I may imagine myself a man of grand thoughts, but even I am too modest to think much of my handwriting. I know that my piece d’oeuvre will be titled “Path of a flightless insect which has been dipped in ink and is now walking across a paper in its dying moments”, which may sound rather Dalí-esque but would basically be nothing more than my hastily-scribbled grocery list.
Knowing this humbling fact, I recently walked into a space at a special event in Turkey where a Montblanc technician was conducting a very curious exercise — designing bespoke nibs. To begin, I was handed a special electro-pen to jot down an English passage with, but it could have been chosen from a list of several other languages. (Handwriting is like a fingerprint, so the essence was to record how it flowed when I wrote rather than the content of what I was writing.) The pen was linked to a computer and could instantly recognise what was being written, or shall I say scribbled, by me. Somewhere, upon seeing my handwriting, I felt I saw the gentleman squirm a bit. It’s like designing shoes for a man with two left feet, he must have thought.
‘M’ for mine
Once I had scrawled and subsequently signed on the paper, the computer got to work, analysing my strokes — the force I exerted on the paper, the way my hand moved, even how my wrist turned and twisted, and by exactly how much. Each nuance had been recorded and was now being assessed. Shortly, the computer spat out a sheet, which had a detailed analysis of my writing prowess.
On the whole, I was adjudged to have a relaxed style of writing (that’s one way of calling it slack, I thought), light on the pressure, moderate speed, at a convenient 45 degree angle and with rather dramatic turns and twirls of the wrist. Drama, c’est definitely moi.
If I were buying a stock Montblanc, then an ‘M’ (medium) was the recommended choice for me. Remember, nibs go from extra fine to fine, medium and bold, with a few more options along the way. But this would just be the starting point because now the Montblanc expertise would step in and step it up. For now is where they would use the computer-generated information to modify the nib in a way that would be even more suited to my way of writing. For example, depending on the angle at which I bring the pen down, they could grind the nib so that the contact was most ideal for smooth flow. Similarly, based on how my wrist tilts, the nib could be given an equal and opposite sense of balance. So it would go, honing each aspect so that it is best suited to work with/in my hands. For, you see, the nib is the heart of the fountain pen; it is the motor that drives the vehicle. Sure, aesthetics matter, but what good is a pretty pen that doesn’t write smoothly when it should, or leaks when it shouldn’t?
Pushing 40
A bespoke nib isn’t just about getting your initials on it. You can get that done too but, pun unintended, it’s really not the point. The real essence is to capture how you write, and then to use that data to fashion a nib which is cut out to work for you. Mind you, this is all only applicable to a fountain pen. If you write with a ballpoint pen then know that you’ve already been judged.
There are a 100 steps to making a fountain pen at Montblanc, of which almost 40 are dedicated to just the making of the nib! The service is 10 years old and offered through select Montblanc stores across the world, including Singapore, Dubai, New York and Milan. It takes around six weeks to get these bespoke, all-gold nibs ready, and remember that every nib at Montblanc, bespoke or not, is put through a writing test, physically by a person, before it is signed off on. The whole service, at approximately ₹1.1 lakh, isn’t any costlier than a special edition pen, which is great for such a highly-customised form of expression.
I still don’t know whether these changes would improve my handwriting, but I was assured that it would certainly change the way I feel every time I write. When you have writing like mine, that’s the kind of confidence you know you just can’t refuse.
Bespoke nib service is scheduled to be introduced in India next year.
