It's quite common today to find ready critics of modern pen makers who point out the fact that the packaging of limited edition pens is often a bit "over the top". In some cases, they claim, the packaging is so overdone as to render the pen itself almost an afterthought.
Well, with the Montblanc Unicef edition, they are right. No doubt about it, the package is the edition here!
Montblanc has joined with UNICEF in an effort to promote international literacy. Montblanc has collected statements from 149 celebrities from the fields of art, business, politics, and sport, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Harry Belafonte, Luciano Pavarotti, Bianca Jagger and Vivienne Westwood. Each of the celebrities was asked to express their love of words and writing in a handwritten statement. Using the Montblanc 149, of course!
For each of these notes, Montblanc is donating $4,810 dollars directly to UNICEF. In addition, the handwritten statements themselves will be sold at an international auction in spring 2005, with the proceeds also going to UNICEF's literacy programs. So, if I'm doing my math correctly, that's over $700,000 just in direct donations to UNICEF! Say what you want about overdone packaging, you can't argue with that bottom line!
But in the case of the Montblanc UNICEF edition, the packaging is actually quite nicely done. Of course, I have my personal preferences, and like some better than others, but all in all, it's a clever idea, nicely executed. Montblanc selected three artists to design packaging for the classic 149 Meisterstück fountain pen.
French interior designer Andrée Putman, German -American architect Helmut Jahn, and an American artist named Tom Sachs have all created highly individual packaging to showcase the pen. Considering that the 149 is about as close as you can get to a "classic design" for a fountain pen, basic black and gold, the designs manage to present the pen in three radically different manners.
Helmut
Jahn is one of the most influential figures in contemporary architecture.
Since 1967, he has been living and working in Chicago, where he went
after completing his studies in Munich to work alongside architects
including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Since 1982, he has been the sole partner of the world-famous Murphy/Jahn firm of architects. His best-known buildings include the State of Illinois Center in Chicago, the Messeturm tower in Frankfurt, Munich Airport Center, Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, the Deutsche Post AG building in Bonn, and the Cologne-Bonn Airport.
Helmut Jahn's style is characterized by his preference for steel and glass, lending his buildings a sense of transparency and openness. His architecture, which combines function, technology and aesthetics, often attracts the attention of both architects and the broader public.
With his design company "Jahn Lykouria Design", Helmut Jahn created his vision of packaging in the language of architecture. He modelled a transparent box out of a block of acrylic, covered with an engraved quotation from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The result is a clean, elegant package that is also visually interesiting as artwork in it's own right.
This piece is easily my favorite of the three. It's a wonderful design, with the pen showing through the acrylic, and the text appearing to float above. I think more than the others, this piece reflects the theme of the edition, that of writing and literacy.
The
French interior designer Andrée Putman has studied the piano,
worked as a journalist, and taught herself industrial design. In 1978,
after several years working with Issey Miyake and Jean Charles de Castelbajac,
she founded her own design and architecture company.
For over 25 years, she has been revolutionizing the international hotel trade, designing objects and furniture with simple lines and subdued colours.Simple, pure and elegant, with no frills best describe her work. Some of her best-known projects include Morgans hotel in New York, Saint James Club Hotel and the Pershing Hall in Paris, the Ritz Carlton in Wolfsburg, the Lô Sushi restaurant in Paris, as well as diverse design projects including furniture, and the interior of Concorde.
For this series, Andrée Putman created a rounded shape for the outer box. This is lacquered in deep black, and sprinkled with white Montblanc stars, giving it an elegant and yet very striking appearance. Inside the outer box rest the bottle of ink, and a tubular case for the 149 pen. The case is also lacquered black, with the stars on either end.
It's a bit "lighter" in feel than the Jahn design, but still quite elegant. In fact, I would go so far as to say that while the Helmut Jahn design is quite "German", the Andrée Putman is equally "French". Both clean, elegant, and modern, but two entirely different results in terms of the overall feel of the design!
The third package is perhaps the most notable, if only in terms of "shock value". Montblanc enlisted the work of American artist Tom Sachs to create packaging that offers a clear change of pace...
With his provocative artwork that takes aim at today's culture of consumerism, Tom Sachs has become a recognized figure in the contemporary art scene.
Sachs studied at Bennigton College in Vermont and at the Architectural Association in London, and made headlines as a window dresser for Barney's department store.
His Christmas decorations, which featured such icons of American culture as McDonalds, Hello Kitty, and characters from the Simpsons in a nativity scene caused quite an uproar, and also guaranteed his entry into New York city's gallery scene.
He has continued to both impress and upset the public with his themes reflecting the American way of life and the consumer oriented world of industrialized nations. Fashion, cars, and fast food provide inspiration for sculptures created by Sachs and his "Allied Culture Prosthetics" studio.
Sachs is best known for his use of existing materials to create artworks that depict the darker aspects and hidden depths of reality. Some of his best-known projects include Prada Toilette, ( a sculpture of a tiolet fashioned entirely of Prada Shoe boxes) the Chanel Guillotine (a fully functioning guillotine emblazoned with the Chanel logo), and the huge installation piece "Nutsy's" that was shown at Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin.
The box itself is in the same size and shape as the traditional luxury package for the 149 Meisterstück. That's about as far as the similarity goes, however! The box is created of the foam core art board Sachs uses in many of his sculptures. It is then decorated with hand drawn Montblanc and UNICEF logos as well as "suggestions for use" of the enclosed pen. It's an interesting approach to the subject, no doubt about it!
The Montblanc UNICEF edition is a very worthy cause, and the editions, at only 4,810 pieces each being made, might prove to be a bit difficult to get your hands on. In that case, I would like to suggest that, even if you cannot add one of these to your collection, that you consider making a donation to UNICEF.
copyright 2005 William Riepl