History of Montblanc
In 1908, three gentlemen from Hamburg, Germany, founded what would become Montblanc. In the beginning, it was known as the Simplo Filler Pen Company—“filler” because their pen featured a filling mechanism that set it apart from desk-dip pens, which was what most of the world used at that time. It wasn’t until 1910 that the firm released a pen with the Montblanc name on it—in 1924, Montblanc was added to the company’s name.
Mont Blanc, of course, is a mountain in France, on the French-Italian border. But the French have always been considered chic in Europe, so it made sense for a German pen company to name one of its models, and eventually its company, after something French. When it came to marketing, Montblanc’s Claus Voss was every bit as smart as George Parker and Walter Sheaffer, the two geniuses of North American pen manufacturing. If calling a German pen by a French name would help it sell better, then Voss was certainly willing to do it.
According to Voss’ daughter’s memoir, her uncle suggested Montblanc at a card game. The company had moved from a pen with a plain red cap, to a red star on the cap top, to a white star on the cap top. The uncle supposedly said to his brother-in-law, “You should call your pens Montblanc because they’re big and black on the bottom and white on top like Mont Blanc.” Mont Blanc is the tallest mountain in Europe, and it’s perpetually snowcapped. This pen would be the pinnacle of quality.
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| The first factory in Hamburg |
The advertising with the mountain in the background occurred pretty early with these pens. Montblanc also began inscribing “4810” on the nibs, which is the patented logo of the company, because the mountain is 4,810 meters tall. I think to call that pen Montblanc worked well for its generation and continues to work well, as it completely encapsulates what the product represents.
The first Montblanc catalogue in 1909 featured three different types of pens with two filling mechanisms—a round-capped eyedropper, a round-capped safety pen, and a flat-capped safety pen. An eyedropper pen is simply a pen that has an empty tube as the barrel, and it’s filled with a little medicine dropper. The eyedropper is immersed in ink, which is then dripped into the barrel of the pen. The section and nibs are screwed back on or slipped back onto a friction attraction, and the pen writes through capillary attraction. It’s like holding one a finger over one end of a straw with water in it; it doesn’t leak.
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| Simplo |
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| Montblanc Safety pen |
A safety pen has a very complex retracting nib mechanism. The nib ascends and descends by turning the pen at the bottom, where the nib is attached to a spindle. The pen has a collar around the nib so that when the nib is retracted, the barrel is completely open so you can drop ink into it, as with an eyedropper pen.
When the nib is extended, the collar around the nib closes the end of the barrel so the pen can write without leaking ink. When the nib is retracted for storage, the screw-on cap fits over the end of the barrel so that it’s leak-proof. That’s what the term “safety” really meant.
The three pens in that first catalogue came in long and short styles, as well. The company also made pens used by engineers and architects for drawing extremely thin lines. All Simplo pens at that time were black with a red cap, which is why they were called by another French name, Rouge et Noir. The bodies were made of black ebonite, which is a type of hard, vulcanised rubber used by pen manufacturers until the 1920s when plastic arrived on the scene.
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| Montblanc Rouge et Noir Vintage Pen |
The Introduction of the Meisterstück range
The Meisterstück line, which means Masterpiece, coincided with the company’s decision in 1924 to begin calling itself Montblanc. The Meisterstück was its top-of-the-line pen. At that time, the company was making Meisterstücks in several different models, including safeties. Montblanc made Meisterstücks in long and short varieties, and they were numbered after their nib size. After the Meisterstück, Montblanc had a medium-priced pen, and then it had the economy or student-range model.
The Meisterstücks always began with the number 1. The 100s would be the best pens. The 200 pens would rank second in quality, and the 300s third. The filling mechanisms in the ’20s and ’30s were also numbered, and that was the second digit. The number 0 designated a safety pen, 2 meant the pen had a pump filler, and 3 stood for a piston filler. The last digit in the ’20s and ’30s was the size of the nib, which ranged from a tiny 00 up to a number 12. In this way, a pen labelled as a 128—best quality, pump filler, with a number-8 nib—could easily be identified.
