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This video is a just a little fun Leonardo Officina Italiana x Casa della Stilografica Furore Grande HT Fountain Pen - this was sent to me as a gift by Casa della Stilografica, in celebration of another year of their sponsorship of this blog! Part of the excitement is the discount code for your purchases! Visit Casa della Stilografica and use the code "FLORENCE" when checking out for 10% off your order.
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(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)
This Leonardo Supernova that I've had on my desk the last couple of weeks has really stolen the show in terms of my stationery rotation. I couldn't pass it up when I saw it online, but seeing the pen in person is even more striking.
The Leonardo Supernova is a regular edition that features a beautiful marbled acrylic that is made in Italy. The color I have is called Star Light Blue with Ruthenium Trim, but there are three other colors options as well. All four materials are gorgeous, but I'm a sucker for bright blues and turquoise with hints of green.
The swirl of color in this material is one thing, but Leonardo added a little extra character by including a sprinkle of reflective particles that subtly sparkle and twinkle under the light. The sparkle gives the acrylic just a little more depth and visual interest that makes the pen pop.
The fit and finish of this pen is fantastic, and I was impressed by how well-made it is for the price. Everything lines up perfectly and feels solid in the hand, and the dark trim complements the bright blue body beautifully. The wide band features a geometric design that looks great without drawing attention away from the acrylic. Aside from the band, there's also a small ring at the bottom of the pen and a functional clip on the cap. The clip is a sleek shape and has a wheel at the end that makes it just a little easier to clip onto things while still keeping the pen secure.
The Supernova sports a steel #6 Jowo nib with some decorative scroll work and the nib size inscribed at the base. The dark nib matches the rest of the trim on the pen and continues that delicious contrast between the dark metal and bright acrylic. The fine nib on this pen was smooth and crisp out of the box, and flows well with the couple of inks I've already tried with it.
Writing with the Supernova is fantastic due to the smooth nib and even balance of the pen body. You can post the cap on the back of the pen, but I prefer leaving it unposted since it's a full-size fountain pen. I like the balance without the cap a little better, but just know that the cap posts securely if you like to write with the additional weight. No one likes a loose cap on the back of the pen when trying to write!
Along with the pen and gift box, Leonardo include a standard cartridge converter so that you can ink the pen up with your favorite ink. I wish more pen manufacturers would do this instead of including a couple of generic black or blue ink cartridges!
From when I first saw the Leonardo Supernova on Goldspot's website, I had high expectations. At $152, it's not a cheap pen, and straddles a really interesting and competitive price point. At a minimum, it needs to perform like other amazing pens that you can buy at this price. I'm happy to say that this pen exceeds my expectations. It's a pleasure to use, and it looks so awesome on my desk. I can't help but pick it up and twirl it around under the light to admire the personality in the acrylic.
Aside from the fine nib, you have the option of extra fine, medium, broad, elastic extra fine, elastic fine, and 1.5mm stub. And good luck picking just one color out of this exceptional lineup of materials!
(Goldspot provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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| The box sleeve for the Momento Magico Collection (right) has the special geometric art that is also the pens' cap bands. Inside the box are the Momento Magico Emerald fountain pen and a Certificate of Authenticity. |
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| Leonardo Officina Italiana Momento Magico Emerald |
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| The Magico can be fully disassembled for cleaning. |
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| Inspired by Greek art, the Momento Magico's cap has a different band from most of Leonardo's fountain pens which are mostly simple bands. The fretwork central band in a letter M pattern comes from the Geometric Art period. |
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| While other Leonardo pens have markings on their barrels, the Momento Magico has its branding on the cap, above the ascending geometric lines of the cap band. |
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| The Emerald's body is so shiny! I love the vibrant color and glossy finish of Leonardo fountain pens. |
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| The Momento Magico's new ink window is shorter and has matching ring bands. |
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| The Emerald's Medium nib writes smooth, juicy, and very comfortable to use. |
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| The marking to indicate width is engraved on the nib shoulder. |
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| Momento Magico Emerald (2022) and Millefiori (2021) – the packaging and presentation for both pens remain the same. |
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| The cap, clip, and clip band are all the same. |
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| But the gap in the ink window that is visible in the 2021 Millefiori is no longer visible in the Emerald. |
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| Here is the comparison of the ink windows of the two fountain pens. The 2021 Magico has a longer and simpler ink window. The 2022 Magico has a shorter ink window with matching ring bands. |
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| The Momento Magico is a full-sized fountain pen that shares the same length and diameter as the Momento Zero and Furore. It also looks very similar to the MZ, but the differences are also very obvious: slimmer clip, cap band design, ink window, and piston-filling mechanism. |
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| From top: TWSBI ECO Turquoise, Laban 325, Leonardo Momento Magico Emerald, Esterbrook Estie Gold Rush Frontier Green, and Lamy Alstar Aquamarine. |
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| I chose this happy song because the Magico Emerald reminds me so much of the sea! |
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| This postcard tells the Leonardo story. |
Caltech researchers re-created an experiment on gravity and acceleration that Leonardo da Vinci sketched out in his notebooks. (credit: Caltech)
Caltech engineer Mory Gharib was poring over the digitized notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci one day, looking for sketches of flow visualization to share with his graduate students for inspiration. That's when he noticed several small sketches of triangles, whose geometry seemed to be determined by grains of sand poured out from a jar. Further investigation revealed that Leonardo was attempting to study the nature of gravity, and the little triangles were his attempt to draw an equivalence between gravity and acceleration—well before Isaac Newton came up with his laws of motion, and centuries before Albert Einstein would demonstrate the equivalence principle with his general theory of relativity. [Edited for clarity.] Gharib was even able to re-create a modern version of the experiment.
Gharib and his collaborators described their discovery in a new paper published in the journal Leonardo, noting that, by modern calculations, Leonardo's model produced a value for the gravitational constant (G) to around 97 percent accuracy. What makes this finding even more astonishing is that Leonardo did all this without a means of accurate timekeeping and without the benefit of calculus, which Newton invented in order to develop his laws of motion and universal gravitation in the 1660s.
"We don't know if [Leonardo] did further experiments or probed this question more deeply," Gharib said. "But the fact that he was grappling with the problems in this way—in the early 1500s—demonstrates just how far ahead his thinking was."
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