"It Has Style:" A History of the Aurora Hastil (1969-1970)

The Italian pen company's experiment in modernism led to a revolution in late 20th century pen design. A two-part series.

- NICHOLAS ADAMS

I am not the first person to have been fascinated by Hastil, the pen designed by the architect Marco Zanuso (1916-2001) and designer Richard Sapper (1932-2015) for Aurora, the Italian pen company; after all, it's in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, New York. It is, of course, a very beautiful object: a slim, straight, polished metal rod. Cap and barrel lock together perfectly. In Italian, the name tells you that it is stylish: Hastil can be broken into two Italian words: "ha stile," meaning "it has style." The basic version is made from what Aurora calls "Ecosteel," chromed brass polished to a lustrous finish--and there are special editions: in vermeil gold, in lacquer (red, blue, black), a solid silver anniversary edition, and a Ferrari lacquered edition in red, yellow, and black.

Hastil is slim: 8.5 mm in diameter, 135 mm in length (with cap). The hinged clip is a single strip of polished selenium. The cap posts but does not mark the barrel, as it is held away from the surface by black plastic flanges-the "brakes"-that secure the cap in place. When the pen is uncapped, the brakes are terminating markers, denoting the end of the pen.

The Hastil nib (steel, gold, or rhodium) echoes the shape of the barrel with its shoulders wrapped around the feed and cinched in at the grip: early advertising described the nib as a "pennino ad ancia," in the shape of a "reed." The nib recalls an arrowhead or a spear point.

There is a ribbed black rubber or plastic grip imprinted with a serial number. Inside is an innovative hydrographic system fed by a thin piston converter, or Aurora's aerometric squeeze converter called "trik-trak."