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| Montblanc 128G |
There were also button fillers modelled after one of Parker’s great creations—a pen with a simple bladder mechanism. It was available in red and black hard rubber. Montblanc also made lever fillers, which were never very popular in Europe and are now exceedingly rare.
There was also a pen with a pneumatic filler, which was invented by the Conklin Company in the U.S. It operated on the same principle as the pneumatic drill used for tearing up the streets. Air pressure collapsed the bladder. When the barrel was closed, the air pressure was removed and the bladder would deflate. If it were immersed, it filled with ink.
Thanks to the introduction of celluloid and plastics, the ’20s and ’30s were a period of great experimentation for Montblanc. From that period on, it had more filling mechanisms than any other company. The company sold a button-filler pen, which was very traditional in design. Other models used lever fillers and piston fillers, which later became the primary type of Montblanc pen and were the most popular filling mechanism in Europe. It had pneumatic fillers with a collapsible bladder. Montblanc’s pump fillers were fairly innovative.
Montblanc only patented one filling mechanism—the collapsible telescopic piston. The company patented or trademarked its 4810 pens as well as the white star, but its telescopic piston, which was a modification of a regular piston, is the only filling mechanism Montblanc patented. It virtually doubled the size of the ink capacity within the pen. It’s a brilliant innovation, but in 1959 Montblanc abandoned it and returned to the more traditional piston, probably because of the expense.
Montblanc Pens in the Pre-War Years
As a rule of thumb, there are really three things collectors look for: the ornateness of the body, the precision of the mechanism, and size. Many collectors also really like big pens. Today, the most expensive non-precious metal vintage Montblanc pens are the large ones. The beautiful Montblanc Meisterstück—the number 12 safety—was made all through the 1920s. It was a very large pen.
Montblanc made nibs from 00 to 12 in the prewar sizes, so you’ll find tiny Montblancs and very large ones. The 00 and 0 babies are very rare too.
By the mid-1920s, everybody was making pens with coloured plastic. Montblanc introduced orange, blue, and malachite-green fountain pens. After the size 12s were discontinued in the 1930s, Montblanc began numbering the Meisterstücks as 20, 25, 30, 35, and 40. These are the solid-color and marble-barrel pens with the push-knob fillers and the rounded snowcap on top. They were available in bright colours and are extremely sought after.
Montblanc made a celluloid pen that no other company, with the exception of OMAS in Italy, was able to perfect. It was called the PL or the Platinum, and it was silver, black, and white—the barrels and caps featured silvery black celluloid in an arch pattern. This Platinum is the single rarest European celluloid pen because it was only made in the 1930s. It was available in the 2, 4, 6, and 8 sizes. It’s probably the rarest Montblanc from the ’30s.
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| Montblanc 139 |
The immediate predecessor to the current 149, the 139, was made from 1939 to 1952. A 139 looks just like a 149 except it’s flat on the top and bottom instead of rounded. The L 139 was and still is, the fattest pen in the Montblanc line. Almost as soon as the 139s began production, the war intervened, so you see war-era 139s without gold nibs, as gold was a strategic metal at that time. Instead, the nibs were made of steel or an alloy. After the war, the 139s were produced until ’52 and is the most-sought-after non-colored Montblanc out there.
As with any pen, rarity is what people look for. One of the ironies of the current market is that a lot of the lower-end, 200 and 300-quality Montblanc's’ brightly coloured barrels and caps are more desired by collectors than luxury models from the same period. That’s because most of Montblanc’s luxury pens were plain black, whereas collectors gravitate toward the ones in blue, pearl, or black and green.
The War years and the aftermath
Hamburg being at the time the largest port in Germany, and in fact, the largest port in Europe after Rotterdam, it was devastated by Allied bombing. The company survived through most of 1944, but in the winter of that year, the factory was bombed and many of its materials were destroyed. We have very few Montblanc archives from that time because of the bombing.
Ironically, the occupation of Hamburg by the British was a great thing for Montblanc. When the war ended, the company was producing no more than a few pens a month. But when the British authorities came to talk to all of the businesspeople, they made sure that Montblanc received the raw materials it needed to get back on its feet again, in part because the British occupation forces needed fountain pens.
