Kamakura Pens Maki-e January 2006 Stylophiles Online

A gaijin in Wajima finds maki-e treasures
By Anna Lawson

Five years ago, hardly anybody knew what maki-e was. Maybe a new Japanese snack food or cartoon, they'd guess -- maybe even a kind of clothing or jewelry -- but never an art form.

Boy, has that changed. Maki-e has become arguably the hottest trend in pen collecting. Darn near everyone knows about the technique, which involves using a plant-based lacquer called urushi, gold and silver powders and bits, tiny pieces of shell, seeds, and other things in various combinations to create miniature works of art on (for our purposes) pens.

In 2004, Ron Dutcher of Kamakura Pens got into the act with his own specially produced limited-edition maki-e pens, built on the sturdy, reliable Platinum 3776.

While we weren't fast enough to get hold of either of his initial two offerings, which were called Shonan, commemorating the shoreline of Kamakura (a city in Japan), and the Dragon, which not surprisingly celebrated dragons, we have gotten samples of his two newest maki-e limited editions.

As do many Japanese pens, these come in boxes made of Japanese cedar with characters on the lid, which refer to Kamakura Fountain Pens (the Kanji character for "fountain pen" actually translates to "thousand-year brush"). It makes for a nice, traditional presentation and heightens your interest in seeing what's inside that simple wooden box.

Opening the lid brings quite a contrast -- rather than finding something simple and rustic, as you might expect, you find the exquisitely detailed artwork of a maki-e creation in all its glossy, glittering glory.

Top-notch maki-e artists are highly respected in Japan, though the vast majority of them decline to work on pens. They prefer instead to use traditional items, such as trays, boxes, and bowls, as their canvases. So when Dutcher started looking for someone to make the limited-edition pens for him, he ran into a wall pretty quickly.

"I couldn't find a pen anywhere," Dutcher recalls of a shopping search for maki-e in Wajima, the premier Japanese town and world capital for maki-e, with roughly 80 percent of the population employed in the maki-e industry. "But while I was looking through the items for sale in the shops, I spotted some trays in an unusual maki-e technique called Kinpaku. This is Japanese urushi lacquer combined with gold leaf.

"I instantly fell in love with this seldom-seen technique and inquired about the studio responsible," Dutcher continues. Once he was able to track down the artisans, he faced their reluctance to become involved with his pen project, since he wanted only a couple for his personal use. But he persevered, and convinced them to create 20 of his initial design -- which sold out quickly.

Thus did Dutcher sort of inadvertently become involved in producing limited editions. Soon after, 100 of the dragon pens were produced and sold out in four days.

Dutcher, who is married to a Japanese woman and has lived in Japan for more than 20 years, had a soft spot for a traditional chrysanthemum-and-vine design that was used on the emperor's clothing. Not often used in decoration, it was first developed when, in 1879, it was placed using maki-e techniques onto a box that Emperor Meiji I gave to U.S. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant during his visit to Japan that year.

"I found this a wonderful mix of maki-e and American and Japanese history," Dutcher, the gaijin (white person), enthused. However, his wife Keiko and assistant Meg thought that since this wasn't considered a traditional design, it wouldn't sell well. As a compromise, they also designed a second pen with a traditional, familiar motif.

The second design, called Mikaeri Bijin -- lovely girl looking backwards -- is what Dutcher calls "the Mona Lisa of the Japanese woodcut world."

"Since I had never seen this design done on a maki-e pen, we thought it a logical choice," he added.

Since the pens are built on the Platinum #3776 and the nibs (on our samples) were Platinum's 14K music nibs, we knew exactly what to expect of the writing experience: Smooth, reliable, consistent and comfortable. We weren't disappointed. Platinum's music nib is one of the best, in my opinion; smooth, a graceful shape and properly proportioned for the mid-sized pen, and with its three tines well able to handle the increased ink flow required of such a nib. (For those who don't know, music nibs were invented early on so that composers could make both the fat and slender strokes of musical notes with one pen, helping them get the notes down before they escaped the composers' noggins.) It has a definite thick/thin line contrast and a nice, responsive spring to it.

I'd forgotten how comfortable Platinums are to use. This mid-sized pen has a mid-sized girth, suitable for most people; its light weight (about .75 oz or 22 g filled, using a converter) was a relief to my sprained thumb. Filling the "Grant design" pen with Herbin Bleu Nuit seemed a natural choice, to repeat the deep-blue dots that serve as a background for this graceful design.

Dutcher says he's already sold more than three-quarters of these pens, and expects to be sold out within a few weeks. Kamakura has already started planning for the next edition in the LE series, so start saving your nickels and dimes now if you want one. At about $700, they fill a good mid-level niche in the exploding maki-e market, which has many incredible samples that sell for five figures and even more.

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