Hello everyone, my name is Marco, I live in Rome (Italy), and I’m really fond of mechanical pencils. In particular I’m really interested in the evolution of the instrument and in the applied technological solutions. In everyday life I use them to write notes at work and to draw in my free time.
marco
Welcome Marco! Make yourself at home and feel free to chime in on anything. Nothing but a bunch of friendly people on here. 
Hi Marco! Just curious, since you’re from Italy… are you familiar with the brand Righella? Are they still making goods today?
Hi Drifand,
This is embarrassing:
I’m not young and I have collected a lot of stationery over the past 50 years, but this is the first time I heard of a brand called “righella” (in English it can be translated as “ruler”).
I made a quick search and found Righella is Rosso family business in the hinterland of Turin. You must know that the area between Turin and Settimo Torinese is a very famous industrial district for pens, pencils and other stationary items, for example Aurora, Universal, Giotto etc. are all famous local companies. In that area there were and there are still hundreds of little companies that create stationary items for other brands, sometimes trying to launch their own.
Online there is their website (a really old and amateurish one): righella storia
with an e-mail where you can try to contact them. In the history section during the '90 they claim to be worldwide famous, and maybe it was true, but for sure they weren’t so famous in Italy.
I discovered that the company must have had, until a few years ago, 5 to 10 employees and a turnover of around one million euros. To find out more, I should make an inquiry to the chamber of commerce.
Welcome, Marco!! Glad to have you here.
Haha, noooo - I had no idea the Turin region was a pen making heartland - probably because my interests veer away from fountain pens. I had only come across Righella or ‘RPR Torino’ only by chance on eBay. They make decent designs, so I was hoping to learn if they were still in business somehow.
Welcome! I envy you so much, over the years I’ve seen so many great designs from Italian companies but never bought one due to shipping costs.
Welcome! I’m very interested in knowing more about European new & old pens, as I’m from Spain ^^
Sadly we don’t have that many brands. Inoxcrom is the only major maker and their modern designs are questionable.
Drifand knowing more about Italian pens than Italian collectors is the most Drifand thing I’ve seen in a while hahah I love it
I know. I have the same problem with some mechanical pencils. E.g. the pilot S series isn’t commercialized in Europe, and the shipping cost + VAT + Custom cost more than the mechanical pencil.
Hi RPD, in Italy there are a lot of companies and there’s a long tradition in the production of writing instruments. Nowadays, there’re still some exellencies in the fountain pens and luxury pens (like Aurora, Visconti, Montegrappa, Pineider, Leonardo, and some others), of the 3 big industries we had for school stationery today remains only one company (from 1920, they now have around 7000 employees) in Florence named FILA (fabbrica italiana lapis e affini = italian industry pencil and other). Until some years ago a big part of the market was occupied from the koh-i-noor hardtmuth that has a division in italy from 1950, and a lot of its production was made near Milan and Turin. Then we have
Unfortunately in the last 30 years, they didn’t introduce any new design for the mechanical pencils. You can buy a luxury one, but it won’t have any particular innovation.