Two materials run through this collection: brass and copper. Both are machined from solid stock — cut, turned and finished as metal, not plated over a lighter core — which is why the pens carry the weights they do (the foil-leaf fountain pen is 45 g; the dragon metalwork pen, 50 g).
Machined, then finished by hand
The hexagonal bodies are milled so the flats meet at polished edges; lacquered editions are coated over the brass, and the coating is thin enough that the edges eventually show the metal — a property of the construction, stated on each product page. Assembly, nib fitting and final inspection are hand work: a fountain pen that leaves with a misaligned nib writes badly from the first fill, and no machine catches that the way a hand and an eye do.
The statement pieces
Two techniques sit at the top of the range. The foil-leaf pens are wrapped in gold foil laid over cloud-patterned washi and sealed by hand, in a traditional Japanese technique — each surface comes out slightly different. The metalwork pens carry orchid and dragon inlays chiselled by hand in gilt copper, made with a workshop in Nagoya, Japan, that has practised this metalwork since around 1920; the 14K gold nibs on those pens are engraved with a matching character.
Standards, not lock-in
The working parts follow patterns bigger than any one maker: Schmidt nibs, converters and ceramic rollerball refills (5888), Schmidt P900-pattern ballpoint refills, the G2 refill format, international-standard ink cartridges. The drawing instruments are brass and stainless spring steel, built around a walnut centring tool. Nothing here needs a proprietary consumable you can only buy from us.
A note on ageing
Brass darkens with handling and lacquer wears at the edges. We treat that as a material fact to describe accurately — not a promise and not a defect. The Care page explains how to polish the metal back, or keep the patina, as you prefer.