Pen World V30.4

The Universe of Writing Culture

30th

Anniversary 1987-2017

floating worlds:

Danitrio maki-e, everyday people

Franklin-Christoph: a U.S. pen-sation sweeping the nation drumroll please!

2017 PW Readers’ Choice Awards winners plus trends in paper: Leuchtturm, Tomoe River, Fabriano, and more JUNE 2017 $6.95US $7.95CAN

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BE A REBEL. BE A PIRATE. BE EXCEPTIONAL.

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DANITRIO Our Eto Jakuchu Collection is growing!

MK-98, Lenchi Fish swimming in lotus pond

MK-40, Peacock

YOK-30, Torazu

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WWW.DANITRIO.COM

Imaginary Tiger

JUNE

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VOLUME 30, NUMBER 4 ON OUR COVER: Danitrio Furo (Bath)

52 schooled in art

Danitrio’s Bernard Lyn pays homage—fountain pen-style—to centuries-old Japanese art.

30 get it together…

…with Ryder Carroll’s organization system, Bullet Journaling.

34 it works!

Japan’s Tomoe River paper is sleek, shiny, and fountain pen friendly.

38 simply Excellentia

Legendary Italian papermaker Fabriano partners with American Master Penman Michael Sull. The result is Fabriano Excellentia.

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49 awards season

You voted, now see who won in the 2017 PW Readers’ Choice Awards.

56 frankly impressive

Franklin-Christoph is helping revitalize American penmaking.

60 don’t cry for us

We’re in Argentina with two brilliant artisans: Juan Carlos Pallarols and Ariel Kullock.

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70 fill ‘er up!

Plunge into a history of the piston filler.

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departments 06 view 08 mail

In Memoriam: Susan Wirth

Timmermans of Belgium

10 news

Montblanc for UNICEF, Grolier Club, Bonhams

16 now 23 date

new pens and products

Yes, Virginia, there is a D.C. Pen SuperShow!

25 show

D.C., Atlanta, and Chicago

27 shop

Anderson Pens

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42 deskology 46 nibs 64 abroad 66 origins 74 in memoriam: Susan Wirth pocket notebooks

Montblanc Augmented Paper

Hagenbuch pen shop of Switzerland

personal letters, historical relevance

stories, images, memories

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76 network 78 source 80 imho

classiďŹ ed advertising

brand contact information

pens behind bars

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Winner PEN WORLD Readers’ Choice Awards Finest Tribute: 2017 Monumental Michelangelo

view

Best Fine Art Pen: 2014 Tropical Fishes • 2013 Storks

J

ust before we were scheduled to begin printing, the Queen of Ink, Susan Wirth, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on May 9. For decades, Susan was one of the most dynamic presences at pen shows, and there’s no way to quantify the enormity of this loss.

Beginning here and continuing on pages 74–75 are excerpts from some of the Queen’s loyal subjects. For the full memories, and for information on the various planned memorial services, visit PW’s Facebook and Instagram pages, then post your own words and pictures.

The many hilarious and heartwarming stories we share about Susan’s intelligence and kindness are something we can enjoy for years yet, during those twilight times at a pen show when everything slows down and we drink, chat, and eat—those times with friends that Susan Wirth loved.

--Nicky Pessaroff, PW editor-in-chief

Autumn Inspired by the heritage of Czech Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha History of Aircraft: The Wright Brothers Each one-of-a-king magnum emperor Not only perfect writing instruments, but also your own museum that is always with you.

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Susan Wirth was a brilliant and incredible human being and a dear friend of over ten years. I’ll never forget running through back passages of hotels, looking for perfect props for her pen show displays while worrying about getting thrown out of the hotel! Forever etched into my memory is her pride in her discovery and subsequent display of her László Moholy-Nagy pen base in the Guggenheim Museum, her dip into the fountain in New York’s Washington Square Park during the same trip, and driving with her through Milwaukee and Baltimore and listening to her excited architectural commentary on both.

