A House Of History And Writing

The new Montblanc Haus, a gallery dedicated to the brand’s history and craftsmanship, is all about the fountain pen, its use and its place in culture.

Words: Wei-Yu Wang Photography: Daniel Schaefer

This and facing pages: within the 3,600sqm Montblanc Haus are exhibits dedicated to the brand’s history. HAMBURG, GERMANY’S SECOND largest city, is a renowned cultural destination with numerous museums, theatres and concert venues – and it now has one more destination in Montblanc Haus. A 20-minute drive outside the city centre, Montblanc Haus is a permanent exhibition sited next to the brand’s manufacture and headquarters. After five years in the making, it opened with the aplomb expected of a major brand milestone: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Daniel Bruhl and Oscar Isaac were among the celebrities present, while Heinz O Wehmann of Michelin-starred Landhaus Scherrer handled dinner and Jamie Cullum provided the evening’s entertainment.

Montblanc Haus takes the form of a threestorey, 100m-long edifice, courtesy of the architect Nieto Sobejano, latterly based in Berlin. It is quite deliberately box-shaped – of the kind that may hold a pen, in fact. The bold, black structure is wrapped in a motif of Mont Blanc, the famous mountain range of the Alps and from which the company takes its name. This image has featured on Montblanc packaging since the 1920s, but is reinterpreted here in dynamic, contemporary fashion; the Montblanc Haus pattern is made up of narrowly spaced vertical lines and triangles, suggesting pen strokes. The building is especially impressive at night when this motif is lit up – as is the iconic, six-sided Montblanc logo.

While Montblanc is indelibly associated with the fountain pen, it has been expanding its purview since the 1990s. In a modern-day boutique, surrounded also by watches, luggage, fragrances, headphones and all manner of leather goods and accessories, a newcomer may be forgiven for not knowing where the brand comes from. A visit to Montblanc Haus, however, will leave no doubt as to its roots as a penmaker, founded in 1906.

Within its 3,600sqm are exhibits dedicated to Montblanc’s history, charting its growth from one of many in the crowded, early-20th century heyday of fountain pens, to the inception of the Montblanc name and branding in the 1920s and the birth of the Meisterstuck range, and how it cemented its reputation as a luxury icon by the 1950s.

Montblanc has the benefit of a surprisingly well-preserved set of documents and archives, as director of brand heritage, culture & sustainability, Alexa Schilz, discovered. She took the lead on the Montblanc Haus project. “We were lucky that in the past, a lot of old colleagues collected things and put them in boxes. Everything was quite nicely preserved,” she relates. She and her team of museologists searched through these for the key elements that defined Montblanc.

The results are on display in Montblanc Haus: exhibits of old plans, drawings, photographs and the like. Montblanc was something of a forerunner

in advertising, with a daring and aggressive campaign even during the early years – impactful posters in the trendy art deco and Bauhaus styles of the era, branded cars, biplanes and enormous prop pens that served as store signs. There is a collection of vintage products as well, pens and ink bottles of all shapes and sizes that reveal the design trends of their respective decades.

A consistent message, even from this early era when fountain pens were everyday tools, was that of exceptional products and luxury. Alessandra Elia, director of category management writing culture, speaks about a particular advertisement that caught her eye. “I remember some of them were mentioning it being your ‘Sunday pen’. Back then, they were already positioning it as something that you can do in your free time, for enjoyment. So they were positioning Montblanc as a true luxury object,” she says. It is this attitude that has served the company well as technology marched on and fountain pens became objects of desire rather than essential tools.

Other exhibits communicate the craftsmanship of today’s Montblanc, like the many-step, multiweek process it takes to create each gold nib. The full range of nib sizes and styles is quite a sight, from the standard round to exotic, flexible calligraphy nibs of limited availability. There is

This and facing pages: Montblanc Haus invites visitors to rediscover the joy of writing with pen and paper. also a sample of Montblanc’s bespoke nib service and its near-endless possibilities. Showcased also are examples of the brand elevating the pen into pieces of art; currently this is an exhibit of its recently concluded Patron of Arts series, a 30-year endeavour which combines precious materials, painstaking handcrafting and remarkable storytelling. Other displays are full of enthusiastic examples of writing. A standout is the Correspondence Wall, which features letters and artwork in varying scripts, styles and languages from around the world, all created by fountain pen. It is enough to prompt a visitor to go to the postcard station, pick up one of the available pens and mail someone a handwritten memento.

The archives room, which is not open to the general public, has special meaning to Schilz as the documents and inspirations that enabled Montblanc Haus are stored here. “This is what made everything possible in the project,” she says. “I’m in deep love with this part of my work, where I can be visionary and where I can be creative, and in order to be so, you need a starting point. And this is what the archive is.” The room is a meditative one, round and windowless with floorto-ceiling drawers and a single table at its centre. It will be available to certain exclusive visitors, but it is also a place for Montblanc’s creatives across its many departments – those who are driving the future of the brand and who need a reference point for its heritage. After all, as Elia explains, writing is still at the core of everything the brand does. “If there’s something that makes us unique, it’s writing. There are a lot of watch brands, a lot of leather goods brands,” she says, noting that the new Meisterstuck leather collection drew heavily upon the nib as an iconic element. “Writing is the source of everything. More than ever, I would say.”

Montblanc Haus is thus not just a showcase of the brand’s history, it also cherishes a piece of culture that was key to its founding. “The ultimate objective is to inspire writing,” says Schilz. “Not everybody finds it natural to use a writing instrument day-to-day. We want to showcase how valuable it is to put aside the laptop and phone, and just put pen to paper. To detox, to manifest thinking or to connect to somebody – to find the joy in writing.”

Elia adds: “When you’re writing by hand, there is something that connects you almost spiritually with what you’re doing. It’s a sensorial experience, especially with the fountain pen. The sound, what the instrument is doing when you open and close it, the way you fill it and clean it – it’s a ritual, you have to take the time. Luxury is about taking the time to enjoy an experience.”