Pen People

A pen person, Leigh Reyes rightly said, knows better than drinking anything looking like ice tea at a pen meeting. And would use almost anything as a pen holder. A pen person, as well, never misses a street with such a suggestive name as Namiki.

In Chuo-ku, Tokyo.

And wonders what Vanishing Point might mean as a bar, members only, in the sleazy streets of Roppongi (Minato-ku, Tokyo).

In Minato-ku, Tokyo.

Yeah, we are a crazy bunch.

Super T Gester 40 – Sailor Yama-dori

Bruno Taut
Nakano, August 16th 2014
etiquetas: estilofilia, Tokyo

Nibs and Pens

“Chase the nib, not the pen”, the wise pen user says. And the reason is clear—the nib provides most of the writing character of the pen.

But in the pen world we often see how the same nib is implemented in many different models. But, are they so different? Aren’t they the same pen under different costumes?

Last week I spoke of the Pilot Elite family of pens –as shown at an exhibition—and published a picture of pocket Elite pens with inlaid nibs. Today I add another picture of similar nibs as implemented on other pens by the name of Custom.

Three Pilot Custom from 1970s.

The nibs of the Custom pens of the previous picture together with those of some Elite. Any differences?

Same nib, different body styles—different pens?

This is a general policy among pen makers, as we have already seen on these Chronicles (see, for instance, the case of Nakaya/Platinum). Then, is it worth to go for those pens with a higher, even much higher, price tags when the nibs are exactly the same?

The otaku and the user would respond in different ways.

Pilot Custom 74, music nib – Gary’s Red-black

Bruno Taut
Nakano, April 22nd, 2014
etiquetas: Pilot, estilofilia, mercado

Self-defense

Against marketing, history. Against the opportunistic reissues, the real thing.

Against the M90,

the Myu 701.

Against the Elite 95,

the inlaid Elite pocket pens.

Against the Justus 95,

the original Justus from 1980.

Oftentimes, the originals are cheaper than the modern reissues. Oftentimes, we stylophiles are just too easy.

My thanks to Dr. D., whose pics of the Elite 95 are greatly appreciated.

Pelikan M320 – Diamine Amazing Amethyst

Bruno Taut
Madrid, December 1st, 2013
etiquetas: Pilot, mercado, estilofilia

Madrid Pen Show 2013

The Tenth Madrid Pen Show was celebrated about a week ago (November 15th to 17th). It was an exciting event with thousands of pens, and hundreds of visitors and tens of traders…

For the first time in its 10-year history, the number of visitors surpassed the figure of 1000. The number of pen traders, though, was smaller than on year 2012 with just over 40 of them, coming from Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, UK, USA, Switzerland, and Spain. But those figures are enough to make this event one of the leading pen shows in Europe.

That about the commercial aspect of the show. The social part was very active too. After all, the pen show is the big party of pen stylophiles in Spain, and meeting all those brothers in pens becomes as important as finding and buying that rare tool. But the vast majority of visitors were Spanish –the exceptions being German, Japanese, Mexican and Portuguese— and attracting foreign customers might be the next challenge for organizers in the years to come.

The third leg of any event like this should be the didactic one. A pen show is a great opportunity to organize workshops and seminars on all things fountain pen—from history notes to calligraphy training to fixing procedures. Attracting younger generations –potential users and collectors— is also an investment for the future. However, these activities are totally ignored during this pen show. I should add, however, that some traders in Madrid organize a monthly encounter –the Tertulias of Amigos de las Estilográficas (their website is far from being updated, although the events are celebrated)— where the didactic side of pen collecting is covered. The paradox is that the November meeting was not celebrated because of the Pen Show.

But the best summary of the Madrid Pen Show might be the following video. The author, José Riofrío, has captured the pleasant atmosphere of both the commercial and the social dimensions of the show, including the dinner of a large group of stylophiles.

These events are easily overwhelming, but also very pleasant.

My thanks to Mr. José Riofrío.

