Montegrappa Quattro Review: The Square-Bodied Successor to Zero, with a Sapphire Crown
The Quattro, released by Italy's Montegrappa in 2023, is the flagship of the company's contemporary line. Plenty of people search for it, yet there is little written about it beyond retailer listings. Drawing on the official sites and on specialist retailers and media, this piece sorts out what is actually new.
Zero, Quattro, Otto: what the number names tell you
Montegrappa was founded in 1912 in Bassano del Grappa. Its modern "Contemporary" direction began with the Zero in 2020, and the official Japanese site describes the Quattro as the result of a long development period that evolved the Zero further. It keeps the same modernist DNA but pushes the silhouette toward something more muscular.
The names are the fun part. The Quattro has a square body with softened corners, and the later Otto has an octagonal one. The Italian words for four and eight line up with the number of edges in the cross-section. I could not find an official statement on the naming, but it is hard to read as coincidence.
A crown borrowed from watchmaking
The Quattro's styling comes from watchmaking. The crown holds a sapphire glass insert bearing the brand logo, and the official site says the hardware finishes come straight from the watchmaker's toolkit. Trims come in three ion-plated tints: yellow gold, palladium and ultra-black. The traditional "ruzzolino" clip has been remade in diamond-cut steel and is said to be stress-tested for more than 20,000 actions.
Heavy metal that helps the nib
The body is black high-density acrylic, 143 mm long, 14 mm in diameter and 34 g in weight. The nib is a No. 6 in 14K gold, plated to match the trim. Widths are EF, F, M, B and a 1.1 stub. A separate flex-nib version is offered in EF and F only.
The point the company stresses is that the heavy steel trims amplify the downforce on the 14K nib. The usual weakness of a metal-heavy pen, fatigue, is turned into weight that draws out the nib's response. Filling is cartridge or converter, and the cap screws on.
Price, and the custom playground
In Japan the list price is 260,700 yen for the 14K version and 264,000 yen for the flex nib. The official European price is 1,295 euros and the US price is 1,095 dollars.
The other side of the Quattro is "Quattro Custom". A configurator on the official site lets you combine the writing mode, the three trim tints, and colours and patterns of acrylic or the resin Montegrappa calls Montegrappite, and even tint the crown and the finial disc. The company calls it the world's first pen configurator. There is also "Quattro Stagioni", made with the Italian chef Davide Oldani: 100 pieces per season, with the colours of each season expressed in renewable resin.
Sources
- Montegrappa Japan official site, Quattro collection
- Montegrappa official site, Quattro collection
- Product descriptions by Pen Chalet and Inkstable