Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pens

I had heard a lot about Tombow Fudenosuke pens for calligraphy so I was thrilled to find a package in my Christmas stocking. The Fudenosuke is an interesting pen because although it’s used for brush writing, the small, flexible tip doesn’t really look like a brush.

The Tombow company traces its origins back to 1913 when it specialized in pencils. Originally called Harunosuke Ogawa Shoten, it adopted the shorter name of Tombow (meaning dragonfly) in 1927. It now manufactures and sells all sorts of stationery supplies around the world but is still run by the founding family. The pens I have were made in Vietnam, distributed by their US subsidiary, and sold in Canada (oops, I mean came from Santa’s workshop at the North Pole).

The Fudenosuke pen was introduced in 2001. The name Fudenosuke means “brush that helps” and it was designed to write Japanese calligraphy (kanji). It’s popular with anyone who wants to write with a varied line as you can create thick strokes by applying more pressure and thinner lines with a lighter touch.

The package I received contained two pens, one with a dark blue barrel and the other with a black barrel. Both write with black ink but the blue barrel one has a firmer tip than the other. There isn’t a huge difference but the soft tip is a little bigger and creates a thicker line.

Written on a Rhodia A5 dot grid notepad

If Fudenosuke pens were people, their family heritage would be important to them but they love to travel the world. Japanese is their first language but they’ve learned lots of others along the way.

Sakura Micron Pigma Pen

Sakura micron pigma pens are one of the most recommended products I have come across. They are popular with artists and zentanglers for their precise, waterproof lines. In museums they are favoured due to their archival ink. I finally decided to try one myself.

The come in seven nib sizes and a variety of colours, although not all of the colours come in all of the sizes. I have the 01 (0.25 mm) which is the second finest line. Confusingly the numbers on the pens have no relationship to the pen tip size. They are considered a technical pen and get their name from the micro pigment particles in the ink. The particles are small enough to flow through the tiny needle point tips of the pen and then sit on top of the paper as opposed to a dye-based ink that soaks in. This means there is no bleed through on the paper. This pigment-based ink was developed by Japanese pen innovators, Sakura, in the 1980s and works best on smooth paper. The downside of this pen is the unattractive beige colour of the barrel and, while they have a reputation of being long-lasting, they are ultimately disposable.

If micron pigma pens were people, they would be very popular with a variety of friends, not because of what they look like, but because of what they do.

DecoColor Calligraphy Paint Marker

When I was drawing versals for one of January’s posts, I had to break open a new gold metallic pen. I wrecked my Pilot Gold Paint Marker when I didn’t properly clean the tip before putting it away. The lid became hopelessly stuck to the marker and I broke it altogether when I used pliers to try to take it off.

The DecoColor Calligraphy paint marker is similar to the Pilot Paint Marker in that it needs a thorough shaking before writing and has that distinctive paint smell I have learned is xylene. Unlike the Pilot, the DecoColor marker has a chisel point (flat 2 mm nib) so you can make both thick and thin lines. Below are photos of the nib before and after I used it.

Before using

After using

I think it is a brighter gold and bit more sparkly than the Pilot. It writes smoothly but the opaque, oil-based paint shows through the reverse on most papers.

You can see it is a bit brighter than the Pilot gold marker.

The DecoColor marker is made in Japan by the Marvy division of the Uchida Yoko Group. Although the company was founded in 1941, the Marvy (pens and markers) part has been around since 1973. I like that the marker came shrink wrapped in plastic with no other packaging.

I used it on B and V letters made on Hahnemühle YouTangle.art tiles and for an acanthus leaf I drew on Eaton Calligraphy Writing Paper with a Staedtler Pigment Liner accented with QOR cobalt teal watercolour paint.

If the DecoColor Calligraphy paint marker were a person, they would have a chiseled jaw and golden hair and ignore those “this is a scent-sensitive location” signs. Some would call them ostentatious, but they enjoy a bit of bling. 

