Visconti makes beautiful pens at its factory in Florence and some of the most iconic are in its Van Gogh Impressionist range. Each pen in the range is inspired by one of the artist's works and for my birthday Lindsey treated me to Van Gogh's Sunflowers fountain pen. I've been using it for a few weeks and it is now nicely run in.
The pen, like all those in the range, has a marbled finish in the
colours of the painting - in this case, mainly mustard yellow with some
swirls in darker, browner shades. The barrel is Visconti's distinctive
18-sided (heptadecagon?) shape, as is the cap which clicks into place
thanks to a magnetic catch.The metalwork on the pen is all stainless steel. An ornate band round the cap bears the name Van Gogh and the nib is beautifully engraved. The clip is the distinctive hinged Visconti design.
The pen feels good in the hand. It isn't too large and is nicely balanced so you can write for long periods without fatigue. The 18-sided design provides some traction in the hand meaning that the pen doesn't slip around on warm days.
I use cartridges. I'd prefer to use bottled ink but it doesn't fit with my current working life. I also like using different coloured inks in different pens and my ink of choice for this pen is J Herbin's Terre de Feu. Herbin supplies its 'cartouches' in small aluminium drums and they are available in a wide choice of colours. Terre de Feu is a warm brown - almost sepia - and perfectly complements the warm yellow colour of the pen.
The combination of pen and ink results in a very smooth flow with no skipping and nicely saturated writing on the page. This lovely pen is getting plenty of use at the moment and is my current pen of choice for taking notes in meetings. It definitely gets noticed and has drawn plenty of positive comments.