MONTEGRAPPA 1999 The Queen of Hearts Annual Limited Edition Silver Fountain Pen

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MONTEGRAPPA 1999 The Queen of Hearts Annual Limited Edition Silver Fountain Pen:
$1700.00

MONTEGRAPPA 1999 The Queen of Hearts Annual Limited Edition Fountain Pen

Ref. Z-Queen-FP

Limited Edition: #310

Green resin and .925 sterling silver, octagonal barrel with playing card motif.

18k-750 (M) Medium two-tone gold nib

Year: 1999 (annual edition)

Made in Italy

The concerned pen has never been used nor inked.It comes complete with original box and papers. It is equipped with an 18k Medium (M) nib and fills via a Piston Filling System.

In 1999 Montegrappa produced The Queen of Hearts, the celebration and representation of the magic of playing.

The Queen of Hearts is manufactured in green resin, to symbolically evoke the game table. The overlay of the pen is inspired from the playing cards and the four suits clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds and is made in sterling silver as all the annual editions.

The clip is enhanced with a sophisticated micro-sculpture that represents The Queen of hearts.

Excerpt from a booklet:

HOMO LUDENS "LET'S PLAY !"

There's no need for anything else.

Each one of us knows what to expect when the play mechanism in relationships is triggered.

We all like to enjoy ourselves in company, to lower ourselves into a fictitious context and to pretend (at least for a while that the rules that govern the game are those that condition our comportment.

"What do you mean ? Only children play, playing isn't an adult thing, is it?"

Whoever said that? It's true that playing is children's "work", it enables them to measure their capabilities limitations, how they vent the need for exercise and put to the test their imagination and intelligence. In the same way adult play becomes an opportunity (sometimes coveted) to evade daily problems, a moment of relax, the occasion to momentarily put aside habits and routine.

Besides, hands up those who have never played cards, a parlour game or even hide and seek. Or rather, hands up, stand up, run around the chair three times and then stand on your head. Are we talking about games or not?

PLAY, THE INGREDIENT OF LIFE

There have been those that have tried to define the origin and the basis of play as the need to get rid of an excess life force and others that have said that, "The human being by play obeys a natural sense of imitation" or even "satisfies the need to relax." and

again those that propose that play is a kind of preparatory exercise for what life will throw at us, training us in self control, an eagerness to dominate that which is expressed.

But if we ask ourselves what the enjoyment in play is, why do we lose ourselves in the passion of the race or scream with joy at a goal (let's not forget that sport is also a game) we cannot find a logical answer.

Play is an irrational reality, that places the human and animal world together, regardless of culture or ethnic group, because all of us play or have played on each and every latitude and under each and every sun.

To play is a basic need, like breathing. Does this seem an exaggeration? It is not.

Because all of us, even those who hide beneath an austere mask, are conscience of moving in a system, on the contrary, in a series of systems family, school, work etc.) in which rules and imposed comportment are recognisable as a game of enormous proportions in which we lose ourselves. The game of life. The only tragedy is when we stop to consider life a game.

RELATIONSHIPS AND COMPETITION

Can one play alone? Of course.

But playing is also, (and maybe) above all a means of being together, in order to understand each other better, to communicate in a way that is sometimes truly amazing, How many times has one happened to view a person as he plays under a different light? During play, characteristics of the personality that we normally mask tend to emerge and often these characteristics are fascinating: the likeable player is not necessarily the player that wins, but the one who knows how to give something of himself, to be original, imaginative and fun, in short, one who surprises others by going to the limits of the scheme.

Yes, because play is also an open door to creativity, creativity that is mistakenly associated with competitiveness.

During a game the winner is often the one that surprises the antagonist: but that has nothing to do with the desire to win.

"Play to win" is the imprinting with which many of us have been brought up and we don't realise that when someone wins the game is over. Competition is the salt of the game but in reality the real flavour is in being with others.

FORTUNE AND INTELLIGENCE: THE LUCK OF THE GAME

Maybe it's the first choice we make in reference to a game. It could be that when choosing to play much depends on our desire for commitment or whether to leave chance to work for or against us.

Luck? Snakes and Ladders for example, oreven the lotteries and the recent scratch cards. Intelligence?