Happy New Year!

I meant to write a year end blog last week but the holidays threw me off my schedule and now I feel everybody has probably heard enough about 2020. The only thing that stood out for me last year stationery-wise was a greater appreciation of supply chain management. Shopping locally is great but occasionally I see items online I want to try. For example, back in June, I was tempted by some incredibly inexpensive stickers and washi tape from Blippo (part of a Japanese company called Kawaii Group).  Their slogan is Delivering Cuteness, and they are not kidding. I got one sheet of cartoon cat stickers and one roll of washi tape from the Live Around the Coral Reef Collection. Both items together came to just over $3 CDN and that included shipping! Unfortunately thanks to the cancelling of flights due to corona virus, it did take a really long time to arrive, three months to be exact, but it wasn’t exactly a time-sensitive order.

The tape is made in China and isn’t top quality. The best washi tape is always from Japan. It’s hard to show in the photograph but comparing the Blippo tape with some Japanese washi tape I got for Christmas, the authentic washi tape is thinner while the Blippo has a waxy feel to it.

Looking ahead to 2021, I think I will be cutting back further on blogging but I’m not quite ready to quit altogether. I still have topics I want to delve into. For instance, I am interested in ink making and book binding, and I have more stationery items I want to research. Of course, I still have lots more to learn about calligraphy.

So thanks for reading and exploring the world of stationery with me. Happy New Year!

Origami

I was first introduced to origami, the art of Japanese paper folding, in elementary school where we made paper cranes after hearing a story of a Japanese girl who folded almost a thousand paper cranes in hope of her wish coming true. While the tale was very touching, I never got into origami in a big way though I love seeing it done well.

Earlier this year, I won a book from Dover Publications through the Handmade by Deb blog. The book is succinctly and accurately called Origami Boxes and provides instructions on how to fold eight different boxes as well as 200 sheets of beautifully patterned origami paper bound into the back two thirds of the book. Although any kind of paper that can hold a crease can be used for origami, squares of light weight paper, often coloured or patterned on one side and white on the other, are most often used. Most of the sheets in this book are patterned on one side with a plain, coordinating colour on the reverse. They vary from traditional looking to modern patterns. I haven’t figured out how to pull out the paper without tearing it.

The book is published by Dover Publications and doesn’t have an author, but the creators of the text and diagrams which explain how to fold the boxes as well as the photographers are all credited. Dover Publications, an American company that goes back to 1941, has an interesting publishing model in that they mainly publish reissues. For example, Origami Boxes was originally in Italian (which is why the helpful videos showing how to fold them are on an Italian website Nui Nui) and was published in Switzerland. This edition was manufactured in China. As well as republishing the books of others, many Dover Publications’ books are now in the public domain, cutting down on their expenses considerably.

My daughter Andrea is very good at origami and sent me some wonderful pieces folded out of Yasutomo Folk Art paper in a birthday package. The Yasutomo company was established in June, 1954 by Mr. Ben Yasutomo. He set up an office in San Francisco to supply stationery and artist materials from Japan to the USA and to distribute American candy and snack food products to Japan. As a side note, in the 1960’s, Yasutomo introduced the Pentel Sign pen (the original felt-tip pen) to the USA market.

Of course, you don’t need to use origami paper to make origami. In the picture below is a shooting star (or as the folding instructions call it, windmill) folded out of Japanese candy wrappers. It was thrown at me during a 2019 Edmonton Fringe performance of Are You Lovin’ it? by Osaka, Japan’s own Theatre Group GUMBO. Fun times!

If this book was a person, they would love to dress colourfully and explain things in great detail to anyone who wants to listen.

Diamond Cat Gel Pen

Earlier this year a Canadian business since 1920, Carlton Cards, closed all its retail stores across the country. I picked up a few cards during the close-out sale as well as an intriguing 0.6 mm gel pen with a “diamond” cat head. There were some different coloured inks (mainly fluorescents) but I choose white. It’s made in Japan but I could find out little else about it.

