Visconti Van Gogh Fountain Pen – Self Portrait

Visconti’s history began in Florence, Italy. A cradle of art and culture, Florence also known for being home to one of the Country’s largest industrial districts for luxury and fashion.
The company is the brainchild of Luigi Poli and Dante del Vecchio, two friends who met in Florence and decided to turn a common passion into business by founding Visconti on October 20, 1988.
On that date, luxury writing instruments began to make their way in a city that was strongly linked to jewelry, leather goods and any other form of art. Over time, Visconti products became iconic pieces that helped to spread Italian values worldwide: design and creativity, craftsmanship and innovation, quality and luxury.

The first collection launched by the company was named “Classic”; the pens were made from celluloid, a noble material used for numerous collections in the following years. The success was such that the next year, in 1989, the company developed “Urushi”, the first limited edition of 100 pieces, made from ebonite and decorated with the complex Japanese Urushi lacquerwork technique. The pens were sold out quickly, confirming Visconti’s expertise and position in the pen market.
In the 1990s the brand gained roaring success in the segment they had recently entered. By providing incredibly innovative solutions, Visconti accomplished major achievements in the writing instruments industry in a short time. These include the High Vacuum Power Filler system (1993), the travel inkwell (1997), and above all the Double Reservoir Power Filling system (1998), which made refilling simpler and tidy with two reservoirs, designed to prevent leakage when necessary – e.g. during air travel.
Mention should also be made of D’Essai collections (1990), crafted from unique 60-year-old celluloid bars with a vintage flair, and Ragtime (1991), whose original glass nib revived an old feature dating back to World War II, when pen parts were made of glass to save gold.

As the new millennium approached, Visconti launched the iconic bridge-shaped clip, making an explicit reference to the ancient Ponte Vecchio, the symbol of Florence. Visited by millions of tourists every year, the bridge is a centuries-old link between two banks of a famous river, a symbol of union and a place filled with flourishing local jewelry workshops. Similarly, the brand’s signature palladium-plated clip was designed to represent a meeting point between two millennia of history, past and present, tradition and innovation, evoking the values that would build the strong, increasingly well-structured DNA of the successful Florentine business.