PurplePrice Mag · · 2 min read
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The Valentine is a portable typewriter in glossy red plastic, with a matching case. It was designed in 1968 by Ettore Sottsass, a consultant to Olivetti, assisted by Perry A. King and Albert Leclerc, and came out in 1969. Inside is the mechanism of the Lettera 32; outside, one of the first and most celebrated plastic bodies ever seen on a typewriter.
A typewriter for everyone
Olivetti conceived the Valentine as a response to the cheap portables arriving from Japan. Sottsass, convinced that design should also be sensual and emotional, imagined a very simple, inexpensive object, almost the ballpoint pen of typewriters: Moplen plastic, capital letters only, no end-of-line bell. Olivetti instead asked for more features and a more expensive ABS plastic. After these disagreements Sottsass distanced himself from the project, which was almost finished and was completed by King and Leclerc.
The details
The Valentine shows parts that usually stay hidden: the black keys seem to “float” above the body and the orange ribbon spool caps are exposed. The red was meant to suggest free creativity rather than the dullness of office work. Great care also went into the case: a simple plastic sleeve that locks onto the typewriter with two rubber straps, is carried like a briefcase and, while you type, can serve as a waste bin or a light stool. The user manual was a set of small tags tied with string, with playful wording.
An icon that did not sell
Expensive, limited in function and mechanically average, the Valentine was not a success in the shops. But its irreverent spirit captured the mood after 1968 and turned it into an icon, now at MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Triennale di Milano. The poet Giovanni Giudici, who worked at Olivetti, described it as “a Lettera 32 disguised as a sixties girl”. Sottsass, who years later would found Memphis, ended up unable to stand it: he felt his whole career was remembered for that “red machine”.
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