Annabella, ma belle…

The Italian company, Antares, made the lovely Annabella portable typewriter, circa early 1960s. There are other colour schemes, but the maroon & cream is certainly the one I would want. Antares wasn’t a big company but it produced a lot of typewriters which turn up for sale relatively often: Parva, Mercedes, Domus, P59, Lisa (the design of which resembles Ettore Sottsass’ famous Valentine, for Olivetti). Speaking of Olivetti, reading more about the Annabella I learned it looks a lot like the Underwood 18. Some serious sleuthing was done by Robert Messenger, the Australian whose Oz Typewriter blog is always fun to visit. Messenger drew the connection to Olivetti, which made the Underwood 18 (Olivetti bought into Underwood in 1959 & took over the company 4 years later.) They’re essentially the same machine, except the Annabella is prettier. Oddly enough, neither Messenger nor other typewriter scholars far more knowledgeable than I am seem to know what the connection — formal or informal — was between Antares (in its latter stages) & Olivetti. Except that there was some kind of business relationship.