Special Guest: Jonathon Brooks' Aka-Kin Tamenuri Urushi

Hey all,

Special treat today.   Someone else's pen work!

Some time ago, one of my fellow pen makers, the very gifted Jonathon Brooks began to work with the Japanese Urushi styles of lacquer art, as applied to his pens.  In a very short time, he has developed some pretty amazing skills.

Seeing his work take off, I decided I really must have some of his beautiful work (I love to collect work from other artisans), and Jonathon kindly indulged me, and began work on this amazing piece, which he describes as aka-kin tamenuri (red-gold layered urushi).

I will attempt to describe the technique from what Jonathon told me, though I will undoubtedly get some points wrong.  The base pen is a black ebonite Cigar style, with multiple layers of shu (red) urushi.  The pattern that you can see on the surface was created using the seirei nuri technique, with gold powder applied to the pattern.  After another layer of kijiro urushi, the pen is covered in a thin layer of gold powder, followed by many coats of nashiji urushi.

The result:  a truly beautiful highly polished deep reddish brown pen, with fascinating gold patterns showing from the depths of the translucent urushi.  one of the very cool things about urushi is that over time, it slowly becomes more transparent, revealing more the deeper layers.  This pen will only get better and better with age.

To top it off, the pen is fitted with a lovely 18k nib engraved with Jonathon's Carolina Pen Company logo.

This pen has immediately fallen into the category of one of my absolute favourite pens, and a lifetime keeper.  Thank you Jonathon for a very, very cool pen and fine example of excellent craftsmanship!

Cheers,

Ken

White and Red 'Japan-Themed' Curvy Style Fountain Pen

Hello all,

Here is another Curvy style fountain pen - this one just finished today.  This is the result of an order that I received some time back.  The order was for a custom FP in my Curvy style, but to be themed after the Japanese flag - that is, in white, with round red inlays on the cap and barrel ends.   The red grip section is to match the inlays and tie the whole pen together.

The customer ordering it agreed to go with a pearly material rather than just plan white and plain red - and I am very glad he did, as the result is really quite eye-catching (though sadly hard to capture on camera).  All in all, I am rather happy with how this one came out.

Thanks for looking!

Ken

Amber Swirl Curvy Style Fountain Pen with Inlay and 18K Fine Nib

Hi all,

After several weeks of travel, work, family time, and more work, I finally had a chance to put in some hours in my workshop.

Here is one of my Curvy style pens in a lovely translucent Amber Swirl acrylic.  The cap has been dressed up with a black finial with more amber as an inlay - just to add a little extra to the pen.

The nib is a fine JoWo 18K, and the pen is a cartridge-converter filler.

Thanks for looking!

Ken