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I hope this review will be interesting to some of you since I have not found many reviews of the urushi pens made by Taccia. As soon as I ordered the pen I resolved that I would post a review - good, bad, or indifferent - since this is a less-known brand and it is hard to be confident in advance what the pens will be like. As it turned out, the pen surpassed my highest hopes and I am thoroughly delighted that I purchased it. Background: Taccia is a small fountain pen and ink manufacturer, established in California in 2003. The company was sold in 2016 to Nakabayashi, a Japanese stationery manufacturer, and now offers its pens with nibs produced by Sailor. The pen I bought was the Hyakko-Hisho Kohaku model, and it cost €850. Like many of the Taccia urushi pens it is a numbered, limited edition of 50. There are four other pens in the “Hyakko-Hisho” series with different style urushi finishes. As far as I can determine, the Hyakko-Hisho was a 17th/18th century compendium of Japanese traditional crafts. Kohaku is the Japanese word for amber, which relates to the urushi colour on this model of the series. I am not knowledgeable about urushi but I understand this pen is lacquered using the Wajima urushi style, which incorporates particles of earth or other materials in the lacquer. Perhaps some of you who possess more knowledge of urushi can expand further on this. The pen comes in a pauwlonia wood box along with a black pen kimono with purple lining. The key question for me, as I considered buying this expensive pen from a less-known brand, was: what makes the pen stand out compared to the many good pens from more established brands at comparable prices? To answer this I think I must start with my reasons for ordering the pen so you will understand what I was looking for and whether it met my expectations. Sailors are my favourite nibs because of their precision, feel and consistency, however I find the Sailor pen body designs and materials disappointing. What I wanted was a high-quality pen with attractive materials and a Sailor nib. I haven’t tried a King of Pen urushi but they are in a rather rarefied price bracket and I am less interested in the more affordable plastic or bare ebonite KoP models. I considered the Cross Peerless 125, which has a Sailor nib, and tried one in a local store, but I absolutely could not get along with the convex section shape and it was very uncomfortable for me. My hope was that this Taccia would offer me the high quality feel I was looking for in a pen with a Sailor-made nib. Design and construction: This is a large pen - at least in length - as you can see from the comparison pictures with a Montblanc 149 and a Pelikan M800. The section is much slimmer than either of those pens, and the nib is quite small (a 14k gold hard-medium Sailor with two-tone Taccia design). For me this is perfect. I prefer small nibs and relatively slim sections, even though I have large hands, because of the feeling of precise control that they give me in writing (not that my writing is particularly precise or controlled!). To my eye the nib size looks appropriate because of the slender section, even though the pen body is large. The section has a significant taper and is quite long, flaring out at the nib end. It is the most comfortable section that I have on any of my pens, and the pen almost disappears from my attention when I write. The nib has a plastic feed, I believe, and it writes beautifully - flawless and reliable ink-flow, a consistent line, pleasant feedback, and long, slender tines for precise location of contact to the paper. The urushi lacquer is yellow stripes over black. If you look carefully you will notice that the yellow lacquer incorporates gold metal particles toward the top of the cap and the bottom of the barrel. The finish has some texture and relief, which I find very pleasing. The quality of lacquer work is very high, as far as I can tell, with no flaws. It is even more beautiful and complex than was apparent from the pictures when I ordered it. The pen is made of ebonite and the body is faceted with twelve sides. The cap comes slightly short of lining-up with the body perfectly when fully closed, but this is hardly noticeable on a pen with so many facets. It there were fewer facets or the edge colour had more contrast then it might have bothered me a little. You can see if you look closely at the pictures, and judge for yourself. I like the clip/roll-stopper design in the flesh better than I thought I would. It functions well, with the right amount of flexibility and firmness. It fits to the cap discreetly with only a small aperture and no significant gaps. Perhaps the design is plain but it you think of it as a roll-stopper this design makes complete sense. The pen is a cartridge/converter filler - standard fare for this kind of urushi pen - and uses a regular Sailor converter. I guess Sailor converters are not known for high ink capacity, but it is no problem for me. The pen is 30g in weight, which is noticeably heavier than you may expect from an ebonite and lacquer pen. It feels well-balanced when writing. The ebonite is thicker than on my Nakaya pens and it lends the pen a greater feeling of solidity. The pen is still light enough to cause no fatigue when writing, but it just has such a feel of quality which I believe is due to the thicker ebonite together with the texture and excellence of the lacquer work. You can see that the threads for the cap are well away from where the pen is gripped, and they are un-lacquered ebonite. Leaving the threads un-lacquered is a design choice I thought might detract from the appearance, judging from photos of the pen, but with the pen in-hand I think it works well and it is not jarring at all. I am still unsure about bare ebonite, as this will inevitably discolour over time, but I guess urushi pens are partly about the experience of seeing the pen finish change over time. Coupled with the yellow lacquer I guess it will not look bad. Wabi-sabi. Overall: I was extremely pleased with this pen and I think it is good value relative to other pens with this kind of complex urushi finish. It truly feels high quality throughout. The positive surprises for me were the greater feeling of solidity and gravitas compared to my Nakayas; the beauty, high quality, and pleasing texture of the lacquer work; and the exceptional comfort and control I experience with the long, slender section. For me there were no real downsides and this is absolutely among my most pleasurable pens to own and write with. I love my Nakayas (I have three portable cigars) but overall I feel this Taccia surpasses them in quality and comfort, offers better value, and of course it also has the Sailor nib that I prize. I expect I will buy more Taccia urushi pens in future, following this positive experience. At least as long as they continue to be fitted with Sailor nibs, which is what brought me to this pen in the first place. If, however, you dislike small nibs and slender sections then perhaps this is not the pen for you. Some other Taccia urushi pen models have a larger sized 18k nib, also made for Taccia by Sailor.