Chess Draughts, Othello and many, many others. In the end those that are most fun are those that manage to balance a dose of luck with the challenge of using our judgement, and therefore our intelligence.

Chance, after all is a fundamental spice, capable of flavouring for good or evil, any occasion.

Cards, dice and games of chance... If we want a classic example of how luck and ability may find a satisfying balance it is enough to think of card games.

The deck of playing cards has its own centuries old and noble story that is lost in the darkness of time.

We don't even know with certainty in which country the card deck was invented, we do know that they arrived in Europe thanks to the Arabs, but it is not known whether they originated for prophetic means or for pure enjoyment. "Naibi" is the Arabic word by which they were called in the14th Century.

Today the most common decks belong to the great Italian and French families in which the Italian suits are the Coppe (cups) Denari (corresponding to diamonds) Bastoni (sticks) and Spade (swords) and the French deck in which the four suits are clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades. Each suit has thirteen cards numbered from one to ten and the three figures the Jack or Knave (Fante), the Queen (Donna), in the Italian deck the Queen is replaced by a horse, and finally the King (Re).

There are fifty two cards to a pack in which two Jokers (Matte) and the Jolly are added, if utilised the Jolly may substitute any card in the deck.

Card games are infinite and often with variations tightly tied to the area of province.

The most well known range from Briscola or Trumps to Scopa, from Rummy to Scala 40 (Gin Rummy), from Canasta to Bridge. It is not an accident that the great versatility of gaming cards has also permitted the birth of games of chance such as Poker, Stud Poker, Baccara and Chemin de Fer etc., in which ability and memory are coupled to luck. At the green tables of the Casino, the natural venue for these games, considerable patrimonies have been won and lost. Gambling fever, the possibility that in a moment, in a hair's breadth, one may turn ones existence upside down in one way or another has fascinated thousands of gamblers.

"The dice is thrown" was pronounced at the ford of Rubicon.

Gaming made one dream even then.

MONTEGRAPPA: FOR A GAMBLE AND FOR LOVE.

Gambling and love are widely observed as being antithetic, but it is not always so. If we think that when, in 1978 the Aquila family assumed control of Montegrappa, the historical company that produces pens in the centre of Bassano, it was a gamble, possibly even a true and proper game of chance. However, it was a risk justified by the love for the artisan's high standard of work, of a love that had already been deeply rooted in the family experience :

The fountain pen, Montegrappa represented (and represents) a symbol in this sense. In fact, the company in Bassano was founded in 1912 and was the first fountain pen factory in Italy, since then in the great building adapted from an antique thermo-electric centre, in which it is housed, the company has manufactured pens, that if during the war gave a significant contribution to the writings of our soldiers at the front, also received the historical appreciation of Ernest Hemingway and Jon Dos Passos, the two celebrated American novelists who worked for the Italian Red Cross during the Great War.

Innumerable are the models that have been constructed at the company in Bassano throughout it's history, always with an acute market sense and with particular attention paid to marrying technique to refined elegance.

The Aquila family have known how to renew the historical successes projecting Montegrappa to the heights of the World market.

A gamble won thanks to courageous choices, such as the use of precious metals, accurate manufacture, untiring imagination in the projection of models.

All this allows Montegrappa and the Aquila family to be a reference point today for whom so ever wishes to bear witness to the history of script.

THE QUEEN OF HEARTS

Inspiration to continue the theme from preceding annual editions, Montegrappa proudly presents the 1999 Annual Edition "The Queen of Hearts".

Produced with the technique exclusive only to Montegrappa, the low-relief engraving of the Four Suits in exquisite details graces the cap and barrel of this yet another masterpiece.

Coupled with a special resin in green, representing the velvet that underlines the playing tables and finished with a perfect sculpture of "Lady Luck" on the signature rolling ball clip, hence the name "The Queen of Hearts" for this annual edition.

Encased in a box of wood and velvet with complimentary professional dices and goblet to satisfy even the "King of Gamblers"

Available in both fountain and roller ball pens in sterling silver throughout 1999 with the 18K Gold versions limited only to 100 pieces in fountain and 10 pieces in roller ball pens.

Nothing is left to "CHANCE" when Montegrappa presents to you ... "The Privilege of a Lifetime".

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