VISCONTI Homo Sapiens Bronze Age Fountain Pen - Medium, black/bronze

Product Information

This is the Visconti Homo Sapiens Maxi Fountain Pen. It comes in a large, leather box that has rounded edges. Visconti Logo is embossed, on the center of the box lid. It has a small tray or compartment that slides out and there's a pamphlet in here, information about the Visconti brand. Hinged-style lid lifts open, has a leather interior. Also included with the pen is a rag, for cleaning and taking care of it. On the underside of the box lid, the Visconti logo is printed there. The cap pushes on to post. This is a large pen to start with and posted it’s very long and quite unwieldy. (My pen is the ‘oversize’ version. There was also a smaller ‘midi’ version but that will soon be discontinued.) Inside is Visconti’s power filler, a vac-filling mechanism with a single chamber and no seal at the nib end — you can write indefinitely without having to unscrew the filling knob. This is a piston-style fountain pen. So, to actuate the piston, you have a little knob here at the end to fill the ink. The cap on the pen can be posted. It's a pretty good size pen, it feels a little top-heavy with that cap posted. I think I would use it without posting it.

The churlish reason is the laser-engraved clip and band with their mismatched fonts and mismatched colour across the trim and nib. For this price I expect consistency. I expect deep and luxurious machine engraving, like on a Dupont, a Graf or Yard o Led. Laser is naff. The writing experience won’t set the world on fire, judging by the sample I received (ironic perhaps for a pen made from lava and named after ashes), but there’s plenty else going for this pen. It’s a welcome addition to the Homo Sapiens range.It closes with what Visconti describe as a bayonet system. It takes a fraction of a turn to cap or uncap yet is held closed securely. It’s a great system that adds to the feeling of quality while also being very practical. The interior's a nice soft leather, the Visconti logo there on the underside of the lid. And of course we have the Visconti Homo Sapiens Midi Fountain Pen. This happens to be the steel version of the pen, it is also available in a bronze version. Chrome colored accents on the pen. There is a prominent double bubble on the tip, like two scoops of ice cream on a cone. If the second scoop also had visible baby’s bottom. But now I’m mixing my metaphors.

The collection can be personalized using the well-known Visconti patent- My Pen System – with the instant application of the initials, the zodiac sign or the semi-precious stone preferred by the fortunate future owner of a Visconti pen. The My Pen System applications can be found in our webstore.I change my mind too often to have a true grail pen but a posh Visconti of some kind has been consistently on my wish list. None of them are cheap and I had to sell quite a few pens to be able to afford this one. Despite having gathered the funds by selling other pens, I still had some sleepless nights about spending this much on a writing implement. Am I glad I bought it? Read on! At least the gorgeous moon-shaped breather hole remains, although it’s not quite so sharp-ended as I’m used to.

and their weight in the cap, which is suddenly much more substantial than I’m used to from a Homo Sapiens. This is the Visconti Homo Sapiens Midi Fountain Pen. It comes in a large leather box with the Visconti logo embossed there on the top of the center of the box lid. Rounded edges on the corners, and a small tray that pulls out with information about the Visconti brand. Clamshell style lid, hinged top, opens up. Each Visconti Homo Sapiens fountain pen comes with a power filler mechanism and an 18kt nib. Buy your Visconti Homo Sapiens Maxi fountain pen today! The most significant feature of the Homo Sapiens Dark Crystal is the inclusion of the smoky acrylic window on the barrel. A large section of the lava compound has been cut out of the pen’s body and replaced with a see-through area, thereby transforming the pen into a demonstrator-style writing instrument. This “window” offers the user a view of stored ink inside the pen.

The branding on the side of the clip and around the body band is not engraved or cast then filled, but laser-etched. The body band, which reads HOMO SAPIENS, uses a very stately serif font that clashes horribly with the new-style extralight sans serif Visconti wordmark on the clip, and also happens to be different from the Courier-style typewriter font used on my Florence and London. The material in this pen is as antique as the world: lava from the Etna volcano. Visconti lava is: Virtually unbreakable, it has a high degree of resilience. Flameproof, Visconti lava has a resistance to heat of over 100°C. Slightly hygroscopic, allowing to absorb hand sweat during use. The monochromatic Lava Dark Age collection was inspired by the intense dark grey colour of lava stone. The Visconti logo engraving on the polished metal clip and the ruthenium-finished gold nib are discreet, refined and elegant.

But: it actually writes quite nicely. The Lava Color writes fairly true to a European fine. There’s a bit of tooth. No flex as such. Barrel options: same barrel but available with bronze trim (‘Bronze Age’) or steel trim (‘Steel Age’) Replacement Visconti fountain pen nibs are available in extra fine, fine, medium, broad, double broad and stub/italic. See the nib chart for the finishes available and nib grades for your Visconti pen. Model The second innovation is the cap. Gone is the familiar Hooksafe bayonet mechanism; instead, the cap snaps on with magnets. It’s the simplest possible user experience, and it really works: the cap feels secure, the nib seems to be sealed well and doesn’t dry out, and yet the cap is also easy enough to remove. The magnets are embedded so they’re totally invisible, but you can feel their effects…Good flow but not the usual Visconti wetness, and sometimes a bit of hesitation to start on the first word. As a fan of the old Dreamtouch nibs with their smooth, wet and slightly bouncy personality, this doesn’t wow me, but it’s OK. I’ve done a fair bit of writing with this nib now and I enjoyed it. The pen filled well with a nice smooth action, although there’s no ink window so you’re flying blind about how much ink you actually take up, or how much you have left. I found that out today when I came to write my final notes for this review after a few days and discovered the pen bone dry. Although I’ve not had the kind of regular hard-starting that would lead me to believe this pen suffers from a big evaporation problem, the last time I used it it was writing fine, and yet today, zip, zilch, nada. So something is going on. It depends on the pen's filling mechanism, which you can find in the Technical Specs section above.