A pen that seems to be taken from the desk of Monsieur Gustave H. A short film as meticulous as a sequence shot. And a collaboration that no one asked for, but we were all grateful for. Wes Anderson and Montblanc joined forces to celebrate the centenary of the Meisterstück, but ended up creating something completely new: the Schreiberling, a pen that materializes the director’s visual universe, encapsulated in gold, mint and green ink. We unravel the shared history of the film director and the world’s most famous pen brand.
It all starts with a proposal that was clear: Montblanc wanted Anderson to direct a short film to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its most iconic pen. The campaign was titled 100 Years of Meisterstück, and was released on May 1, 2024, with a triple premiere: the video, a pop-up store on Rodeo Drive (and later in Hamburg), all wrapped in the filmmaker’s signature aesthetic. The short opens on a snowy mountaintop – a nod to Mont Blanc – with Wes, Jason Schwartzman and Rupert Friend decked out for the expedition. After coming in from the cold, they enter a fictitious design lab: green shelves, retro decorations, visual details that belong more to The Grand Budapest Hotel. In the middle of the spot, a mini-fetish object appears: the prototype of the Schreiberling, designed by Anderson, which Montblanc then decided to make it a reality. The result: a limited edition of 1,969 pieces.
Inspired by the baby pens of the 20th century and wrapped in the pastel colors of Anderson’s imagination, the Schreiberling is pure fetishism. Mint green body, yellow details, coral trim. Everything about it looks like something out of a set. Its name – Schreiberling, “he who writes without pretension” – sums up the tone of the project well: pleasure in writing without great pretensions, but with all the style. Each pen comes with a gold nib engraved with a doodle of Anderson himself. And it comes with green ink cartridges, notebook and ruler in metal packaging.
To carry out the launch of this pen, Wes Anderson again created a short film. Also starring Jason Schwartzman and Rupert Friend, and with Anderson on stage, the story transports us to a fictitious Montblanc studio where pen design becomes an almost existential issue. The narrative is absurd, the rhythm surgical, the aesthetics millimetric: symmetrical shots, green shelves, analog aesthetics. Everything breathes the Anderson universe, but with the precision of a firm like Montblanc behind it. The pen appears as a fictional artifact, but fiction has already become an object.
The interesting thing about this collaboration is not the hype, nor the exclusivity, nor even the well-measured fan service. It is the surgical fusion of two complementary obsessions: Wes Anderson’s obsession to build millimetric universes, full of emotional symmetry, and Montblanc’s obsession to preserve the object as a technical, functional and eternal artifact. This is not a simple branding exercise. Nor before another object of desire launched to feed collecting. This is a capsule of narrative turned into manufacture.
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