A unique selection of Writing Instruments developed from objects in the Metropolitan Museum’s Collection.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world’s largest and nest art museums. Founded in 1870, the Museum is located in New York City’s Central Park along Fifth Avenue. Its encyclopedic collection includes more than two million works of art spanning 5,000 years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Writing Instruments reflect a broad spectrum of the Museum’s collection. Its three ranges are designed to suit the tastes and fit the needs of discriminating customers who appreciate the art of penmanship.

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Met Experience Pens - Color Magic Rollerball Pen

Met Accessory Writing Instruments

The Met Accessory range of playful and decorative ball pens incorporates images ranging from the 16th to the 20th century. The first collection includes four beautiful designs and will have regular additions of new Met images introduced each year. Each design not only spans the barrel of the pen, but comes in its own coordinated package with a brief description about the original image.

The Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes - the state-sponsored fair held in Paris in 1925, from which the term Art Deco is derived, marked the apogee of the Art Deco style. Art Deco's popularity continued worldwide into the 1930's. The appeal of its aesthetic derives from simplified forms, stylized decoration, elegant lines, and use of bold color. In the United States, designers responded to European influences, gradually transforming them into a uniquely American idiom. Minnesota-born Donald Deskey, a multi-talented and innovative furniture, interior, graphic, and industrial designer, is best-known for his 1932 interior for Radio City Music Hall. About 1928 Deskey designed the striking and elegant painted and silver-leaf wood cigarette box on which this pen is based. Twist action, Parker-style refill. Black ink. Measures 5 1/4'' long.

The Metropolitan Museum Accessory Ballpoint - Mughal Carpet

The Mughal empire in India (1526-1858) flourished under a long line of dynamic and highly cultured rulers who supported some of the greatest achievements of Indian art and architecture. In the Museum's collection are many fine Mughal carpets, including the exceptional one from which this pen is developed. The floral pattern and design of the field of this rug relate to carpets from Herat (Persia), the early models for Indian carpet production. The naturalistic, stemmed plants on the border, however, are the mark of a specifically Indian development. By Shah Jahan's time (r. 1628-58), to which the carpet is dated, the motif of small flowering plants arranged in neat rows permeated nearly all Indian arts. Twist action, Parker-style refill. Black ink. Measures 5 1/4'' long.

In the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a large, white, baluster-shaped vase decorated with Kakiemon-style flowers and birds in polychrome and gilt, and an iron-red meander pattern on the neck. This splendid covered vase (German, ca. 1725-30), almost two feet high, was made at the Meissen factory, the first European manufactory of hard-paste porcelain. Kakiemon is the name given to a distinchtive class of Japanese porcelains, which were widely imitated by eighteenth-century European manufacturers. This pen is adapted from the vibrant decorations on the original vase. Twist action, Parker-style refill. Black ink. Measures 5 1/4'' long.

The Metropolitan Museum Accessory Ballpoint - Egyptian Ceiling  

From 1907 to 1937, the Graphic Section of the Egyptian Expedition of the MET made precise colored copies (facsimiles) of decorations found in tombs in the cemeteries of western Thebes, across the Nile from modern Luxor. Among the 365 facsimiles on display in the Egyptian galleries are some that reproduce painted ceiling decorations, originally created to suggest the tomb chambers were hung with colorfully decorated textiles. The Museum's Egyptian Patterns Pen is based on such textile-derived painted ceilings, copied from tombs from New Kingdom Egypt, ca. 1360-1349 b.c. Twist action, Parker-style refill. Black ink. Measures 5 1/4'' long.