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Wancher has launched a kickstarter for a series of fountain pens with the name Seven Treasures. They are made from Bakelite and feature Shippoyaki; Japanese Cloisonne artwork. Current super early bird reward is at $240 for the basic version with steel nib and plastic feed. Black ebonite feed is an aditional $30 Red ebonite feed is +$50 Gold nib is +$130 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wancher/seven-treasures

I just recovered from influenza but I am so excited to tell you a story that I also just told my friends on Facebook. Around 15 years ago, Japanese Shippo artist 岡垣幸得 (Okagaki Yukie) presented me 2 big frames (1 of them is in second picture).They are handmade with Japanese Cloisonne or 七宝焼 /shippoyaki/.These two were supposed to be displayed in Museum but she chose to give to me.At that time, I thought, how wonderful it is to have this art on a fountain pen. But honestly, it seemed impossible haha.A few years later, that idea still hang over my head so I came back and talked with artist Yukie about this idea.She said "I can make a small piece of shippoyaki, but it will be harder".I was never more excited than that. I spent many more years researching and testing how I can make a fountain pen with this precious art.I tried with ebonite and plastic and celluloid but all failed. Ebonite didn't work out with piston filler mechanism I have, plastic was not a good idea for a traditional pen and celluloid is so hard to carve.But finally there was one material that made my idea become possible, it is bakelite. It is rolled up from many layer of paper.And it works best with piston filler. But most importantly, I can carve the Shippoyaki on top of the pen for forever use. Sadly, there are not many Shippo artists nowadays. I am already old and Master Yukie is also very old now but we really want to make this art continue.I would never expect that a small idea of 15 years ago would turn out to be real now. I just want to say that if we try, there will be good result. I feel thankful that master Yukie gave me this treasure.In Japanese, Shippo is written as 七宝 which means Seven Treasures. So I call this fountain pen Seven Treasures.Do you have any other name suggestion? If you might want to read more, you can go here.https://www.wancherpen.com/pages/shippoyakiI have a giveaway of one prototype for one of those who help me fill a survey about this pen.Please help if you also care about unusual arts and fountain pen. Thank you very much again!