I have been waiting for February to arrive so that I could finally gush about the Valentine Typewriter—a design icon created by the Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass and British industrial designer Perry King in 1969 for the Italian typewriter brand Olivetti. It is found in the collection of MoMA (my old stomping ground), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among countless other museums around the world. How did a typewriter achieve such a feat without ever being a huge commercial success? Let’s jump back in time to the 1960s. [Wavy back-to-the-past lines]
In the 1960s, typewriters were big, heavy, drab-colored beasts whose natural habitat was a soul-less cubicle. Then arrived the Valentine with a user guide that opened with, “Dear Valentine, this is to tell you that you are my friend as well as my Valentine, and that I intend to write you lots of letters.” This playful and sweet sentiment echoed the passion and verve inherent in this particular machine:
First, it was bright lipstick red. To be fair, it came in white, blue and green as well—much like the rainbow lineup of the first iMacs (I had the pink one!)—but the classic color of the Valentine was red. And, what’s more, the keys were black, which was also risqué for typewriters of the time. Everyone knows that red + black = sexy. Sottsass even wanted the machine to only write in lowercase to keep it simple and more approachable, but Olivetti nixed that as being just a little too radical. (One of the reasons Sotsass eventually bowed out of the project and King took over; the major designing was done by Sottsass, however.)
Second, the Valentine was light and portable. Compared to most models of the time, the Valentine was a feather. Furthermore, the handle to carry the typewriter was part of the machine itself; the ABS plastic case was a mere sheath that slid over the machine and locked onto the back. To give you some perspective, the cases of typewriters in the 1960s were more like bulky suitcases that did not inspire much movement.
Third, the Valentine was created for the artist or aesthete, not the automaton. Sottsass wrote the Valentine “was invented for use any place except in an office, so as not to remind anyone of monotonous working hours, but rather to keep amateur poets company on quiet Sundays in the country or to provide a highly colored object on a table in a studio apartment.” In (fun) fact, the case was designed to be a traveling wastepaper basket to catch all those unsatisfactory musings of that moody amateur poet.
In the end, what Sotsass (and King) achieved was not only the designation of the typewriter for creative production, but also the elevation of an everyday typewriter to an object of design to be admired for its form even if its functionality was far from flawless. The Valentine offered emotion, passion, and companionship…what better Valentine could you ask for?