Pilot FCN-500R-B – Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuyu-Kusa

Bruno Taut
Madrid, November 24th, 2013
etiquetas: evento, estilofilia, mercado

Family Portrait (VI)

I will be a bit narcissistic today and will show my collection of music nibs. All of them are Japanese.

Clock-wise from the top, these are the pens:

At 12 o’clock: Pilot Super 200 made in 1962. Hose filling (quarter-switch) system. 14 K gold nib.

Pilot Super 250, E model, made in 1967. Hose filling (quarter switch) system. 14 K gold nib.

Pilot Custom Grandee made in 1982. Cartridge-converter. 14 K gold nib.

Pilot Custom 74 made in 2010. Cartridge-converter. 14 K gold nib.

Twsbi Diamond 530, red, with a Kubo Kohei’s nib in size 2. Piston filler. Steel nib. This is a “frankenpen”. Twsbi does not sell music nibs for its pens. The best we can get are italic nibs.

Platinum P-300 made in 1969. Cartridge-converter. 18 K gold nib.

Platinum pocket with wingflow nib, made in 1978. Cartridge. 14 K gold nib.

Platinum 3776 in celluloid (calico pattern) made in 2009. Cartridge-converter. 14 K gold nib.

Platinum 3776 Century, made in 2012. Cartridge-converter. 14 K gold nib.

For this list, I have purposely ignored the music nibs currently made by Sailor in 14 K gold and steel. Those have failed in attracting my attention and their writing was never very pleasant. But Sailor, nonetheless, had manufactured three-tined music nibs in the past. The current Cross-music nib, by nibmeister Nagahara, is a totally different animal.

All these nibs, save for those currently on production, are rare finds in the second hand market. Rare, however, only means that it takes longer to find. Collecting has a lot to do with being patient.

Parker 51, octanium nib – Pilot Blue

Bruno Taut
In flight over Europe, November 13th, 2013
etiquetas: Pilot, Platinum, nibmeister Kubo Kohei, plumín, plumín musical, Sailor, estilofilia, Twsbi

Context and Research

On these Chronicles I have extensively spoken about the Capless family of pens by Pilot. So much, in fact, that I ended up creating its own label to access all those texts easily. Some might say that this follows from a deep appreciation of these pens, but the actual reason is a lot more mundane—it is easy to speak about them because it is easy to provide a context for them as a whole, and for each of the models. And that makes a huge difference with respect to many other pens.

This picture alone provides most of the context we need to analyze any Capless model.

That is, in fact, a major advantage of the big three pen companies on this blog. Their history is relatively well known and available. What can we say, in contrast, about pen brands as Opal, North Star, Ramie, Tokyo, Asahi Tsubasa…? And this problem feeds back—known brands become better known while minor companies fall into oblivion.

Is there a way to revert the situation? The point is not about forgetting all we know about Pilot, Platinum and Sailor, but about how to increase our knowledge on all those minor brands that played some role, even if small, in the history of these tools. And there is only one way—research.

Then we encounter a discouraging situation. First is how reduced this world of fountain pens is. And most of the money in it is associated to new pens, on which some obvious companies have a clear interest. Their investment, needless to say, favors their own products.

Then we have the community of stylophiles—that is, collectors who are seldom satisfied with one single pen and who buy a number of pens just for the sake of owning them (even if under the excuse of thinking of themselves as users). But this community, even if very active and noisy, is small and divided. And little research they do other than satisfying their own curiosity. Some even publish their findings.

A third actor in this scenario are vintage pen traders. They might be very interested in adding value, that of the actual knowledge, on those unknown pens they need to sell. And in fact some traders do that and even publish their knowledge. But not much investment is done on this activity.

Two books with the same title: Fountain Pens of the World. By Nakazono and by Lambrou.

And now and then, some visionary entrepreneur thinks that publishing a book on pens might be a good idea. And they even publish it… Whether they make any money is yet to be seen.

And that is all we have. Those initiatives, mostly personal, might be fragmentary, and might be of good or of bad quality; but that is all we have. And the conclusion is that it is up to us, stylophiles, to improve this situation.

