Friday, May 29, 2009

Omas Leads

Omas are an Italian brand of luxury writing instruments. Like most luxury brands they place their emphasis on fountain pens, but they do offer a small number of instruments that write with lead rather than ink. I don’t have any Omas mechanical pencils, but I do have some of their leads.omas pencil lead refillomas pencil lead refill
(Both pictures above are clickable for high res beauty)

I think these are the fanciest leads I know. Beautiful little cardboard lead packages. The colours, the styling of the ladies, the Greek key type design on the sides of the packages, it all feels sumptuously Art Deco to me. I love it. On the ends of the ends of the package we have “Made in Italy”.Open the package up, and behold…

……leads from Schmidt???? schmidt lead refillMany of you will know of Schmidt, the German manufacturer of writing instrument components. I don’t know if they make mechanical pencil leads themselves – I’ve always assumed they just bought them from a specialist lead manufacturer e.g. from their countrymen at Staedtler or Faber-Castell. So what’s with the ‘Made in Italy’ tag on the Omas packages? I’m surprised at the concept of there being a factory in Italy making mechanical pencil leads, but maybe there is one? Maybe the Omas package is misleading? I am sure that wherever they are made, any lead associated with companies like Schmidt and Omas will be of good quality, but you certainly pay a lot to have it repackaged in Omas livery. Still, I’m happy with my purchase – those little packages really are classy.

6 comments:

B2-kun said...

Neat item!

Caitlin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Black Lead Nate said...

Dave, how does it compare to your favorite lead?

Anonymous said...

I just mailed SCHMIDT
http://www.schmidttechnology.de/en/index.htm

and asked them.

They get the leads from Japan.

-Arne

Kiwi-d said...

Black Lead Nate - I haven't used the leads to any extent to make a comment on.

Arne - thanks for that. Pentel or Pilot, or someone else by another name. So, "Made in Italy" is looking rather questionable by my reckoning.

Perhaps the cardboard sleeve is printed in Italy, and the Schmidt lead container is put inside it in Italy, somehow this allows the use of Made in Italy under Italian law????? Country of Origin labelling is quite complex and variable from place to place, I'd appreciate any comments from Italian readers on how "Made in Italy" is used in Italy. Having read the above, do Italian people think these leads qualify as Made in Italy?

Germ said...

cool packaging. i agree, very classy. Would be nice if pentel did something like that...