Autumn is a season tinged with shades of the supernatural – when nights lengthen, imagination unfurls its inky wings, and All Hallows’ Eve sees the veil between the realms of fact and folklore become gossamer-thin. It’s a season for tales best told in the dark.
What better time, then, for luxury pen maker Montblanc to honor an innovator of the horror genre with its Writers Edition Homage to Bram Stoker collection: a tribute to the author who gave us an indelible archetype of the vampire legend with his gothic masterpiece, Dracula.
The collection cleverly incorporates elements of Stoker’s life and influences, as well as details from his masterwork and the science and lore it draws upon, using artisanal techniques to produce four elegant writing instruments that evoke the unmistakable aesthetic of the literary maestro’s most famous work.
The Writers Edition Homage to Bram Stoker captures in precious resin the moments following a vampire’s deadly bite, the marbled red and black pigments representing the mingling of blood with the creature’s dark, transformative poison. It also features two subtle marks on the cap’s clip ring, suggesting a recent visit from a pair of fangs.
The Limited Edition 8, meanwhile, features an intricate floral motif – a riff on the Arts and Crafts designs of William Morris, who was printing his botanical wallpapers even as Stoker was penning his sepulchral masterpiece. The pattern depicts a tangle of garlic and wild roses, talismans to ward off and bind vampires in their graves, rendered in hand-applied enamel and mother-of-pearl inlay. Here, the clip-ring bite marks are set with two tiny garnets.
Of course, no vampiric paean would be truly complete without some bat action, and so the Limited Edition 1897 (a nod to the year of the novel’s publication) is exactly that. The writing instrument appears to be enveloped in a leathery black bat wing, a reference to Dracula’s alternate form, the effect achieved with specially oxidized 925 silver. The pen’s fluted cone recalls the columns of London’s Lyceum Theatre, where Stoker worked and found inspiration, echoed on the solid-gold nib by a pair of comedy and tragedy masks.
Perhaps the most literal – and the most fun – of the four is the Limited Edition 93 (the year Stoker began writing Dracula), a facsimile of the Pravaz syringe used by Abraham Van Helsing to sedate Lucy Westenra in the book. The window in its hand-engraved white-gold barrel reveals the medical device’s trademark screw-down plunger, engraved with a Celtic knot, a symbol of eternal life, in this case designed by Stoker’s sister, Matilda. Satisfyingly, the bejeweled bite marks above the pen’s clip are matched by a single garnet blood drop at its tapered end.
An inspirational tool for writers, catnip for collectors, and a pitch-perfect tribute for literary fans – or anyone who appreciates a touch of the gothic – it’s clear that Montblanc had an absolute blast designing these pens. And that makes them all the more covetable.
Comments