Sailor pocket pen, 18 K gold nib – Daiso red cartridge

Bruno Taut
Yokohama, October 2013
etiquetas: metabitácora, mercado, estilofilia, Capless

Rarities

Some weeks ago I included the picture of an ad by Pilot on pens marketed in 1978. It was perfect to illustrate the pen under analysis –a Custom Grandee with a music nib. But the ad also displayed another pen—the all-steel Pilot Murex. But although marketed on the same year, their fates have been very different.

The Pilot ad from 1978.

The Custom Grandee was intended as a more luxurious product. It implemented a 14 K gold nib and there were seven different nib points available, including a three-tined music nib. The price was JPY 7000.

On the other hand, the Pilot Murex was more of a rarity—an all-steel pen with nib and section integrated in the same piece of steel. It followed the path lead by the Parker T1 and, more successfully, the Pilot Myu 701. The Murex had only two very rigid nib points—F and M. Its price was JPY 5000.

Now, thirty five years later, we pay a lot more attention to the rarity than to the luxurious functionality. And I am no innocent at this game as I wrote about the Murex a lot earlier than about the Custom Grandee, and when I finally described the later I did so by focusing my attention on another rarity, the unusual music nib.

The Parker 51 must be included in any book on the history of pens, and many a collector will have it,. However, the collector will pay attention to that very scarce color or variation that in actual terms is mostly irrelevant.

Collecting, this shows, deals more with the unusual than with history; more with the rarity than with the well-proven technical characteristics. And only a handful of true icons appeared on both lists: those made by collectors and by historians.

And this also shows that a history of pens written by a die-hard collector might be very biased towards those rarities that very few could have.

Pilot Capless CS-200RW – Platinum Black

Bruno Taut
Shinjuku, October 13th, 2013
etiquetas: Pilot, mercado, libro, estilofilia, Parker

Artisanal

In this world of fast-evolving technology and mass-produced goods there seems to be room for nostalgia and romanticism… But are those for real or mere illusions?

There are a number of pen companies claiming to have their products handmade or crafted by traditional artisans following ancient recipes. But what do all those words really mean? What is really handmade and what is machine-made?

What tools can an artisan –whatever this might mean— use while preserving the label and aura of “handmade”? Is the lathe an acceptable tool? And if that lathe was numerically-controlled? Should the lathe be made by the artisan himself to keep the purity of the handmade process? Or, is electricity an acceptable source of energy?

Nakaya. Japanese handmade fountain pens, we read on its website. But what does that really mean?

It is very difficult –if at all possible— to draw that red line delimiting the realm of the craftsmanship and the realm of the mass-production. Craftsmanship is, after all, only an older technology, but a technology that still uses tools made by others.

Two are the reasons for a new technology to gain favor. First is the economic argument—does this new machine makes the final product for less? Second is the quality—is the product newly made better than the one produced with the previous technologies? The final adoption of the new procedures depends on a delicate balance between those two arguments. Cheaper but lower quality is not a good strategy to keep business going, but it is certainly tempting.

At the end, the consumer decides, and it is my contention that the final decision should only be taken based on the quality of the good and not on the marketing labels attached to it to increase the price. After all, we do not judge a novel based on which instrument was used to write it.

Handmade, artisanal, hand-crafted,… Mumbo-jumbo, I am afraid.

Pilot Super (cartridge-converter), soft nib – Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Brown

Bruno Taut
April 3rd, 2013
etiquetas: mercado, estilofilia

Rhetorical Question (II)

For 金野さん

Lamy 2000 in stainless steel.

-- My last purchase was a Lamy 2000 in stainless steel.
-- Oh! Nice. But, isn’t it too heavy?
-- Who’s gonna write with it?

Pilot Myu 701 – Sailor Yama-dori

Bruno Taut
Shinjuku, February 7th, 2013
labels: Lamy, estilofilia

Rhetorical Question (I)

Recently, a friend confessed –yes, that is the right word— that she had purchased a luxury mechanical pencil for the amount of JPY 1575 (about EUR 16 or USD 17), and that was expensive. Sure enough, to any normal person, to any healthy mind, any writing tool over EUR 10 (or USD 10, or JPY 1000), is expensive. We stylophiles are the abnormal ones in here, and we might need to rethink our perceptions on what is cheap or expensive in our small world.

