Experience is key for artisans making watches, jewellery and fine writing instruments

Looking at the history of some of today's long established European luxury brands, it appears that their stories began during the winters that left them with few financial alternatives and little else to do than to develop a craft or an art during those long and cold nights.

These skills have survived, many for more than a century, having been passed down from fathers to sons or favoured apprentices. In a tale similar to many of today's traditional crafts, the lure of the modern world has been whittling away at the number of such artisans as the young either lack the patience for the long years of apprenticeship or prefer to build careers in the big cities.

As older artisans leave their mortal coils, and few of the younger generation are able or willing to step into their shoes, there is a fear that the artistry of luxury is in danger of being lost. Hence, in industries from bespoke men's suits to watches and jewellery, and fine writing instruments, the identities of these artisans are jealously guarded by the maisons for fear of them being poached by the competition.

Inside Montblanc's pristine Artisan Atelier in Hamburg, 60 artisans spend as many as two to four years bringing to life any one of the brand's limited-edition fine writing instruments from its initial sketches to the final product that may cost up to a couple of million euros.

However, while admiring the final gemstone setting on the barrel, or the engraving on the skeleton or nib, one often fails to realise that each of these instruments is produced with a combination of advanced technology, skilled craftsmen, such as goldsmiths and stone-cutters, and the creative artistry of the engravers for the pen nib.

Montblanc's chief engraver is 73 years old and has worked for the atelier for close to 50 years. Christian Rauch, managing director of Writing Culture and Leather, says the brand knows it can never replace the engraver.

"We did a writers' edition on Jonathan Swift and we wanted the scene where Gulliver is bound to the ground and Lilliputians are around him, and there was a Lilliputian village, and he managed to put all that on the nib," Rauch says.

"We tried to simulate it, to engrave it with a computer [and] laser for I don't know how many years. When he does it, it's just gorgeous, because you need somebody who [is an artist] but we also need someone who knows how to treat the block of steel. So you need craftsmen and artists. And this combination is almost impossible to find."