Nakaya
Nakaya Naka-ai Cigar Chinkin Housoge Kikyo Platinum
Nakaya Naka-ai Cigar Chinkin Housoge Kikyo Platinum
The Housoge floral pattern represents an idealized hybrid ""flower in paradise"" as envisioned by the Pure Land Buddhism of the period. The Housoge has its origins in the Tenpyo period, 729-749 CE, during which time Buddhism was becoming an officially recognized state religion in Japan. The Naka-ai Cigar Platinum on blue is a masterwork of collaborative design.
The tapered shape of the Naka-ai provides an elegant surface for the painstaking Chinkin engraving work involved in the creation of the Housoge Kikyo Platinum. Silver powder is carefully applied to the engraved lines, set against a dark blue Kikyo Urushi background. It is then sealed in place with a final layers of clear urushi lacquer in a time honored tradition.
Designed by Nakaya master pen designer Shinichi Yoshida in collaboration with Classic Fountain Pen's John Mottishaw, the Naka-ai model of pen, with its peaked ends and tapered body, combines many of Nakaya’s most distinctive design features in a single model. ""Naka-ai"" has the meaning of middle or in-between, and brings to mind the Middle Way of Buddhist practice with its emphasis on balance, integrity, and centeredness. Appropriately enough, the Naka-ai occupies a midway position between Nakaya's smaller Piccolo series pens and the longer desk pen.
This super detail reveals the number of hand engraving strokes on part of a single flower.
Nakaya pens can be filled with bottled fountain pen ink using the provided converter, and can also use Platinum brand cartridges. Hand-painted Maki-e converters are also available.
The Naka-ai Cigar Housoge Kikyo Platinum fountain pen is provided with solid gold 14k single-tone nib in your choice of tipping size.
Nakaya pens ship in a solid softwood shipping box decorated with Japanese Kanji script and lined with decorative rice paper. A fabric pen ""kimono"" and starter box of Platinum brand cartridges are also included, making this pen a lovely presentation item. Sensible and elegant packaging has long been a hallmark of the Nakaya brand.
Nakaya pens are individually handcrafted in a process that requires a minimum of three to six months and often much longer. Pre-ordering is recommended.
Unless requested otherwise, each pen or nib you purchase from us will be carefully examined, tested, and optimized for your personal writing characteristics before it ships.
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Customization Guide
Stub
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Above is the same size nib after a regrind to Stub. A regrind to Stub is often a good place to start for your first customization. A Stub nib provides broad down-strokes and narrow cross-strokes while writing, and is less position-sensitive on the paper than the crisper and slightly more demanding cursive italic.
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Cursive Italic
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More demanding, but also providing crisper edges and more line-width variation, is the very popular customization to Cursive Italic. This also provides broad down-strokes and narrow cross-strokes, but is also more position-sensitive in terms of how the pen is held and requires more skill on the part of the user. This is a common customization for artists and calligraphers, but is still smooth enough to make for a good everyday writer.
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Formal Italic
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Formal Italic is an even crisper and more demanding customization than either cursive italic or left oblique, and is usually utilized for calligraphy and by the most experienced users. This provides broad down-strokes and narrow cross-strokes, with even crisper corners and edges than a cursive italic - this is an extremely position-sensitive customization.
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Left Oblique
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Commonly used for signatures and correspondence, the Left Oblique customization provides broad diagonal strokes and narrow cross-strokes, and like a cursive italic, is more position-sensitive and demanding than a stub. The whole pen must be rotated to the left in order to write smoothly, without skipping. The "Left" in Left Oblique refers to the cut of the nib itself, and does not refer to the handedness of the writer. |
Architect's Point (Also for Arabic and Hebraic writing)
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A more exotic regrind is that to Architect’s Point. Named after the style of writing used by Frank Lloyd Wright, this regrind is the opposite of cursive italic, and provides for broad cross-strokes and narrow down-strokes. This also tends to be a particularly useful customization for those practicing Arabic or Hebraic calligraphy. |
Spencerian
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Perhaps our most popular customization, but also one of the most advanced, the Mottishaw Spencerian Customization has gained special attention from being featured in a customer's YouTube video which has now received over twelve million views! The Spencerian starts from a semi-soft 14k nib and adds additional flex and a regrind to needlepoint to create a specialized writing point used for copperplate calligraphy. For more details, visit our special Spencerian page.. |