I had a great time at last weekend's DC Supershow. I was able to pick up several nice Italian pens, including a new Visconti Opera Master Demo and one of the limited run of Tobacco Brown Opera Clubs.

But the real finds of the weekend were a pair of prototypes. First up is a Montegrappa Harmony, the resin version of the Symphony. It was released in three marbled colors: red, blue/green, and amber/brown. This one is the grey resin from the Zodiac series pens. My guess is that it was too close to the grey celluloid of the Symphony series and so they went with the other colors to help differentiate the lines. It's a beautiful grey in my book, though, with a depth that's missing from the celluloid. It almost has a burled wood type pattern, but with a much finer grain.

The second prototype is an Ancora Toscana. This was Ancora's first regular production pen, back in '97 or '98 I think, made in marbled red/violet and the marbled blue/yellow as seen here. What sets this one apart is the filling system. While Ancora's original pens, all LEs, were filled with the Vac style pump filler, the Toscana model was a cartridge converter filler. This one here has the pump filler, though. Must have been an early consideration for the pen but dropped for cost or complexity reasons? Oddly enough, while this pen has the pump filler unit, it doesn't have the feed needed to support it, so it doesn't actually work. It does fill very well from a traveling inkpot, though, or in the worst case scenario it works as an eye dropper.

Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

Gorgeous color on that Ancora!

How's the nib on that Ancora?

Congratulations Doug, real beauties there. I have had only one Ancora pen and it was a real let down. I had the Cielo blue demo and just was not impressed. For an expensive pen it seemed to be crudely made with unfinished edges and rough corners. I also did not care for the nib. IIRC I traded it to Howard Levy for something else.

Those two are real beauties, guess I need to rethink my position with Ancora.

It needed a little work. Luckily, Nagahara-san was not too far away at the Sailor table and managed to fit me in for a quick nib smoothing. Now it's pretty nice. Typical springy Ancora nib, still has a bit of tooth but a nice user.

Ancora had some pretty spotty quality control, and it was worse earlier on. Poor finish and scratchy nibs were pretty par for the course. They got better later but still far from Omas or Visconti levels. Still, the colors are awfully nice, the trim is all sterling, and the nibs are good when they're good. Unfortunately, when they're bad they're pretty bad...

-Doug

Congrats That grey marbled is sure unusual; not as eye-catching as the gorgeous Ancora but still very pretty. The Ancora looks beefy too, nice! Why would the pen companies sell off their prototypes? Wouldn't they want to keep them for archival purpose or something? Just curious.

Vicary, have you had a chance to play with the Visconti Opera Master Demo? Whacha think of it? Did you get the patterned one? I ordered one of those but it hasn't arrived yet