Seiko Champion

Guiliano Mazzuoli makes a wonderful watch, the Manometro. But I’ve recently realized out that his design also includes pens, and a notebook alternative to Moleskin.



I had read about Mr. Mazzuoli’s background racing Alfa Romeos as a background to his designing and creating watches based on automotive instrumentation. What I did not understand until clicking on a familiar name while browsing the other day, is that this is only a small part of the back-story. In fact, the main part of his business experience was in the manufacturing of printed products such as catalogs and daytimers, which years later combined with his design abilities expanded into ancillary items such as pens, and from then into watches.

All of this started when he took over his father’s printing business just outside of Florence in the early 1970s. The firm specialized in producing notebooks and address book inserts.

Mazzuoli’s design introductions included his 1993 introduction of the Stifflexible line (hard yet flexible covers with plenty of space to record notes, quickly including ones with curved or slanted lines instead of typical straight ones). One of his more high-profile clients is the Modern Museum of Art (MoMA) of New York, whose customized versions changed every year since 2002 are a hit seller.



In the year 2000 Mazzuoli’s design work moved into pens. After being asked by a friend to design a pen, his design inspiration ended up coming from the bicycle tools recalled from his grandfather’s workshop.



One pen model, the Moka, has become a top seller for Mazzuolli.

The inspiration for the Moka line of pens came to him while he was talking on the telephone in his office and doodling with his pencil. Only afterwards did he realize that what he had “drawn” was the Moka coffee-maker created in 1930 by Alfonso Bialetti. The image of the coffee-maker reminded him of the collection of coffee-makers his grandmother kept in the kitchen as home decorative items alway refusing to use them for their real purpose.

It’s neat to find that the maker of one of my favorite watches is in many ways a modern day Renaissance man. And where else but in Italy?!