Lamy Safari, JPY 3800. Cartridge-converter. Converter not included.

Parker IM, JPY 2900. Cartridge-converter. Converter not included.

Pilot Prera, JPY 3500. Converter included.

Twsbi Diamond 540, USD 40. Piston filler.

Case in point—can we really say that a EUR 30 fountain pen is an entry level fountain pen? Can we seduce any sane person into buying a writing tool that is about 10 times more expensive than those regular pens he might use?

Sailor Profit Junior, music nib – Diamine Graphite

Bruno Taut
Yokohama, January 30th, 2013
labels: mercado, estilofilia, Lamy, Parker, Pilot, Twsbi

Pilot Super Ultra 500

(Note for non-Spanish speakers: I wrote this text for a pen forum in Spanish. However, the final result made me think it was worth to publish it as one of my chronicles, despite most of the information here included had already been published in here. One of the reasons is that there is very little information in Spanish about this pen).

1953 es un año muy importante en la historia de las plumas estilográficas en Japón. En ese año se adoptan dos decisiones de gran relevancia:

La primera es la adopción de un sistema de control sobre el material de los plumines. Esta medida del Ministerio de Industria japonés nunca fue obligatoria, pero las grandes empresas –Pilot, Platinum, Sailor, SSS— la adoptaron rápidamente. El resultado fue que muchas empresas pequeñas, con productos de menor calidad, cerraron ante la imposibilidad de competir con ellas.

La segunda medida fue el final del embargo sobre el uso de oro para plumines. Desde el año 1939 el uso del oro para artículos de consumo había estado prohibido y las estilográficas se vieron obligadas a utilizar plumines de acero inoxidable. Son los llamados plumines shiro, que significa blanco en japonés.

En consecuencia, en ese año 1953 el mercado quedó abierto para nuevos productos y con más garantías de calidad. En ese año, Pilot lanzó al mercado el modelo 53R. En ella, los plumines (de oro y de acero) y los alimentadores son visibles. Respecto al sistema de llenado, son dos los métodos preferentes: cuentagotas con válvula de sellado y palanca lateral que acciona un saco de goma. Ocasionalmente también se emplea un sistema de pistón pulsado llamado sistema A (A-shiki) y alguna fuentes hablan de que también se empleó el sistema del bebedor (nomikomi-shiki) en ellas.

Un ejemplo del modelo 53R. Se trata de una pluma con llenado por palanca, por lo que estrictamente es del modelo 53R-T.

Pero esta pluma 53R no es, en el fondo, más que una recreación del modelo R anterior a la Guerra. Y es en el año 1955 cuando finalmente Pilot lanza al mercado una nueva pluma. Se trata de un diseño de un joven ingeniero, Shigeki Chiba. Sus ganas de comerse el mundo no le granjearon muchas simpatías en la compañía y le envían a las líneas de producción para que aprendiera lo que era posible y lo que no era posible hacer. Y de su mano salió el diseño de la Pilot Super. Es una pluma que muestra el plumín mientras que oculta el alimentador dentro de la boquilla. Es la configuración que muchos llaman “en uña”. Es un estilo que ya había iniciado Platinum con sus plumas “Honest”, aunque sin llegar a ocultar completamente el alimentador.

Una selección de plumas de la serie Super de Pilot. Todas las mostradas tienen sistemas de autollenado. En versiones posteriores, algunas de ellas pasaron a ser de cartucho/conversor.

La foto muestra los tres sistemas de autollenado de las primeras Pilot Super. Arriba, sistema de llenado por saco en forma de acordeón; en el medio, el sistema de manguera (hose-system); abajo, sistema aerométrico. En las dos últimas se puede ver la geometría típica del plumín en uña. La pluma superior es el modelo Super 500G.