Gel pens are a type of ballpoint pen that use a gel pigment rather than ink. The gel is water based and because it is thicker than ink, you can get stronger, more opaque colours. The thickness also means they don’t bleed through paper.

White pens really pop on black paper so I tried it on Canson Ingres Black. For an inexpensive novelty pen, I found it wrote smoothly though the line was not as solid as I would have liked. The cat head at the end of the pen makes it a bit top-heavy but serves as a reminder that gel pens are supposed to be stored nib end down.

If this pen were a person they would have a sparkly personality and enjoy the nightlife. This means they are not happy with social distancing but they are doing it anyhow.

Hello Coffee Stamp Set

A couple of weeks ago my daughter surprised me with a gift of a little stamp set shaped like a pour-over coffee pot. She purchased it at a pop-up in the Kensington neighbourhood of Calgary. The filter part is a rubber stamp of a word balloon saying “Hello” and the pot is a stamp of a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly it is from a Japanese company, Decole Co. Ltd., although it is made in China. I have written before about my love of cute Asian stationery products and this little set fits right in.

Minimal packaging

You can see how small the stamp is in comparison to the size of the notebook holes.

Decole does not sell products directly to consumers, either over the internet or at a retail store, you have to find a dealer. It’s a small company (less than 20 employees) and is based in Japan’s third largest city, Nagoya. Fun fact, Nagoya has been featured in three Godzilla movies and in the anime The Wind Rises by Hayao Miyazaki.

Using stamps to mark documents goes way back into antiquity but the first use of rubber stamps in an artistic way is linked to Russian poets who were part of the Futurists Movement at the beginning of the 20^th century. They made what we would now call mixed media books, blending writing, sketching, and rubber stamping along with other media.

The modern decorative rubber stamp industry got going in the 1940’s when American artist Ray Johnson started what became known as the mail art movement. He was part of the Neo-Dada and early Pop art scene in New York City and loved designing absurdist stamps to use on his projects. This little coffee stamp seems a long way from the avant garde beginnings of decorative rubber stamps.

If this stamp set were a person they would be an artist working as a barista always greeting the regulars in a friendly, perky way.

Uni-ball Signo 207 Retractable Gel Pen

 The Uni-ball Signo 207 Retractable Gel Pen is a standard in many office supply cupboards but somehow I missed it when I was discussing coloured pens. It is made by the Mitsubishi Pencil Company of Japan, a company that goes back to 1887 when it began as the Masaki Pencil Manufacturing Company. The Mitsubishi Pencil Company is not part of the Mitsubishi Group of car fame, but rather part of a giant American group of companies, Newell Brands Inc. This conglomerate owns such diverse brands as Rubbermaid, Coleman outdoor products, Sunbeam, Crock-Pot, and Goody hair care accessories. Aside from Uni-ball, their stationery brands include Sharpie, Expo Markers, PaperMate, Dymo, Elmer’s, Krazy Glue, Liquid paper, Mr. Sketch, Parker Pens, Prismacolor, Xacto, Waterman, and Berol.

Long before they became part of Newell Brands, at the time the company changed their name from Masaki to Mitsubishi (1966), they began making pens they called the “Uni-pen” and “Uni-pen Deluxe”. Then in 1979, the Uni-Ball rollerball pen was launched, becoming what the company claims to be the first water-based pen in the world. Rollerball pens are different from the earlier ballpoint pens in that they use gel ink. Pigment is suspended in a water-based gel rather than the oil-based inks ballpoint pens used. The gel is smooth to write with and because it is water-based, allows for a large number of pigments to be used. The Uni-ball alone comes in black, blue, green, light blue, orange, pink, purple, and red.

