Almost everywhere you go, from the doctor’s office to the library to the car dealership, there’s one ubiquitous design gem hidden in plain sight: the Bic Cristal.
This unsung hero of the writing desk has produced uncountable signatures and annotations—but now it’s getting its moment in the spotlight through a collaboration with the Italian home goods brand Seletti.
The Bic Cristal is the world’s best-selling pen, boasting more than 120 billion sales since its release in 1950. For the tail end of the pen’s 75th anniversary, Bic teamed up with Seletti to produce a work of art inspired by the pen: a giant, 12:1 scale lamp.
The product’s massive scale translates particularly well for a lamp, with a clear case revealing a glowing, neon-like LED light inside. It can be positioned vertically or horizontally, and used as a floor lamp, pendant, or wall sconce. The lamp will be available in the pen’s classic blue, red, and black colorways when it debuts in the U.S. later this year for around $350.
Why the Bic Cristal makes a perfect lamp
The Bic Cristal is an adaptation of the first-ever ballpoint pen, invented in 1938 by a Hungarian journalist named László Biró (hence the pen’s common nickname, the Bic Biro). According to a breakdown written for the MoMA exhibition Pirouette: Turning Points in Design, which featured the Bic Crystal, Biró’s original pen was designed to allow ink to flow more consistently than older fountain pens, but it still had some issues with clogging and leaking.
After acquiring Biró’s patent, Bic founder Marcel Bich adjusted the design to include a smaller, 1-millimeter-wide ballpoint tip with a simple quirk: an air hole, which prevented a vacuum from forming inside the pen. This tiny tweak allows the pen’s ink to flow freely to the nub, and is what makes it such a reliable choice to this day.
Aesthetically, Bich’s choice of a clear plastic for the pen’s body reveals how it works and renders it instantly recognizable. Paola Antonelli, MoMA’s senior curator of architecture and design, said in the museum’s breakdown, “It almost looks like it is within a crystal tube. It was such a beautiful use of plastic that almost made us think plastic could be precious.”
Art director Stefano Seletti was similarly drawn to the Bic Cristal’s sleek, crystalline aesthetic as a potential lighting object for Seletti. Since the brand began dabbling in lighting several years ago, it’s embraced an out-of-the-box approach to its catalog, playing with everything from animal figures holding light bulbs to an anatomically correct rendition of a human heart.
“The structure of the pen was absolutely perfect for this project: The transparent tubular body allows light to pass through, the ink cartridge could easily be transformed into the LED that provides the light, and the electrical components could be easily hidden by the colored plastic parts,” Seletti says. His team partnered with Italian designer Mario Paroli, as well as with Bic, to bring the Bic Lamp to life. They used Bic’s archives and technical drawings to faithfully reproduce the pen at a 12-to-1 scale.
The final product is an ode to Bic’s simple-yet-functional design ethos—and it’s the perfect kitsch addition to any space where writing gets done.