Food and sleep could always wait until after a pen show. People and pens were much more important! So many times we would get so caught up in conversations that Susan carried her entire plate of food back to the hotel room for later consumption.

A former news reporter, Susan had a keen inquisitiveness, an insatiable, almost childlike curiosity, a razor-sharp intellect, a photographic memory for details, and passionate joie de vivre. In conversation, she could hone in on 20 topics at once without losing focus on any of them. I was always in awe of her ability to remember dates and tiny pen manufacturing minutiae.

She loved teaching people about pens and she stood behind every pen she sold. She loved cats, children, roses, chocolate, and fountain pen newbies—and they adored her back.

There’s a huge hole in my heart, and pen shows will never be the same without her.

Every time I think about Susan, I think of things I could add—for example, how she would reorganize hotel rooms. This included removing doors to closets, taking all irrelevant items out of the room and putting them in the closet (including essentials, like blow Deborah Basel and Susan Wirth sharing a moment at Susan’s table. Calligraphy by Michael Sull. dryers and coffee makers)! After the show, she would put it all back.

I have a vision of her meeting St. Peter at the pearly gates, with her inky fingers, her iconic hotel cart filled with sleeping kitties and recycled bottles of water with roses hanging out of them, asking St. Peter, (before he would sign off for her to enter Heaven) if she could interest him in a pen that would improve his handwriting.

I’ll still never tell how she got that hotel cart onto the airplane…

--Deborah Basel, PW contributing editor

Danitrio reinterprets Japanese ukiyo-e art through maki-e application

The

BY NICKY PESSAROFF

Floating World

The limiited edition Dantirio Furo (Bath) is based on a classic Japanese illustrated book and captures the hilarity of a bath gone horribly wrong.

D

anitrio Pens is more than a fine writing instrument business; it’s also owner Bernard Lyn’s attempt to codify, preserve, and disseminate information about Japanese art schools and techniques to a wider, Western audience.

His newest project honors a centuries-old Japanese art tradition, ukiyo-e.

In early 17th century Japan, the Tokugawa shogunate took the reins of power and moved the seat of government to Edo, a village of only 1,800 people. By the 19th century, Edo had become Tokyo, a vibrant metropolis home to over one million people. A city-centered lifestyle emerged, including a newly-wealthy merchant class and an impoverished working class. This intersection led to one of the most influential art movements in Japan, ukiyo-e.

“When we walk down the main streets of Tokyo, we’re in the main part of modern Japan,” Lyn says, “but when I turn into a back alley, I smell ukiyo.”

“Ukiyo” translates roughly to “the floating world,” a homophonous reference to Buddhist teachings that focused on the agonies and grief of daily life. Ukiyo took that notion and turned it on its head, reveling in hedonism and pleasure in the face of such agonies. Ukiyo-e artists began capturing daily life for the first time—kabuki actors, geishas, work scenes, nature, erotica—in color-printed woodblocks.

Lyn explains the psychology of the period: “Life was short, so they began to think that life is just a span of time, whether it’s spent in tears or laughter. ‘Ukiyo’ actually means the world of the common people, the world behind the main streets, the world of non-government officials. It’s a very special culture.”

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Danitrio Nihonbashi (Nihon Bridge) is a reinterpretation of Hiroshige’s bustling city scene from his Fifty-Three Stations woodblock print series.

Below—Aka Fuji (Red Mt. Fuji and the Sea) captures the ochre hues of Japan’s most famous volcano in a treatment reminiscent of Hokusai’s ThirtySix Views of Mt. Fuji.

Originally considered coarse and crude in its subject matter, ukiyo-e gained cultural recognition with time, and as centuries passed, the art school became more nuanced. By the 1850s, with the opening of Japanese borders to the world, Western ideas on perspective and depth influenced ukiyo-e artists. In turn, ukiyo-e artists deeply affected the Impressionist movement: Manet, Degas, Whistler, and Matisse were fans; Van Gogh had a personal collection of ukiyo-e prints; and poet Amy Lowell released a collection directly influenced by ukiyo-e, Pictures of the Floating World.

