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OMAS celebrates an 80 year experience of fine writing with the popular Vintage Arte Italiana, first introduced in 1931.
The limited collection is a redesign of the 1991 Paragon is in royal blue celluloid and has a production of 40 pens with high tech trim and 50 pens in gold trim. The fountain pen is piston filled, and can be selected with the nibs ranging from fine to broad sizes. They have also reintroduced the specialized 14 kt extra flexible nib, which is available in extra fine and fine., The extra flexible nib will be engraved with the extra flessible logo and the standard nib will be a production of the original style with the triangular engraving.
The barrel will be subtly branded with the 80th Anniversary logo.
The tribute to the Arte Italiana has been commissioned to honour the integrity and passion that has been OMAS for over 85 years. The Royal Blue will be first in a series of three vintage celluloid Paragons introduced in 2011.
Expect the total production of 80 fountain pens, announced at the end of March 2011, to sell out in a very short time.
With the announcement of this pen, OMAS also provided some of the history of the classic Arte Italiana line.
The first OMAS nib was designed and manufactured in 1918. The enormous technical ability of Armando Simoni, the founder of the company, ensured that it was immediately one of the most prestigious and sought after models. The incredible flexibility and easy adaptability to the hand, obtained after a long series of minute and sophisticated machining operations, characterizes this particular nib since its creating.
The design of Armando Simoni's first faceted collection resembles the twelve sided Doric column. The Arte Italiana has never gone out of production. Since its original introduction the collection has been reinterpreted in the size, colours and materials. But always in classic taste.
Armando Simoni found the range of colours available using ebonite was a hinderance to his creativity. Celluloid provided a material that would produce beautiful shades of col our. He found that celluloid was a material that would provide the best of the qualities he sought in making a fountain pen: lightness, resistance to impact and pressure, resistance to hear, no reaction to ink, very pleasing to the touch and bright refined colours
Once he overcame the challenges of size instability and colour changes that competitors were not able to full conquer he unveiled his first collection in 1929, using a production process he invented and guarded. That process is still used today by OMAS. Depending on the model, the production of the pen can be more than 350 days.
This is known as the million dollar pen as it was an million dollars that an important competitor offer Carvliere Simoni to buy the patent.
With the refusal to sell the patent, the competitor tried, unsuccessfully, to create an imitation of the pen.
The OMAS 361 in unique in that it provides for three different types of writing with a single nib ranging from flexible and calligraphic to hard and it is also able to write as a ball point.
In 1955 the faceted line joined the streamlined line and the simple and elegant clip of the rounded models of 1958, OMAS considers it a perfect pair of tradition and avant-garde.
The pearl-grey celluloid testified to the "economic boom" of those years.
the decade of the 1980s was to marked by a renewed interest in prestige fountain pens.
To keep abreast of the times, the latest, high tech equipment is a necessity.
But for OMAS it was as important to protect and capitalize on the craft skill that had helped the company achieve its great success of the past. On the design front, this meant formulating new ideas with an obvious imprint of the past to ensure that by the end of the of the century OMAS pens would have the same fascination as those from the 1930s.
This philosophy to firm shape in the Arte Italiana Collection released in 1984. Arte Italiana was a complete collection of writing instruments, comprising a fountain pen, mechanical pencil, ball point and roller ball, which retained the classic design with twelve facets introduced in 1931. The fret design, an OMAS hallmark, appeared on the cap in filled yellow gold. On the larger models the design also appeared on the body of the pen.
The nibs, with their arrow design and the elegant chromatic effect of their platinum overlay, made more than a few passing references to the Extra Lucens. Due to the shortage of celluloid in the mid 80s, the Arte Italiana collection was produced in resin, in black, and in very limited numbers, bordeaux.
Company lore has it that The Paragon was actually named by an Englishman. The Paragon was a comparison of the pen with the famous diamond of the English Crown Jewels.
Celluloid disappeared from the market at the end of World War II, even through OMAS had enough stocks to continue using it until the early 1960s.
But OMAS presented celluloid again in 1991. They used the same production system used by founder Armando Simoni. Red, green, arco brown were just some of the launched colours.
The event, long-awated by collectors and enthusiasts, was a real milestone in the history of the fountain pen.
Source: OMAS Press Release.