Datation of Japanese Pens. VII. Sailor's Nibs (II)

Some years ago I spoke about dating marks on Sailor nibs: up to 2016, the manufacturing date on Sailor nibs was encoded in the form

abb

where a was the last digit of the year, and bb was the ordinal of the month: 01 for January, 02 for February, and so on.

710. On this case, October of 1957.

212. December of 1982? Maybe 1972?

A Naginata Togi nib from October 1999 (910).

Starting at some point in 2017, Sailor changed this code for another one in the form

ccX

Now, cc are the two last digits of the year, and X is a letter that encodes the month of production in the form A for January, B for February, and so on until L for December.

July of 2017 (17G). Photo courtesy of Inktraveler.

17K: November of 2017.

And now, the former ambiguities (does this 9 mean 1979, 1989 or 1999?) are eliminated.

Muji Aluminum pocket pen – Pelikan Black

Bruno Taut
Nakano, October 29th, 2018
etiquetas: Sailor, plumín.

The Case of Naginata. II. The Two-Year Hiatus

Allegedly, Sailor stopped the distribution of specialty nibs (Naginata Togi and derivatives) in Winter of 2016-17. Or so we were told. The reasons behind that decision were the difficulty to attend the demand of those nibs, particularly from the North American market, and the need to train more people to make them. And in the meantime –until further notice, they said-- no more Naginata were to be distributed.

A collection of (old) Naginata nibs.

Or were they?

Indeed they were, albeit in small numbers and through selected retailers. On the following pictures we can see a Naginata Togi nib produced in 2017. The pen was purchased at a well-known stationer in Tokyo.

An old Naginata?

Not so old --2017--, but the old engraving. (And on another Chronicle I should speak about the dating codes on modern Sailor nibs).

That nib displays what now we know as the old engraving. This shows how this nibs predate the new policy –new prices, new distributions, new decoration-- of Sailor re specialty nibs.

Nibs like this –and it is not the only example-- are the last examples of the second generation of Naginata nibs, and the later pricing decisions of Sailor is making them all the more desirable.

Pilot Custom Heritage 912 – Wagner 2008 ink

Bruno Taut
Bunkyo, October 23rd 2018
etiquetas: mercado, Sailor, plumín

Anonymous Music

My latest acquisition is an anonymous pen with a very non-anonymous nib. And this combination make the whole pen all the more intriguing, and, for some, appealing.

The pen, in essence, is a Japanese eyedropper, made of ebonite with a very discreet maki-e decoration –a "tanzaku" (poem cards) pattern. The clip is of the teardrop shape, just like many Ban-ei pens.

An anonymous pen. Other than the inscriptions on the nib, the only text on it says R14K, and is on the cap ring. The very discreet maki-e --a "tanzaku" pattern-- is not signed.

And this clip, together with the overall shape of the pen and the shape of the section, and even the geometry of the ebonite feed point out at Ban-ei (Sakai Eisuke) as the master mind behind it. However, this idea is nothing but a guess, although this pen is very likely to have been made in the 1960s at Asakusa area in Tokyo.

A Ban-ei pen (top) and the anonymous pen with an interesting nib. Note the similarities in the shape. The Ban-ei pen is larger in all dimensions.

Feeds and sections of the pens on the previous picture: Ban-ei on top, anonymous on bottom. This geometry of the feed was very common in Japan from the 1960s till well into the 1990s on smaller pen makers.

The comes the nib—a beautiful music nib perfectly identifiable as made by nibmeister Kubo Kohei. In fact, the nib inscription NK stands for Nobel Kubo, where Nobel is one of the brands Mr. Kubo created during his career as nib maker. The nib is likely to be a replaced unit, but it could also show the origin of the pen itself. Then, is this a Nobel pen? Many a Nobel pen were anonymous –no brand name was imprinted on the pen--, but ebonite was not a typical material on that brand as Mr. Kubo doesn’t work with the lathe.

The music nib by Kubo Kohei. It is made of steel and is gold plated. The inscriptions read " STANDARD / NK / (JIS mark) / IRIDIUM / < 3 > / NPK ".

All in all, not much we know for certain about this pen, but the nib, and the unpretentious decoration make it most interesting.

These are the dimensions of the pen:

Length closed: 138 mm
Length open: 119 mm
Length posted: 166 mm
Diameter: 13.7 mm
Weight: 16.7 g (dry)
Ink deposit: 2.3 ml

And the search for information continues…

Twsbi Eco with Kubo music nib – Aurora Black

Bruno Taut
Nakano, October 16th 2018
etiquetas: nibmeister Kubo Kohei, maki-e, Ban-ei, Nobel, marca desconocida, plumín, plumín musical