In Japan, ukiyo-e’s reputation as the illegitimate offspring of legitimate art has long passed. Thanks to works by such masters as Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), ukiyo-e became more than celebrations of hedonism and pleasure, it became cultural commentary, legitimizing the droll lives of the working poor and the city centers in which they lived.

Ukiyo-e is done in woodblock prints, and by the late 1600s, technical innovations allowed for prints with multiple colors. While each artist was welcome to capture the images he liked, ukiyo-e had a proscribed, singular method of creation and application. This also allowed artists to make multiple prints of the same image. Later, ukiyo-e artists began to make single pieces on paper called nikuhitsu.

Lyn’s pens focus on ukiyo-e’s golden age, when the focus had moved from kabuki, geishas, and erotica and onto depictions of daily life, such as Hiroshige’s The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, a series that captured the 53 postal stations between Edo and Kyoto.

Another famous piece, Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji, a series of woodblock prints that capture Mt. Fuji from various distances and perspectives, proved so popular that two ukiyo-e artists tackled the series—the original designs

by Hokusai, and a later version by Hiroshige.

Given that Lyn’s artists work in maki-e, translating woodblock prints to pen bodies could have posed a problem, but as Lyn says, “Ukiyo-e just fits maki-e work.”

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Another in Hiroshige’s Fifty-Three Stations series, Mariko (left) shows a winter and spring scene of the quaint Japanese town. The tea shop in the print is a mainstay of Japanese culture, and they still exist today.

Next page—Sanjo Ohashi, another stop along the FiftyThree Stations, captures the silent treachery of the journey between Edo and Kyoto.

To make sure he got the best results, Lyn commissioned his most venerated maki-e artist, Masanori Omote. “He’s the oldest maki-e artist of ours, probably almost 80 now, yet he can hold the brush like a young man. He can still draw a long straight line with a brush, and it looks exactly like a line drawn with a ruler,” Lyn says.

This issue’s cover pen, Furo (Bath), is the perfect exemplar of this populist art form. The original woodblock print was made by the legendary Hiroshige, who composed the design for a classic Japanese comic book, Dochu Hizakurige. “‘Hizakurige’ means ‘Walking with their own knees’—jokingly, traveling by foot instead of by horse,” Lyn says.

The specific design is a humorous take on the traditional Japanese bath, called ofuro. Lyn says, “This ancient Japanese bathtub was made of wood, and water was heated in a stove in the bottom part of the tub, with a piece of wood to protect the bather from the stove. The design of Furo shows that the tub didn’t have the wood piece to protect the bather, and he was burned. It’s humorous but full of the human touch.”

The Yokozuna-style ebonite pen body is a clipless eyedrop filler with a bulbous cap and barrel. While many maki-e pieces feature liberal applications of abalone shell and gold leaf, Furo keeps the embellishments to the minimum, instead focusing on creating a true visual narrative that wraps around the pen body in exquisite detail and lush colors even more vibrant than the original print. The giant No. 50 bicolor 18 karat gold nib is handmade.

Nihonbashi (Nihon Bridge) is another Hiroshige masterpiece from his Fifty-Three Stations series. The Nihon Bridge, which still exists in modern-day Tokyo, was the first station on the legendary road from Edo to Kyoto. The Grand Trio-style pen body is affectionately nicknamed the Mae West by Danitrio fans.

With Aka Fuji (Red Mt. Fuji and the Sea), Masanori showcases his ability to render Hokusai’s original mastery. Like the referent, the background presence of Mt.Fuji on the cap demands attention despite the busy coastal scene on the barrel. Bathed in ochre, Mt. Fuji rises from the sea like an angry god, fitting for an object of such ancient religious significance.

