Montblanc Archives

M

2 Comments / Inks, Montblanc, Uncategorised / By memm

Last year one of the UK jewellery chains had a huge discount on some Montblanc items. This included the Montblanc M which could be had for less than 50% of the current recommended retail price. You will understand how difficult it was to resist.

The Montblanc M with the Universalpatrone – good use of the available space

The Montblanc M was designed by Mark Newson and is quite unusual for Montblanc standards. Not everyone is keen on the looks of this pen, but I love it. If you were to classify fountain pens by appearance then the M would be much closer to the Lamy dialog 3 than to your average Montblanc. Its most exotic feature is the cap which is magnetically aligned and held in place.

Unlike many other Montblanc pens which come with a converter the M not only doesn’t come with one, there’s also none available that officially fits. I successfully used the Cross Verve adapter in the past, but my Cross adapter is now back in the Verve.

I am now using what I call a Lamy/Pelikan cartridge. Probably 20 to 25 years ago these no-name cartridges got popular in parts of Europe. You could always get no-name Pelikan/standard cartridges ^[1]Pelikan has a big share of the market for school fountain pens., but with the popularity of the Lamy Safari being used in schools the ink cartridge manufacturers thought of putting a Pelikan compatible end on a Lamy compatible cartridge. Clever stuff and if you don’t mind refilling your cartridge with a syringe (I don’t mind) then it is just perfect for the Montblanc M’s body with the tapered end.

The only problem is that these cartridges don’t seem to be popular in either the UK, where I live or the USA, where nearly all the Bleistift Blog readers are based – as I wasn’t able to find these in online shops. I hope online shops in the UK and the USA will stock them in the future. In Germany, you can get them under the name “Universalpatrone” on eBay and Amazon for less than 10 cents per cartridge if you buy a bigger pack.

The standard/Pelikan end of the Universalpatrone

Proper reviews of the Montblanc M:

References[+]

References
↑1	Pelikan has a big share of the market for school fountain pens.

The Montblanc and the recipe

7 Comments / Montblanc / By memm

I spotted this recipe yesterday evening, when my wife was preparing her dinner. What’s that, I thought. Why is Montblanc being mentioned in a recipe? Turns out the Montblanc is used to describe the size of the asparagus. I wonder whether the author did this to show off, or whether a Montblanc pen is really a universal thing everyone knows the size of…
In my imagination it happened like this:

Are those recipes ready to be published?

Kind of – there’s one problem with the asparagus and shrimps recipe.

What problem?

It’s about the size of the asparagus. We wrote the size down in cm, but thought it’s odd if people take their tape measure out when preparing food.

That’s easy, we just describe the size of the asparagus using an everyday object – one we all use on a daily basis. Write down the asparagus should be the size of a Montblanc.

Ah, of course, why didn’t I think of it earlier…

Interlude

Leave a Comment / Fountain pens, Links, Pelikan / By memm

I am still quite busy at work, so no new blog post at the moment…

…but I thought I amuse you with with this video from Pelikan’s youtube channel.

Montblanc fountain pen failed – Pelikan M800 to the rescue

Pelikan’s description of the video reads as follows:

“During the inauguration of Japanese minister Kensaku Morita on April 6th, 2009 the fine writing instrument failed. The former Minister Akiko Domoto spontaneously offered her Pelikan Souverän M800 to her successor and the documents could be signed without further delays…”

On a related note: Recently, Pelikan changed the logo on the top of the cap to a metal logo.

Usually, I do not display images from other web sites for copyright reasons – one of the reasons why my blog posts with news look quite bare. If I do include images not taken/created by myself I mark them accordingly (e.g. a screen shot from a TV series). Since youtube provides the code to embed videos on your own web pages I decided to embed this video directly. Last year, I did something similar for a Staedtler video. I will keep my restrictive policy regarding images and will mark all images taken from other sources explicitly.

Unfortunately bad news keep coming from Japan. Let’s hope for the best, which (currently) is probably a hope that things don’t get even worse.

Mahatma Gandhi ink

3 Comments / De Atramentis, Inks, Montblanc / By memm

If you are interested in fountain pens you probably came across Montblanc’s Mahatma Gandhi fountain pen. Keeping in mind that Gandhi led a simple lifestyle, gave up unnecessary expenditure and promoted Indian-made goods there is a huge discrepancy between what he represented and what Montblanc’s Mahatma Gandhi pen stands for. No wonder this pen made headlines in several newspapers, including USA Today and The Guardian.

More affordable was Montblanc’s saffron coloured Mahatma Gandhi ink, which was released around the same time but sold out very soon. De Atramentis started selling an ink with the same colour and the same name. Even though there is a chance that Montblanc’s Gandhi ink was manufactured by De Atramentis I wouldn’t bet on it. Old Montblanc ink and De Atramentis inks are made in Germany, but as far as I know Montblanc’s old inks were made by Gutenberg ^[1]previously mentioned in this article – not by De Atramentis. Montblanc’s new inks are made in Austria.

De Atramentis’ Mahatma Gandhi ink is probably a copy of Montblanc’s ink, but it might be worth a try if you were keen on getting Montblanc’s Gandhi ink and missed your chance when it was first released. Unfortunately, De Atramentis’ shipping costs outside Germany are quite steep.

References[+]

References
↑1	previously mentioned in this article

No Montblanc Season’s Greetings ink for 2010

Leave a Comment / Inks, Montblanc / By memm

Sad news, at least for those of us who like fountain pens. After searching the Fountain Pen Network and not being able to find any information about this year’s Season’s Greetings ink I just called a Montblanc boutique…

…and found out that there is no Season’s Greetings ink for 2010 …What a shame!

Maybe this should not be too much of a surprise after they recycled 2008’s White Forest ink in 2009. The reasons for last year’s recycling are now unclear. Was it because of quality issues or did they just have too much stock left?

If you want to read more about the Season’s Greetings inks that were available from 2005 to 2009 have a look at this blog post.