Pen World V30.1

The Universe of Writing Culture

good fortune beckons:

Namiki’s Maneki-neko is feline grace

Aurora new museum, new pens, classic style artist/writer

Nick Bantock: more than meets the eye the purr-fect

Holiday Gift Guide DECEMBER 2016 $6.95US $7.95CAN

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LIMITED EDITIONS

A Visit to the Imperial Palace The Connoisseur Limited Edition of Nine Pens

Contact Us

info@aplimitededitions.com

Sterling Collection Hand-wrought sterling silver enhanced with beautifully etched traditional Japanese designs. The distinctive style of these fountain pens is complemented by an 18-karat gold rhodium-plated nib in ďŹ ne, medium and broad points. Also available as a gel roller.

www.pilotpen.us

December

43

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1

On our cover: Maneki-neko fountain pen by Pilot-Namiki

60 me-wow!

Namiki wishes you luck and good fortune in the coming year with its Maneki-neko maki-e fountain pen.

50

32 another journey to the East

Familiarize yourself with some Chinese pen brands in this second of a two-part overview.

43 grinding it out

Not happy with your pen’s nib? There are plenty of options out there.

50 a new museum with Italian flair Aurora’s Officina della Scrittura is a history of the brand and much, much more.

54 new pens, optimized

Introducing the new Aurora Optima and 88: two classic pens with some big surprises.

56 more than Griffin & Sabine

Nick Bantock’s oeuvre is big, bold, and groundbreaking, so we brought him back for more.

54 56

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64 the pen lover’s shopping list Get in the holiday spirit with the Holiday Gift Guide.

departments

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08 view 10 mail

symbols of the season

our readers speak

12 news

people, places, and events

18 now 20 date 24 show

new pens and other products

mark your calendar

L.A., Dallas, Denver, and Boston

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26 page 29 exhibit

Nathaniel Cerf’s Little Voices

László Moholy-Nagy’s Parker desk set

36 shop 39 origins 47 places

Nota Bene

a people’s history of handwriting

Sheaffer Museum

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81 getting started 84 network

inventorying your collection

classified advertising

88

86 source 88 National Handwriting Day guide to products and services

an invitation from Michael Sull

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Winner, Best Fine Art Pen PEN WORLD Readers’ Choice Awards

view

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Anton Chekhov and His “Blossom Orchid Garden” One-of-a-kind Magnum Emperor Pricing on requestt

Great Writers Series— William Shakespeare Limited Edition of 11 pens • $3,990 US Not only perfect writing instruments, but also your own museum that is always with you.

One-of-a-kind & limited edition pens.

Custom ordered pens and desk sets.

New Dealer: The World of Pens, Dubai, UAE www.artuspen.ru • artuspen@inbox.ru TEL: +7-4932-478-111

M

accabees, Movies, and erry Christmas

2014 Tropical Fishes • 2013 Storks

BY NICKY PESSAROFF

envy you your Christmas movies—specifically, children’s cartoons. Give me your Frosty, your Claymation Santa, your choo-choo trains to Big Rock Candy Mountain! Give me your Snoopy Dance, your Grinch, your heroic Rudolph (the most relatable of all these figures to me, ridiculed for his bulbous nose)!

As a young Jewish boy in the 1980s, I had one cartoon movie about Hanukkah. I think it was called Festival of Lights, and it certainly wasn’t a spectacle of glitter and stop-action wonder. It was a historical cartoon about the struggle of the Maccabees, only slightly more exciting than reading the original text and with a production value out of ancient Judea. Every year, I watched this movie because, well, what else was there?

One element that struck me about the movie was the way it interpreted flames: every light that had a sacramental purpose wasn’t just a light, it was a symbol—a flame in the shape of a Hebrew letter. I didn’t appreciate then how appropriate the symbolism was—in Judaism, the written word is considered sacred, a light of intellect and insight in an often dark world. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, Kwanzaa, or the myriad other winter-time festivals, light always takes on a symbolic meaning, and it always has to do with enlightenment. You simply cannot disassociate the notion of enlightenment from the structure of the written word.

In the world of pen lovers, symbolism abounds. The words you’re reading are nothing more than symbols. That handwritten note you pen is a series of scribbles until someone recognizes them for what they are—symbols that stand for ideas. Indeed, symbols abound in this issue, from Namiki’s cover pen, Maneki-neko, in which every symbol on the pen has a cultural meaning; to Aurora’s new Officina della Scrittura museum, which explores both the history of Aurora and the history of the written word. Or take artist/writer Nick Bantock, who continually breaks barriers between art and literature to create new modes of communication. The annual Holiday Gift Guide abounds in pens that contain symbols or are symbols in and of themselves.

