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Otto Hutt Design 04 - a pen in the Bauhaus style

Bauhaus was a German art school that combined crafts with fine arts. It had a tremendous influence on German products, from architecture to interior products to writing instruments.

One company which was influenced by the Bauhaus was the company of Karl Hutt founded in 1920 in Pforzheim (Germany). Pforzheim is known as the gold town in Germany, with lots of companies working on precious metals and jewellery. And Karl Hutt's company was one of them, making pocket accessories for everyday use and elegant writing devices made of silver.

In the 1960s, when the son of Karl Hutt took over, it changed it's name to Otto Hutt.
In 2006, another change of ownership to the recent owner Robert E. Huber company. This time, however, it was decided to keep the former brand name Otto Hutt and the new owner also decided that some of the old designs were worth to be followed upon.

One of the Bauhaus designs of the old Hutt company is the base of the modernized design of the writing instruments of "Design 04".

Design 04: the wave finish in blue and black. Copyright: Otto Hutt

It is a beautiful design. In total, 16 finishes/colors are available: striped guilloché & Princess Cut; black, platinum, flowers & creme, ruthenium flowers; black uni & creme uni; black check & creme check; black uni with rose gold; black & white wave with rose gold; wave blue, black & white; code, and sand (link to the homepage of Design 04 where you can see all of them).

I have the fountain pen in "wave white". This finish is described as having a "multilayered white coating as a primer and subsequently guillochéd where three-dimensional lines are then cut into the color lacquer, varying in depth". The engraving is done by machine, a short article about the method can be found here: link.

I like the Bauhaus style and I like this pen. While I would prefer it to be a little bit larger, it is still a pen which I regularly use.

Mine has a steel nib in size F which writes very well. It has a tiny bit of feedback from the paper - that is clear, it is an F nib, at last. The Otto Hutt nibs are relatively similar to the nib sizes I am accustomed from Japanese pens. An F nib writes ca 0.4 mm lines, an M nib about 0.5 mm lines.

The pen is a cartridge/converter pen, using international cartridges or converters.

The cap is threaded onto the rest of the pen and 2.5 full turns are necessary to take it off. While this is a lot of turning, it is not as inconvenient as it looks like. If you write like me, cap in the left hand, using the cap always for temporary storage during writing, 2.5 turns would be very inconvenient. However, only a little bit more than half-a-turn is necessary that the pen is securely fixed by the threads and doesn't fall out.

A little bit different picture is the 8 turns necessary for removing the barrel from the feed assembly. That is OK for me, it became my morning procedure to fill up the pen, and the turning has become a part of the morning ceremony of starting work.



Some further details:
  • Cap is made from highly polished brass.
  • Cap is engraved with the name "Otto Hutt", Germany and a six-digit numeric code (which makes it a kind of limited edition).
  • The solid brass spring clip is platinum-coated.
  • This pen is available with steel or 18K nibs in F, M, or B. 
  • The 18-carat gold nib is bicolor, sanded and polished several times by hand, a stylized logo is engraved into the nib, which is inspired by the Bauhaus signet by Oscar Schlemmer from 1922 - that same logo decorates also the top of the cap.
  •  
     
The top of the Design06 pen (left) and the top of the Design04 pen.

Writing test


I think I should not drink so much coffee, perhaps my handwriting would become better.

nib size F



Prices

MRSP is 184 Euro, the silver finishes 200 Euro and a gold nib adds 100 Euro to the bill.


The 18K (left) and the steel nibs.





























Technical data

Lengths
  • Total Length: 13.3 cm
  • uncapped (incl. nib): 12.3 cm
  • Cap: 5.9 cm
  • Nib: 1.9 cm
  • Feed section: 2.6 cm
  • Barrel: 7.9 cm

Widths:
  • Feed section: 0.8-1.0 cm
  • Barrel: 1.2 cm

Weights
  • Total 34.6 g
  • Cap 13.1 g
  • Feed 6.6 g
  • Barrel 15.0 g































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