew on the novel’s themes for several elements, such as the allure of wealth, reflected in the money clip design of the clips on the pens’ caps. And Gatsby’s past as a Prohibition-era bootlegger was suggested by the hip-flask-like screw caps on the ends of the barrels.
All the designs have a touch of green, too, either Montblanc’s star logo rendered in fluorescent green or gem accents, calling to mind the green light on the dock at Daisy Buchanan’s home that mesmerizes Gatsby.
On the 100-piece limited-edition fountain pens, which have 18-karat gold detailing in an Art Deco style, the green accents were provided by the tsavorite on the barrel and a green malachite inlay (price on application).
A 50-milliliter bottle of green ink, at $40, and a notebook bound in blue leather and embossed with a gold car motif, at $85, round out the offering.
The collection was four years in the making and presented some challenges. For example, Mr. Lecamp wrote, working with platinum for one design required some special tools, and the brand’s artisans had to “relearn how to polish the surface as platinum behaves completely differently to gold.”
Also, he noted, “Another notable challenge was the development of the collection’s clip: Since it is shaped like a money clip, we had to develop a new mechanism that works with two joints.”
Who would like such an extravagant writing implement? “I believe the collection would interest literature and film aficionados worldwide who have a true appreciation for this literary masterpiece,” he wrote. “However, thanks to the story’s deeply human nature, I believe we would be hard pressed to find people who have not been touched or moved by it in some way.”
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