By reading this issue, you’re unwittingly partaking in a social experiment in which we present a series of printed characters that you then decipher, and hopefully, we all end up on the same poverbial page.

At Pen World, we have always appreciated the history and cultural import of the written word. We’re part of a discourse community—an academic fancy-pants term for a group of people who have a shared interest and, thus, a shared language. Consider lawyerese, doctorese, or the strange #hashtag language of social media. Consider what we think of when we say “feed” versus what it means when your child says it. And since the beginning, this magazine has explored the very beginnings of language as well as its outer limits.

In this issue, we codify (to use some more academic jargon) this particular interest in a new, ongoing series we’re calling “Origins.” The article in this issue explores the way that modern theorists are reinterpreting the earliest uses of language and written communication— and the scribes who practiced it. Future subjects may include the neuroscience of handwriting, or the origins of modern English, or the history of brush pens in Japan, or the way binary code effects our modern communication. It’s a far-flung and fascinating field of study, and we’re hoping you’ll enjoy the journey.

The seasons turn, the days get shorter, the lights go up, and we celebrate. We send our Christmas cards, we sing our songs, we chant our prayers. While the winter wind howls, we light our candles, we gather to feast, and we celebrate the warmth of family and friendship. I, for one, feel like breaking into a Snoopy Dance.

Happy holidays, gentle reader!

Namiki appeals to lovers of Japanese folklore—and cats!

The Purr-fect

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Pen

BY NICKY PESSAROFF

n 1930, children’s writer Elizabeth Coatsworth won the Newbery Medal for her book The Cat Who Went to Heaven, retelling an old Japanese folk tale about a cat who brings good luck and prosperity to an artist. The artist is angered at first, as he and his housekeeper have no food, but the cat’s poise and beauty convince the artist to keep the cat.

“She will have to have a name,” he declared, sitting down again on the old matting while the cat stood sedately before him. “Let me see: She is like new snow dotted with gold pieces and lacquer; she is like a white flower on which butterflies of two kinds have alighted; she is like…”

“May I humbly suggest,” said the housekeeper, “that we call this cat Good Fortune?”

That’s exactly what Namiki has done with its new maki-e masterwork, Maneki-neko. The legend takes a number of forms, and the trope is a familiar one in folk legends, in which spiritually enlightened animals bring luck and fortune to righteous but poor artists, warriors, or artisans. In the case of Maneki-neko, the cat’s good deeds so move the Buddha that all felines are then allowed to enter heaven.

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Maneki-neko translates as beckoning cat and is often found in Japanese shops as a totem of prosperity (prior page). The Pilot-Namiki Maneki-neko abounds in symbolism, from the cat, itself, to the coins that rain down from the heavens.

Walk into any shop in modern-day Tokyo, Japan, and you’re likely to see a Maneki-neko, which literally translates as “beckoning cat” and is still traditionally used as a symbol of good luck and fortune. Lovers of Namiki’s maki-e artisanry will certainly allow the Maneki-neko into their homes. In the company’s reference, a cat saves a samurai from a lightning strike by beckoning him with a raised right paw.

Namiki is the luxury maki-e pen line of Japanese company Pilot, which was founded in 1918 by Ryosuke Namiki. In the 1920s, he formed a spin-off company to begin producing maki-e imagery on ebonite pen bodies.

Beginning in the 1940s, Namiki introduced the Western world to this centuries-old art form through a partnership with Dunhill.

John Lane, Pilot-Namiki’s sales manager for the U.S. market, has deep respect for the Japanese artists that produce Namiki’s globally respected fountain pens. He says, “I’ve had the privilege of knowing the artists and watching the way they work, and I just love the way the finished product comes out. What’s on there is almost secondary to me.

It’s about the whole piece of art I’m holding in my hand.”

In the case of Maneki-neko, a limited edition of only 99 pens, the focus is on cats. The Emperor-bodied pen features a background of black urushi lacquer, and symbolism abounds. The upraised right paw of the cat on the cap represents good fortune, and taka (raised) maki-e gives the feline depth. Gold coins rain down from the heavens, and a mallet that represents good luck is also depicted.

The cap also features a senryo-bako, which is used to hold large amounts of gold coins.

The Maneki-neko on the barrel has its left paw raised, a symbol of business prosperity, while its right paw holds an oh-iri-bukuro, an envelope containing money that is traditionally presented to the winner of a sumo match or to a kabuki performer. Other auspicious symbols—a pine tree, bamboo, and a plum tree—also adorn the barrel. An 18 karat gold medium nib with rhodium accents finishes the pen.

