Nakaya
Nakaya Portable Cigar Enjoying The Moon Cat
Nakaya Portable Cigar Enjoying The Moon Cat
With its whimsical and evocative design, the Nakaya Portable Cigar Yakou Maki-e 'Enjoying the Moon Cat' is based on a sketch by a Nakaya customer who loved cats. The slim and slender Portable Cigar model is a perfect size and shape for this composition.
The artist uses Tame-Sukashi technique to paint the moon in striking reddish orange, ensuring that it will increase in brightness over time. Paw prints on the gripping section and the featured cat are made using the Yakou Maki-e technique whereby the images are painted in black Urushi over an Aka-tamenuri base.
A black cat painted in Yakou Maki-e technique gazes up contemplatively at the moon, as does a smaller mouse depicted by the cat's side. However this evocative fountain pen represents more than simply a cat, a mouse, and the moon. This pen embodies the sense of appreciation that a passive observer can have for the natural world. The Yakou Maki-e technique adds texture to the critters, bringing them to life.
The Nakaya Piccolo Cigar can be filled with bottled fountain pen ink using the provided converter. Nakaya pens can also use Platinum brand ink cartridges. Hand-painted Maki-e converters are also available.
14k nibs are well-suited to customizations including Stub, Cursive Italic, and Left Oblique, as well as the modification for added flex.
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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. Â 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.. |