Mariko displays views of the eponymous Japanese town on a round Takumi-style pen body in two motifs—a winter scene on the barrel and a spring scene on the cap. Lyn says, “Both designs are based on Hiroshige’s originals. Mariko is a place known for its tororo jiru [yarn soup], served at a chamise [tea shop]; they’re still open today. There’s a place that’s built exactly like the house on the barrel in Hiroshige’s picture. As depicted on the design of the barrel, the winter in Mariko is very severe, and the days are dark.

The journey onward is notoriously difficult.” The clipped, cartridge/converter pen features an 18 karat gold nib in fine, medium, or broad.

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Finally, Sanjo Ohashi (Sanjo Bridge) is another in Hiroshige’s Fifty-Three Stations series. The bridge, located in Kyoto, was the first of the 53 stations if one started from Kyoto. While Hiroshige’s originals capture the cosmopolitanism of the bridge, the Danitrio treatment is far more muted. The gorgeous maki-e work on a Takumi body seems to foreshadow the treacherous journey ahead, or conversely, to capture the weariness of a traveler nearing the end of the line. Like the best art, it depends on the viewer’s interpretation of the scene.

None of these designs could see the light of day without Lyn’s oversight and vision. And the amazing thing is that Lyn’s vision keeps expanding. These ukiyo-e writing instruments might be Danitrio’s most sophisticated pieces yet, which helps put the lie to the notion that this art form is somehow less relevant or important.

Anyone who has experienced true poverty will understand the concept of a “floating world.” When life is so unpredictable, the world seems to float around you, visiting you with pleasure or pain on whims that seem directed by the winds. Danitrio’s ukiyo-e school of writing instruments captures the highs and the lows, the fear of the unknown, the beauty of the everyday, the hilarity of a bath gone horribly wrong.

Visit danitrio.com.

The Fanciful World On the other end of the spectrum from ukiyo-e artists like Hiroshige and Hokusai is Ito Jakuchu (1716–1800). While Hiroshige and Hokusai worked in woodblocks and pushed the limits of what types of scenes Japanese art captured, Jakuchu captured classic nature scenes and especially birds.

And while Hiroshige and Hokusai were part of the working class, Jakuchu called the noble realm home. As Lyn says, “Jakuchu was a rich businessman,” and he was an excellent self-promoter.

Most of Jakuchu’s work was done with traditional Japanese and Chinese techniques and were painted on hanging scrolls. Lyn notes, “Jakuchu’s paintings were valued at that time because he could afford to buy the most expensive and highest quality pigments for his drawings.”

A salient example, one now treated in a maki-e rendition by Danitrio, is Jakuchu’s Tiger, a fanciful series of paintings by nature, as Jakuchu never actually saw a tiger in real life. The Danitrio Torazu (Tiger) is a maki-e wonder, with a blue-eyed tiger in the process of grooming itself on the barrel and a sprig of cherry blossoms on the cap. This clipless filler pen is a Yokozuna body type with an eyedropper filling system and a an 18 karat gold nib.

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UNICEF does not endorse any brand or product. For every piece in the “Montblanc for UNICEF Collection” sold from April 1 2017 to March 31 2018, Montblanc will donate 3 % of the proceeds to support UNICEF and its literacy projects, with a minimum amount of US$1.5 million being guaranteed by Montblanc.

Hugh Jackman and the Montblanc for UNICEF Collection Montblanc supports

With the Montblanc for UNICEF Collection, we celebrate the gift of writing and in partnership with UNICEF aim to improve the learning conditions for over 5 million children by providing quality learning materials and better teaching.

Discover more at montblanc.com/unicef Crafted for New Heights.

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Master Penman Michael R. Sull and Emmy award-winning filmmaker John S. Altman announce a forthcoming documentary on PBS.

With Pen in Hand— The Journey of American Handwriting

The Universe of Writing Culture

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The documentary will share America’s history of handwriting from the founding of our nation to present day. The producers need the support of the entire pen community to make this important documentary a reality. A crowd funding campaign has been launched to raise $300,000. Please support With Pen in Hand by making a donation today. Learn more about this exciting project in future issues of PEN WORLD.

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