The Lamy 2000 was first produced in 1966.
1966 – it seems a long time ago. The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Beach Boys all had #1 hits. Labour won the General Election – Harold Wilson became PM. Time magazine coined the phrase “Swinging London”. Someone shouted “Judas” at Bob Dylan for having the temerity to use an electric guitar. “Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven”, as Wordsworth would have had it. It was a time of change, boundless opportunity. 1984 was still 18 years away and the year 2000 far in the future – the stuff of science fiction. Even Judge Dredd in AD 2000 comics wouldn’t arrive for another eleven years, even later (1992) drawn by our friend Charlie Adlard
But the best of 1966 was yet to come. I was bought up in Wembley. On the afternoon of the 30th July, I was at my cousin’s wedding in St Augustine’s Church – just over Wembley Hill from the Stadium where England were about to play a football match against Germany. Needless to say, the men in the congregation and subsequent reception weren’t focussed on the nuptials. Transistor radios, sound turned down to a whisper, lurked in the back row of the congregation. An undignified scrum of men awaited the happy couple coming out of the church but were clustered around now louder radios. England were playing Germany for the World Cup. At the reception, nobody paid much attention to the speeches but, shortly before 4pm, the celebrations started in earnest. England had won the World Cup.
Absent from the match was Gerd Muller – a 21 year old who played for Bayern Munich. He was on the fringes of the German squad but was not selected. He became one of the most successful strikers of all time, on a par with the blessed Jimmy Greaves, also absent. They had much in common: a low centre of gravity, blistering pace over a short distance and an unerring sense of where the goal was, and the goalie wasn’t. Would either have made a difference? We can only guess….
But there was another great Gerd Muller active in 1966. He was a designer, and was working on a product that continues to surprise and delight 58 years later – the Lamy 2000 fountain pen.
Muller was 34 years old when the Lamy 2000 was launched. He had already established a successful career as a designer. Born in 1932 in Frankfurt am Main, he was the son of a dentist. His father would have liked him to follow in the family business, but he was determined to go in a different direction. He enrolled in the Wiesbaden School of Applied Arts to study interior architecture. The school required an apprenticeship in a practical skill, and he chose to work with a carpenter. He had also helped his father making impressions for dentures required by soldiers injured in the Second World War, so was skilled at plaster modelling as well.
This enabled him to quickly and accurately make models of ideas for new products, and in 1955 he was recommended by a friend from Wiesbaden college, Dieter Rams, for a post as a model maker for the innovative German household appliance makers, Braun. Working for them, he designed some iconic goods – razors, radios, food mixers. Muller left in 1960, possibly because of Artur Braun’s policy of not crediting by name their designers, to go independent – but already with a portfolio of classic designs.
Meanwhile, Dr Manfred Lamy was taking the reins at the pen company founded by his father, Josef. He had a strong interest in design and was especially fond of the Bauhaus influenced Braun appliances.
“I only owned Braun appliances. They are art that makes itself useful” he said.
He met Gerd Muller in 1963, and they started work on the project that was to become the Lamy 2000. The design was according to Bauhaus principle: shape of the pen was to be determined by its function, it would avoid ornamentation, and use the best materials available.
The design was ground-breaking, and completely in keeping with Bauhaus principles of simplicity and functionality. A cigar shaped pen, squared off at each end, with a hooded nib that followed the flow of the design and section. The clip was robust and spring loaded, the cap clipped on. It was a piston filler, the knob entirely integrated with the pen’s barrel. (In the immortal words of Eric Morecambe, “You can’t see the join”.) Barrel and cap were made of Makrolon, a new polycarbonate material developed by Bayer that was robust, light and strong. The section was brushed steel. The nib was 18ct gold, platinum coated and was available in 8 widths, including obliques. There was an ink window to ensure you didn’t unexpectedly run out.
It was an immediate success. This was back in the day before personal computers – indeed, any sort of computing. A couple of years later I had a job feeding a mainframe computer, an IBM 360. It lived in an air conditioned room with a specially installed floor. Data was input using 80 column punch cards – paper (cardboard actually) still ruled supreme! The fountain pen was still an essential and efficient business tool.
Computing has changed a lot since 1966. However, looking at a Lamy 2000 today, you will see that Gerd Muller’s 58-year-old design has not. It is entirely modern, still almost futuristic. Since then a ballpoint, rollerball, multipen and pencil – 0.5 and 0.7 – have been introduced, as well as a stainless steel version of all but the multipen. One of my favourites is the wooden ballpoint. The shape is still totally satisfying.
Limited Editions have been released over the years, and there will doubtless be more. A design classic, they sell out rapidly.
58 years on and England’s football team still awaits another major trophy, but the Lamy 2000 endures and seems as young as ever. Why change perfection?