With its long, sleek shape and black-red finish, the Nakaya Long Cigar Kuro-tamenuri fountain pen represents simple elegance. The Urushi tradition is historic and profound in Japan, where lacquer ware has adorned utilitarian objects for centuries. This technique, though painstaking, gives this fountain pens its deep lustrous sheen and subtle color shift.

With its sizeable length, this is not a pen you would carry in your pocket. The extra surface area and the clipless design serves as is an excellent canvas for the rich kuro-tamenuri color, and even with its long shape this fountain pen achieves perfect balance in the hand.

This Long Cigar Kuro-tamenuri fountain pen is made of hard rubber or ebonite that is meticulously coated with Urushi, a material made from the sap of a Japanese lacquer tree. The process of collecting the Urushi and applying many layers of lacquer to this fountain pen takes three months to complete. These close-ups give a sense of the subtle color shift that occurs on a new tamenuri pen. As the pen ages with careful handling, more of the red under color emerges. The Kuro-tamenuri shows the most dramatic color shift of any of the colors as the contrast between the black outer color is slowly worn away revealing the deep red lacquer underneath.

Nakaya pens can be filled with bottledfountain pen ink using the provided converter, and can also use Platinum brand ink cartridges. Hand-painted Maki-e converters are also available.14k nibs are well-suited to customizations including Stub, Cursive Italic, and Left Oblique, as well as the modification for added flex – see our nib customizations page for more information.

Decorative rice paper, a simple solid softwood shipping box decorated with Japanese Kanji script, and a fabric pen “”kimono”” are all included with this pen, making it a lovely presentation item. Sensible and elegant packaging has long been a hallmark of the Nakaya brand.

Unless requested otherwise, each pen or nib you purchase from us will be carefully examined, tested, and optimized for your personal writing characteristics before it ships. See our nib set-up and optimization page for more details.