A downside to gel inks is they dry out faster than oil-based inks so they need to be recapped right after using. In 1997, the Mitsubishi Pencil Company introduced the world’s first retractable gel pen, the Signo Gel retractable pen, which took care of the recapping issue and provided those who like to compulsively click their pens a way to irritate their classmates and coworkers.

This particular pen has blue ink and a 0.7 mm medium point. Like all their inks, it is acid-free and of archival quality. In fact, the company calls it Uni Super Ink and says it “helps prevent against cheque and document fraud” as it “is specially formulated to become trapped in paper, helping prevent criminal check washing and other document alteration”. I’ll have to take their word for it as I don’t want to test whether or not I can successfully carry out cheque fraud using this pen.

As for the Uni-ball’s other qualities, I found the rubbery finger grip comfortable to write with and although I personally don’t use pen clips much, this one seems sturdy and nicely designed. The Uni-ball must be designed to last as you can purchase refills for them. It wrote smoothly without blotching or bleeding and it didn’t need a little scribble to get it going like so many ballpoints seem to require. Overall this is a good, basic pen.

If this pen were a person they would be a competent office worker. They may appear boring but don’t under estimate them. They know things and like the archival ink that flows in their veins, they never forget.

Radar Plastic Eraser

I have two items left in my good-bye gift bag. One is a Stalogy Editor’s Series 365 Days Notebook but I don’t want to discuss it until after I have used it for awhile and I was thinking of waiting until the new year as it seems to be a planner more than just a notebook. That leaves the Radar plastic eraser. At first, I didn’t think I could come up with enough to say about an eraser to create a blog post but as I have discovered about other seemingly mundane items, when you look more closely there is something to learn about everything.

First off, I like the name Radar as it is a palindrome and I find the retro look of the package appealing. I suspect the design has not changed much since it was introduced in 1965. It is still being produced by the Seed Corporation of Osaka, Japan whose company slogan is “A Technology of Erasing”. They don’t just make erasers for writing but also a series for cleaning, such as removing scale or rust on walls and sinks. Although the company is based in Japan, the actual eraser was made in Vietnam.

The cardboard sheath protecting the eraser has small notches on the corners to minimize eraser breakage. I haven’t usually found that is a big problem but it is nice that they have thought that through.

I tried the eraser out on four different pencils, a Kimberly 3H, Berol Turquoise HB, Palomino Blackwing (the hardness is not stated but usually considered a 2B), and a Staedtler Mars Lumograph 8B. The Radar did an excellent job of erasing all the pencils except for the 8B. That is really dark graphite and I just couldn’t remove it. It left a nice tidy crumb that sort of stuck to itself to make strings rather than crumbling completely. The eraser itself stayed nice and clean with no graphite residue left on it. This is a better than average eraser that’s for sure.

If this eraser was a person they would be small and effective with a distinctive style that is retro, not old-fashioned. They are always pleasant to be around.

Midori Soft Pen Case

Another of the items I was recently given by colleagues was a light blue Midori soft pen case. Midori is a great Japanese stationery company whose products combine fun with practicality. I have discussed Midori penguin paper clips and the Midori Mini Cleaner before. This two-part pen case is made of nice soft silicone rubber that is slightly translucent with this message written on it in white “Soft case – The case with a soft feeling. Please use in any way you like.” Like many of the messages on Asian stationery, it has a slightly odd but endearing sound to it.

The pen case is fairly small – 176 cm (6.5″) long, 43 cm (1.4″) wide, and 22 mm (.75″) deep. This small size, and its light weight, makes it good for taking on-the-go, but not to store much in it. I found I could put in about five or six pens but there are many things that do not fit in it at all, such as full-sized pencils. No doubt this is why it is called a pen case, not a pencil case. I found that the top stays on nicely even though there is no fastener. I expect that it should last for a long time as silicone rubber has a great reputation for being stable, even in extreme temperatures.

If this pen case were a person, they would be short and softly rounded but don’t call them flabby. This person loves to travel in minimalist fashion so no checked-in luggage for this passenger!