Montblanc’s whole line was redesigned in 1949. The 132s through 138s were discontinued as the company introduced a whole new line of luxury pens. When the size 8s were dropped, the middle number 4 was introduced as a new rounded model that looked like the 149 you see today. So, in 1949, the product line consisted of the 142, 144, and 146. At the time, it was unheard of for a European company to produce new lines like that. It was amazing for Montblanc to produce a new line of pens four years after the war in a devastated city.
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| Montblanc 144 Vintage Celluloid |
The key to its success was its ability to export. Nobody in Germany had any money at that time. It was far more important to sell a pen to the U.K., where Montblanc would be paid in hard currency, rather than in Deutsche Marks or Reichsmarks, which really didn’t have any value. Montblanc was exporting because there simply wasn’t a domestic market.
Montblanc Pens in the 1950s
In the 1950s, Montblanc was making pens in Denmark as well in Germany. The company was producing the 140 series - beautiful celluloid pens. It was making plain black celluloid, as well as a gray stripe, brown stripe, green stripe, and other colours.
The company was trying a variety of designs, like bringing back the slip cap for the first time since prior to 1930. Montblanc also redesigned its nibs. The traditional nib was like a spear, the point of an arrow, but there’s another nib called the Cobra, which looks like a cobra head, or a heart. The slip cap and Cobra nib are two innovations Montblanc introduced during this period.
Montblanc also began marrying celluloid and metal with metal caps on its pens. The Americans did that in 1941 with the Parker 51, one of the world’s most famous pens. Montblanc began doing it with the 600 series pens. The 600 series was celluloid and metal, with sterling silver, solid gold, or gold-filled caps and barrels—the peak of German pen quality at that time.
Pens in the 700 series were all metal, while pens in the 100 series were all celluloid. Another great change Montblanc developed in the 1950s was a telescoping system in which the first section of the piston collapses over the second section so that it occupies less space. That way, there’s more space for the ink.
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| Montblanc 246 Coral / Made in Denmark |
In 1959, Montblanc abandoned celluloid for injection-mold plastic. Some people see that as the beginning of a decline in quality. Indeed, many collectors don’t collect Montblanc from 1959 and after because that’s when injection plastic was introduced.
Montblanc Pens in the 1960s and 1970s
In the 1960s, the 149 really was the only oversized fountain pen out there. Albert Goertz redesigned the entire Montblanc line. He streamlined every Montblanc pen except the 149, which remained the one big pen. People like those. For the most part, though, Goertz made Montblanc pens thinner and plainer.
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| Montblanc 149 "Le Cigar" |
In the ’50s, there were still people, particularly in America, who didn’t want to buy German products. It wasn’t until the early ’60s that the Volkswagen Beetle became popular in the States. Leica cameras didn’t make a comeback until that time. I think Americans bought Montblancs in part because some of that anti-German feeling had disappeared.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the ballpoint was the rage throughout the ’50s and ’60s. The ballpoints were terrible when they first came out in the late 1940s. The ink was horrible. The Reynolds Company was the first to produce them, but when Bic in France made a disposable pen in the ’60s, it became the world’s most popular ballpoint.
As the ballpoint became more accepted, the fountain pen lost some of its panache. People saw it as something old and inferior, and only in the late '70s and early ’80s, there was a resurgence of interest in fountain pens. A lot of companies like Sheaffer and Parker began producing retro designs in the ’80s. Montblanc's just continued to sell, thanks to their European craftsmanship and quality.
The 1980s and beyond
Ironically, Montblanc’s popularity in the ’80s coincided with a decline in the reputation of its products. This happened in part because a lot of people were accustomed to ballpoints, not fountain pens and if you bear down hard with a fountain pen you can ruin it in three or four seconds, this happened quite a lot according to retailers and manufacturers.
The pens themselves didn’t change dramatically in the early 1980s. The company began an enormously popular series of limited-edition pens in 1990 and ’91, and ever since, each year, Montblanc issues a Writers Edition and a Patron of the Arts limited edition.
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| Montblanc Van Cleef & Arpels Pen One of the most expensive pens ever made |