The fountain pen is presented in a box meant to resemble a senryo-bako, and the serial number plate looks like an oh-iri-bukuro. A five-yen coin and a bottle of Iroshizuku ink are also included in the packaging. These limited edition pens have a suggested price of $12,000, but given all the pen’s symbolism, perhaps good fortune will rub off on the owner.

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Maneki-neko comes complete with a presentation box as full of symbolism as the pen, itself. The 18 karat gold rhodium plated bicolor nib is available in medium.

Namiki’s Ryu fountain pen features a dragon motif on both cap and barrel.

Namiki pens tend to become collectors’ items. “It all comes down to the design,” Lane says. “Some designs sell out in an hour; some take four years to sell out. The Manekineko—out of 20 pens we currently have, we’ve already pre-sold 18 based on just a picture on my iPad.” But Pilot and Namiki pens are more than just pretty—or, in the case of Maneki-neko, adorable—they’re meant to be used. “The artists don’t like hearing stories about collectors who put their pens up on a shelf and then forget about them,” Lane says. And uniformity to the image is also extremely important. “If you look at Maneki-neko, the ball of the clip is right in the cat’s paw, which blends right in. That’s how we decide on the different barrels—either a wrap-around story that we don’t want to interrupt, or a way to work the clip into a work of art. I have never seen a clip on a flat-top Emperor, and I’ve never seen a rounded Emperor without one.”

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A fine example of the flat-top, wrap-around design is the Ryu (featured in PW’s Fall Preview of Pens, October 2016), in which dragons that represent wind and water wrap around the pen body in striking taka maki-e.

Conversely, the Namiki Shooting Star and Milky Way fountain pens use rounded barrels and incorporated clips. These two pens showcase the technique known as raden, in which mother of pearl and gold flakes are intricately placed for a stunning visual effect. Artisans used fusezaishiki, an effect in which various colors are applied to the backs of thinly sliced mother of pearl, to create cosmic images with the most traditional of techniques.

Lane gives credit for Namiki’s vivid designs to the Namiki Planning Production Department, which designs the initial idea, and the artists who make the company’s ideas come to life. Indeed, the cachet of a particular artist adds value to Namiki pens, and the artists, themselves, place hints as to the pen’s designer.

A combination of fusezaishiki, raden, and other maki-e tachniques brings the universe to light in two Namiki pens, Milky Way and Shooting Star. The pens have an MSRP of $2,400 each.

“For the signature, a single line on the left represents a group, or kokokai, that made the design,” Lane says, while a two-line signature represents a single artist. “The line on the right is the artist’s signature, and the red symbol is his or her crest. That’s really important. Our master artist, Kyusai Yoshida, retired a couple years ago, and now anything that has his signature is way up in value.

“You would be beyond fascinated to sit down in Hiratsuka and watch these artists at work,” Lane continues. “The tools are extremely primitive. There’s a series of brushes and bamboo tools, and a flat, rounded ring attached to the artist’s finger that’s filled with urushi lacquer.” One of Lane’s prized possessions is a set of traditional maki-e instruments on loan from Pilot, which he keeps safely locked in his office when he’s not displaying them at various shows.

The intricacies of maki-e mean it takes months to complete a single pen, which explains the high price points for Namiki writing instruments. However, Lane is quite aware that those price points are sometimes out of reach, especially for younger collectors, so the company’s line of Yukari pens tend to be in the thousands of dollars as opposed to tens of thousands.

“I’m looking for new, young collectors, a tough market to get into,” Lane says. That being said, Namiki has experienced significant

success through various partnerships with online sellers. And the expanded name recognition has bolstered sales throughout, including for the company’s long standing relationships with brick-and-mortar shops like Fahrney’s, Fountain Pen Hospital, Airline International, and Dromgoole’s.

Lane hasn’t neglected the blogging community, either, with a marketing team at U.S. headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida, that specifically works with the robust pen and ink blogging community. Lane also credits the success of such lines as the Pilot Metropolitan and Vanishing Point—wellrespected by Millennials as everyday carry pens—in introducing younger collectors to the company, as a whole.

Like the cats on the barrel of the new Maneki-neko, Pilot-Namiki has two proverbial paws raised: one in which it beckons traditional collectors, and one in which it calls out to new collectors.

The traditional folk tale of Maneki-neko always ends with the cat finally being allowed into heaven for the services, grace, and dignity in which the beloved pet serves its human caretaker. Likewise, the purr-fection of Namiki’s Maneki-neko will surely beckon to plenty of maki-e lovers.

Visit namiki.com and pilotpen.com

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