INVINCIBILE EXTRA : ARTURO HEINZ'S VERSION OF WATERMAN'S INK VIEW

The history of fountain pens in Italy is full of interesting examples which involve a relationship with the international pen scenario and specific individual cases of ingeniousness and creativity.

Invincibile pens, for instance, connect Pforzheim to Milan and to Naples through the personality of  Arturo Heinz.  He  was born in Pforzheim, then moved to Milan  where he worked for Kosca and then in the early 1930s  moved to Naples where he founded his own pen factory, named Invincibile (unbeatable).The experience he had piled up with Kosca in Milan allowed him to develop a full-fledged production plant where gold nibs were manufactured, too

Heinz’s awareness of the market and his attention to technical and aesthetical developments and trends made his pens very competitive and absolutely interesting from a historical point of view.

The example in the picture shows the connection between an Invincibile Extra and the famous Waterman Emerald Ray Ink view.

The Invincibile Extra  represents one of the best Italian interpretations of the Ink view model, going far beyond the replica of the striped material, like many other Italian brands did.

The barrel is divided in two parts like the Ink View (but the pen is a simple button filler) and the cap top replicates the stepped profile which is repeated at the bottom of the barrel, too (where the Ink view has  instead thew Waterman plaque).

Even the texture of the cap band is replicated in the Invincibile whose cap is enriched by two extra thin rings.

This Invincibile Extra is a beautiful and sturdy pen and it really seems to compete with the Ink View, even if it cannot offer the transparency of the barrel which was the major innovation of the Ink View. The filling mechanism, which is reached unscrewing the blind cap, is actually a button filler but it has large aluminum cylinder to be pressed to activate the pressure bar. Heinz patented this mechanic ams shown on the barrel imprint (brevettata)

In this case, like in a few others,  I think that  defining the pen just an imitation, would be reductive.

It takes a lot of creativity to make a button filler look like a transparent pen and  to give it  elegance and a strong identity.