Winning words are the premise for a special new writing collection released by Montegrappa to celebrate sixty years of one of Italy’s favourite board games. On Scarabeo, bold, handcrafted presence and playful delight tap the essence of the iconic word game. With a set of interchangeable letter tiles inserted into its barrel, Scarabeo gives writers more ways than usual to create their favourite words:
Comprising limited editions of 300 fountain pens and rollerballs, Scarabeo honours Italian eccentricity and a shared love for language. In a design evolved from QUATTRO – the Venetian maker’s newest reference model. Palladium-plated steel, sapphire crystal and enamelled resin use advanced material finishing to glorify a game that has been mainstay of Italian households since 1963.
Wooden letter tiles are a hallmark of the original game and are emulated on Scarabeo in miniature, cut from woodgrain resin, then individually engraved and filled with enamel. By purchasing additional letter sets, owners can personalise their own pen with names or other high-scoring words. Thanks to a barrel and blind cap engineered specifically for this edition, new letter combinations slot snugly into the pen’s softly squared profile.
Cut from scarlet resin, the edition’s cap brandishes the game’s signature ‘jumbled letter’ livery –realised with intricate shallow engraving. Complex surface treatments like engraving and enamelling have long been core disciplines at Italy’s oldest fountain pen factory, and are gaining currency with the manufacture’s contemporary designs, bringing crafted, tactile qualities to modern industrial materials.
Like the original game, the edition includes two scarab tiles. The game’s wildcard is a good luck symbol that also features on the edition’s pocket clip and – on fountain pens – on a handmade 14K gold nib. Fountain pens are also supplied with a bottle of Scarabeo ink. The upscale anniversary edition is presented in a deluxe remake of the game’s current packaging.
When toymaker Editrice Giochi introduced its famous board game to the Italian market, it predated its famous international rival by more than twenty years. Outsiders often overlook Scarabeo’s independence yet, for Italians, its provenance is undisputed. Invented by the writer, Aldo Pasetti, Scarabeo’s distinct design encompasses rules and scoring well adapted to Italian and the language’s sparse, 21-letter alphabet.
Six decades after its debut, Scarabeo remains one of the country’s best-selling board games.
All Montegrappa writing instruments are manufactured by hand at the company’s headquarters, located beneath Monte Grappa in Bassano del Grappa, Italy. Artisan-operated since 1912, Montegrappa’s historic factory combines expert craftsmanship with state-of-the-art machinery and tooling to continually explore the limits of writing instrument design.
Please allow a 30-day handling time. Thank you for your patience!