Namiki
Namiki Chinkin Crane
Namiki Chinkin Crane
The Namiki Chinkin Crane is beautiful example of this traditional art form - each hand-finished pen can require up to six months or more to be completed. We provide it with your choice of 18k solid gold nib.
Our complimentary nib tuning ensures that your pen will have writing qualities equal to its appearance, and our optional nib customizations can give your writing on the page added style and distinctiveness. We are an authorized Namiki dealer.
The crane occupies a special place of symbolism in Japanese art - a symbol of longevity and good fortune, it is traditionally believed to have a lifespan of a thousand years. As the ""bird of paradise,"" it is also believed to carry departed souls to a heavenly realm.
The crane motif is realized here in chinkin, one of the most precise and exacting of all Maki-e techniques. Each individual line is hand-etched using specialized tools, and just one small error can result in the entire piece being discarded and work started over again from the beginning. Namiki utilizes artists from the famed Kokkokai collective for the production of these specialized finishes.
Each pen ships in a special wooden presentation box which includes a complimentary bottle of ink. Namiki's convenient cartridge-converter system allows for the use of any bottled fountain pen ink when fitted with the provided converter, and Pilot brand disposable ink cartridges can also be used with this very special writing instrument.
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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.. |