Leonardo Noce Moscata - 4ml Fountain Pen Ink Sample

Hue: A deep cherry-red with a warm brown undertone. Leonardo sell this as a brown — the bottle label reads "Brown Ink" and retailers describe it as a medium red-brown or nutmeg brown. My swatches sit redder than that suggests: the handwriting sample is a true red-brown, but the swab bar and pooled areas go a rich oxblood-cherry red with only the edges resolving to a dark, almost black-brown. If you are buying it expecting a brown, expect a red one.

Shading: Strong. The swab bar runs from a light brick red in the thin drag-out to a deep saturated red where the ink sits, and the writing sample shows clear light-to-dark variation within single strokes.

Sheen: None visible on my swatches. The dark bands around the edges of the drops are chromatic separation — the brown component pulling away from the red — rather than a metallic sheen.

Shimmer: None.

Flow: Medium.

The interesting bit: Leonardo Officina Italiana is a Neapolitan family firm founded in 2017 by Salvatore and Mariafrancesca Matrone, whose father Ciro was one of the founders of Delta. The ink line began as seven plainly-named colours — blue, black, red, green, purple, turquoise, sepia — and was later joined by four with proper Italian names instead: Arancio Tarocco after the Sicilian blood orange, Taurasi after the Campanian red wine, Smeraldo, and this one, Noce Moscata, Italian for nutmeg. A spice that shows up in Neapolitan kitchens far more than it does in British ones, and a colour named for the deep red-brown of the whole nut rather than the pale powder.

This is a hand-decanted 4ml sample vial from my own bottle.

Photos are my own swatches on Tomoe River Paper.

I'm a collector and I'm always happy to talk ink, so please message me if you have any questions.