Leonardo da Vinci working machines made by hand in Florence by Niccolai

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The fascination of Leonardo Da Vinci never fails...

"Knowledge springs for experience", Leonardo Da Vinci used to think. Experience was in fact the dominating theme of his thoughts, the theme which made him the first real Renaissance man who expertly combined artistic and scientific activities. Sought after and honoured has a Court artist, he also concerned himself with scentific matters, applying his knowledge of mechanics to works of civil and military engineering as well as passionately studying anatomy, biology, mathematics and phisic.

His manuscripts reveal the experiments he carried out, from the solutions he had thought out to resolve practical problems of the time to the intuition of future possibilities, such as the flying machines and automation. Even today Leonardo Da Vinci continues to exercise an enormous fascination, as was the case for Carlo Niccolai. As a schoolboy he attended the "Leonardo Da Vinci" technical industrial school in Florence where he came into contact with the mechanical models of the Renaissance genius, later donated to the Da Vinci Museum. The memories of his school years, the restoration of these machines, accomplished under the guidance of the teachers and the passion of mechanics never left him.
In 1955 he set up a firm (Niccolai) with his father Libero, which initially specialised in the working of decorative artistic brass, followed by the production of accessories for custom jewellery, handbags and footware. At the same time, however, he continued to study machines and dies in order to accellerate production times and to improve the finishes. Finally one day... he had the idea of trying to reconstruct scale models of Leonardo machines in his workshop. These models were given their first official showing in 1996 in trade fairs together with the customary fashion accessories, as a sort of symbol of what is "Made in Italy" and... they did not pass unnoticed. Anything but! Visitors' curiosity was aroused and they were stopping in front of the stand to ask where the models came from.

The fact that they were one-off pieces, hand-build and for display purposes did not discourage some for leaving an order should it be decided to start their production. And that is what happened.
This event led to a fruitful co-operation with the Friends of the Science and Engineering Museum in Milan, resulting in a series of models made to scale, using materials of that time, i.e. wood, cotton, brass, iron and rope, and accompanying each single piece with the reproduction of the page of the codex from which the model had been taken. The machines are entirely worked with craftmen's techniques, particular attention being paid to the finishes, and they are therefore limited in number. They are destined for those who love gifts with a high historical, artistic and scientific content and are especially appreciated by foreigners as a symbol of one of the most sublime expressions of the human spirit. The technical design is worked out on the computer in order to be able to calculate with precision the proportions of the mechanisms and to be able to satisfy any request regarding the dimensions of the object. A CD Rom has also been created in this way of the thirty available models, displayed outside and inside with three-dimensional movements and with all the information of their construction, yesterday like today. From the codices, Leonardo Da Vinci has passed to virtual reality: a fantastic leap; who knows if he would ever have immagined it!

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NICCOLAI s.n.c.
Via Pistoiese, 69 - 50010 San Donnino (Italy)
Phone: +39 055.899.471 Fax: +39 055.896.4387

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