I had been making a decision between a Nakaya or a DaniTrio. But when I walked past the Nakaya booth at the Chicago Pen Show, I heard this pen singing a siren song to me.

I felt powerless as I picked the beautiful urushi body. The nib master placed the nib on the body, smoothed the nib to my writing angle and perfectly adjusted the flow for me. However there was a small defect on the urushi and no more pen bodies. So they shipped the nib unit on a new, perfect barrel and cap. It arrived today.

I opened the package. Inside there is a rice paper-covered cardboard box, inside it is a wooden box. The velvet-lined box nestles an urushi pen pillow and a pen kimono. Inside the blue silk pen kimono, finally, is a beautiful Nakaya original fountain pen, Writer Model in Kuro-tamenuri (blackish red -tamenuri) urushi with an elastic music nib. Writes like a dream, creamy smooth. I am in heaven. 9

It's great there is a fruitfull competition between Danitrio and Nakaya. I hope you will enjoy your new beauty. Which body shape did you get?

I allready have a great Danitrio Takumi plain deep blue Urushi from Kevin, but also love the redish-red and redish black Urushi coatings. The Nakaya Decapod is my favourite for those colours, with all those edges to show Urushi colour border zones. I hope one day I'll be able to buy one.

pic by nakaya

http://www.nakaya.org/wr_akatame1.jpg

*Kuro-tamenuri (blackish red -tamenuri-) Writer's Model
"Tame" means "pool" and "nuri" refers to the lacquer coating process.
You can actually see through the layers of clear urushi lacquer as if you were looking into a pool. Wajima artists use "shu urushi" (red color) for the base urushi on the barrel, and "shu-ai-urushi" (mixtures of red and clear lacquer) for the finish coats. When the process is finished, you can still see the base surface of red urushi. After this coating process, craftsmen polish the surface over and over by hand for months in order to attain greater transparency, allowing you to clearly see the underlying red usurshi surface.

Congratulations on the pen! I've had my eye on a Nakaya for a while but have been waiting to pick one up at a show as well so that I can make sure everything is to my specs. I hope you really enjoy it!

The handmade Urushis have to be the most beautiful and tasteful pens in the world - congratulations!

Just to add to the compliments, I have not seen this pen before, it is wonderful! That red shimmer reminds me of the effect of a black Vacumatic, reddish rings visible under certain light. No clip, very brave (for some reason) and no gold. I think its great!

Fabulous choice, I hope it continues to bring you such pleasure.


Greg