What do bicycles have to do with pens? Nothing. There is just one memory that connects me particularly to the Officina program. My grandfather Renato had a real mechanical workshop with lathes and milling machines, which he used to build bicycles by hand. In the early 1950s, with the advent of motorcycles in a very hilly area like ours, he ceased trading.

A few years later, when I was about 10 years old, I got hold of an old wooden box containing metal objects of the strangest shapes. For a few years, that was my treasure, which I tried to keep hidden. In November 1999, I happened to visit a modern mechanical workshop and, while browsing here and there, I saw exactly the same fascinating objects again, 40 years later, with shapes so beautiful that they intrigued me even more. This is how Officina – Writing Tools was born.