La serie Super, en cualquier caso, se convierte en la pluma fundamental de Pilot. En ella hay desde modelos muy baratos con plumines de acero hasta productos de gran lujo con decoración maki-e. Respecto a los sistemas de llenado, el método más empleado es el de manguera (hose-system), pero hay otras dos opciones: aerométrico para plumas pequeñas y de saco en acordeón para algunas de las más lujosas (modelo Super 500G).

Modelo Super con decoración maki-e. Se trata del diseño seirei-nuri, exclusivo de Pilot.

La obsesión de Shigeki Chiba, sin embargo, eran los plumines enrasados y finalmente logra un diseño que atrae la atención de la dirección. Es la Super Ultra 500 y se erige como el modelo más lujoso de toda la serie cuando se lanza en 1959.

La Pilot Super Ultra 500.

El plumín enrasado de la Super Ultra 500.

El sistema de llenado es el más habitual de la serie Super: el sistema de manguera (hose-system). Pero el capuchón metálico del saco está dorado.

Este diseño conserva el sistema de llenado típico (el mencionado sistema de manguera) de la serie Super, pero el resto se hace mucho más refinado para hacer un producto de lujo. El acabado de la pluma es lacado en negro con apliques (anillos, prendedor) chapados en oro de 14 quilates. Incluso la vaina del saco del sistema de llenado está dorado. Hubo algunas variaciones, menos habituales, con el cuerpo de color gris y con el capuchón completamente recubierto de oro.

El diseño del capuchón sigue las líneas del plumín enrasado. Este detalle hace decir a muchos que el capuchón negro es más atractivo que el modelo más lujoso con todo el capuchón dorado.

Detalle del alimentador y de la parte inferior del plumín.

Dos de las versiones de la Super Ultra 500 expuestas en el museo de Pilot, Pen Station, en Tokyo.

La pluma en sí era muy cara de producir y se mantuvo en el mercado durante menos de dos años. Es una de las pocas plumas japonesas realmente apreciadas en el país de origen. Es buscada y admirada, pero no es fácil de encontrar y, en consecuencia, sus precios son altos.

A pesar de su limitada difusión, la Super Ultra 500 marcó una tendencia estética. La admiración despertada impulsó a otras marcas a hacer plumas con un aire similar. A esas plumas; de Platinum, de Morison, de Navy; de las llama, genéricamente, modelos Ultra.

Plumín y boquilla de la pluma Gold 200 de la marca Navy.

La Super Ultra 500 original, de 1959, y la réplica de 1995.

En el año 1995 Pilot hizo una réplica en una edición limitada de 350 unidades con el nombre de Pilot Ultra (número de catálogo, FU-6MR-BM). Esta nueva versión cargaba por cartucho y conversor.

Teclado español de 87 teclas.
(Sí, ésta es mi primera crónica escrita directamente en el teclado).

Bruno Taut
Yokohama, 15 de enero de 2013
etiquetas: Pilot, Navy, Platinum, estilofilia, Morison

Reminder

Long time ago, at the beginning of this blog, I wrote a text vindicating the role of the nib –and of the feed—over the rest of the pen. A fountain pen, I wrote in Spanish, was a system to control the flow of a fluid on its way between a deposit and the paper. And therefore, materials, colors, filling systems, shapes are secondary as long as they created no problem in the act of writing.

However, current commercial trends seem to be focused on these secondary elements, and pen companies indeed charge a lot for those. Precious resins, colorful celluloid, exotic lacquers, intricate ornaments, rare wood, new materials, … revival of pneumatic filling systems, pistons, plungers, eyedroppers… The business of new fountain pens is no longer based on the utility or on the need to write. Fountain pens are a commodity, a symbol of status, a sign of snobbism. And craving over need determines what we, users and collectors, end up buying.

But some people do not want to forget that fountain pens are writing tools. And that is why people like Yamada or Nagahara and those many masters in adjusting a nib are so necessary.

Pilot Elite pocket pen, posting nib – Pilot Blue

Bruno Taut
Shinjuku, November 9th, 2012
labels: plumín, Mercado, estilofilia, Yamada, Sailor