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A rare and exceptional Montblanc No. 00 Baby "Long" safety fountain pen, black hard rubber, cap imprinted "ROUGE ET NOIR", red captop star. 82mm. 14K gold Warranted heart-vent nib, very slight flex. Excellent condition, barrel and cap glossy black, captop star bright red, imprint perfectly crisp, safety mechanism functions smoothly, no condition concerns. A splendid Baby Rouge et Noir, perhaps the finest surviving example.
-Wallrafen, Stefan & Jens Rösler. Collectible Stars I: Montblanc 1908-1947. [Cologne: 2014]. From p. 35: "The first brand of the young company [Montblanc]... was ROUGE ET NOIR.... After the war [WWI] ROUGE ET NOIR was still sold until 1923 but only in Italy. This is why there are ROUGE ET NOIR products with a red star that are identical to MONTBLANC products." No examples of this pen are pictured in the book. Regular Montblanc No. 00 Baby "Long" safety pens, without the ROUGE ET NOIR imprint or red captop star, are listed with a scarcity rating of 9 (on a 12-point scale), indicating "Ultra-rare, up to 75 may exist." No. 00 ROUGE ET NOIR examples are significantly more rare.
-Lambrou, Andreas. Fountain Pens of the World. [Epping: 2005]. From an account of the origins of the Montblanc brand name, p. 254: "As the company itself is unsure how the name Montblanc came about, it is pointless to speculate. Suffice it to say that, by 1911, all Simplo products with the white top [preceding the star emblem] had the name Montblanc while the pens with the red top kept the name Rouge et Noir."
Provenance: This example was previously sold at auction by Bonhams of Knightsbridge, 8th October 1999. Lot includes Bonhams auction invoice (duplicate) and original lot tag.