The Mille Miglia
70th Anniversary Fountain Pen
Very few know that, the most celebrated road race in the World was born in a quiet Milanese drawing room, on Christmas Eve in 1926. In the home of the journalist Giovanni Canestrini, three friends from Brescia, Count Aymo Maggi, Renzo Castagnato and Franco Mazzotti were conversing about cars and the need to invent something new in racing. There were many ideas, but all were inevitably discarded. Then a flicker of light, Why not a non stop Brescia-Rome-Brescia? "How many kilometers is it? " asked Count Maggi. "About one thousand, six hundred," Castagnato immediately replied. "A thousand miles (mille miglia), "Mazzotti underlined, having just recently returned from a trip to America. Everybody immediately liked that name. Certainly the world miglia had an English significance and a few zealous Fascists, opposed to every xenomania, would find this hard to swallow. But this obstacle was soon surpassed. "The Romans measured distance in miles, "Canestrini reasoned, "Therefore we are fully immersed in Roman tradition, "At the first edition of the Red Arrow on the 26th March 1927, they parted in a D'Annunzio style type of atmosphere, in a total of seventy-seven crews.
Many newspapers wrote that none of the foolhardy participants would return to Brescia, instead only twenty-two cars were obliged to withdraw. Morandi and Minola's OM 665 Suberba won, under the bonnet six cylinders of 2,234cc. And 70 horse power, crossing Italy at a little more than an average of 77 kilometers a day.
A foolish enterprise for those times, but there were three OM's on the three steps of the winner's podium, three OM's, all built in the machine shops of Brescia, that would become part of racing legend.
The Pen
With an eminent shape and strength of substance, it reveals in its exquisite beauty the fabrication of the true artisan. The artistic value of the decoration nearly overwhelms the actual construction of the writing instrument. In this way the "largest traveling museum in the world" takes body. The pen's form configures the route that one's fancy takes one to imagine and follow throughout the Mille Miglia. The best engraving masters of Brescia, reunited in the "Engraving shop of Cesare Giovanelli" have understood exactly how to transfer on to this pen that small motor world witnessed by our grandfathers and fathers. The engraved design seems to move along it. The burin, "magic instrument" removes the superficial metal, like a small plough, imprinting color on to the design and so obtaining the various scales of complete grey. From one to ten notches a millimeter takes body and color, as the carbon of the artist on a sheet of blank paper. But, in this case it is far more difficult.
One needs a firm hand and a sound mind to be able to move along the object to be engraved with out committing a single error. It is for this that the "Engraving shop of Cesare Giovanelli" is not only a craftsman's laboratory, but also and above all a school of experience. It is this interpretation of the craft that emerges in their work, each piece unique and unrepeatable.
