Ancora

The Ancora pen company was founded on the shores of Lake Maggiore, Italy, in the early part of the twentieth century. Giuseppe Zanini received his first fountain pen as a gift, and fountain pens became his gift to the world with the inception of the Ancora pen company at Sesto Calende in 1919. His earliest wish was simply to make beautiful pens, but his long-range desire was to create every piece of every Ancora pen in his own factory. Zanini’s untimely death in 1929 bequeathed the fruition of this dream to his son Alfredo, and within a year, all parts of the company’s ebonite and celluloid button-filled pens were produced within the Ancora factory.

Eighty-five years later, Giovanni Santini is fulfilling the original mission of the brand: to produce exquisite pens with passion and care and share them with those who appreciate the timeless fervor that created them. Santini collects vintage pens and owned a pen shop in Turin for a number of years. But it was his work as a pen repairman that gave him the initial impetus to make his own writing instruments.

Santini resumed the production of Ancora pens in 1998, and the passion he puts in the pens today is the same passion Zanini had for his products.Pen production takes place in Pavia, about fifty miles south of Milan, where the company fittingly resides in a 1913 Liberty-style building. “We have a small but very complete factory in which we produce all the parts for our pens. We have no mass production—everything is handmade,” says Santini.

Ancora is one of the very few companies that produces all the parts of its pens, including its ebonite feeders and most challenging of all, its 18-karat gold nibs.

The company is known for its micro-painting, an example of which is the Jules Verne limited edition fountain pens, each depicting a scene from Around the World in Eighty Days and Twenty-Thousand Leagues under the sea (88 pieces of each). The Four Seasons—a collection of fountain pens, each of which depicts a painted scene showcasing each season—and the Botticelli Venus Rising are also examples of micropainted pens.

Ancora also produces limited editions with unique metal overlays, such as the Nautilus—a pen-size rendition of Verne’s famed submarine. The Cellini, in sterling silver of vermeil, is another example of the brand’s stunning metalwork.

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