Nakaya (modem burner!)

[shandy]

Some of you may not be familiar with the Fountain pen brand called Nakaya.
They are a very small company hailing from Tokyo and hand make in small quantities exquisite fountain pens made to write that way you want to.

The North American distributor is the famous (in pen circles that is!) John Mottishaw of classic fountain pens in Los Angeles. John is famous for his gift of customizing nibs to write the exact way you want them to,a perfect partner for Nakaya!

You can order these pens from John or direct from the maker. I use the word maker as this is a very small scale operation that is based in a very small building in Tokyo. The gentleman who hand turns the ebonite bodies and caps of these pens does so at home! virtually all the employees are retired Platinum pen company men.

The Bodies once turned are then sent to an Urushi Lacquer artist. On average it takes three months just to apply the many layers of natural lacquer. My particular model is in Kuro-Tamenuri.

This colour is a deep deep red, almost black. Layers of red lacquer are layed down followed by layers of black, over time the black becomes translucent showing even more of the red below. The pen literally changes over a period of time, ageing to a beautiful rich red. In a years time my pen will have developed this colour, I love the fact it does that!

The pens come in a simple but beautifully hand made wooden box lined in rich red velvet, The pen comes in it's own kimono, cartridge converter and a pakage of platinum ink cartridges. I forgot to take pictures of that so will add them later!

Everything on this pen is hand made, no CNC machines and the only place a computer exisits is in the initial design!

I purchased my pen at the begining of the year (John keeps a small selection in stock but if you want a special finish or unusual colour then be prepared to wait up to a year!) with a medium nib.
The pen was wonderful to write as you would expect being set up exclusively for my handwriting requirements! But my tastes have changed since experiencing the joys of vintage pens so I decided to change my nib to one customised by john.

I now have a double broad Nakata (the name of the parent company of Nakaya) nib but I wanted more! So John custom ground the nib to a stub and shaved off some of the thickness of the tines on the nib so as to increase flexibility. I like a wet nib and so this was taken care of as well.

The customization is excellent and worth every single penny,this is the work of a true artisan! The nib is exactly as I asked for!

When you order the pen, either from John or Direct you are asked many questions on how you write, from the angle you write at to the force you use to write with, from this and much more Nakaya or john adjust the nib so that it writes exactly as you want it, you can then take that to the next level as I did and add flexibility or different nib profiles, even to accomodate left handed users.

It is very much like having a bespoke pair of shoes made. All this from a starting point of $460!

After the pictures I will include a couple of links so that you can find out more about this amazing company and it's equally amazing North American distributor!






The North American distributor is Classic Fountain pens.
http://www.nibs.com/

And the main website for Nakaya is.
http://www.nakaya.org/eindex.html

Happy writing fellow pen fans!