Luxury Japanese Fountain Pens Range Guide

A lot of fountain pen enthusiasts end up with Sailor as their favourite brand. From top quality mid-range pens, up to the most luxuriously hand-crafted limited editions, they cover very traditional designs, but also very modern styles.

Sailor is best known for smooth nibs, including some speciality nibs like their Zoom nib, available on many of their pens, which can write different line widths, depending on how upright you hold the pen.

If you like your fountain pens to follow the traditional 'cigar shape' design, with rounded ends, the 1911 is the Sailor for you. Sailor gets their name from a visiting sailor who inspired the founder to make pens in Japan that were just as good as the pen he'd brought from Europe, and the 1911 shows that European inspiration.

For a more contemporary style of their own, Sailor introduced the Professional Gear, or Pro Gear. Their flat ends and straighter sides give a more modern look, which has made them a favourite of many fountain pen fans.

The Pro Gear range includes three sizes - the Slim, the Regular, and the King of Pens. All have gold nibs, but with a higher gold content in the larger pens. The Slim is sometimes referred to as the Sapporo.

Only Sailor's largest and highest quality pens get the name 'King of Pens'. It's a designation of their size, rather than a style - there are 1911 King of Pens, and Pro Gear King of Pens. But if you like a large pen with a 21k gold nib, it's the King of Pens name you're looking for.

Like the King of Pens range, 'Ebonite' isn't a range, as such, it's a material. Sailor make 1911 pens and other King of Pens models from Ebonite.

Ebonite is a hardened form of rubber, and used to be a common material for pens, many years ago. It's now a far more specialised material, much prized by those who love its natural feel. It's not as tough as most modern plastics and resins used in pens, so a little extra care is needed - but totally worth it to some enthusiasts.

Much like Sailor, Platinum has a long history of making top quality fountain pens in Japan, and makes a wide range of different styles. They're best known for the #3776 Century pen range, with the innovative 'Slip & Seal' mechanism that prevents ink drying out, and enables the use of their permanent Carbon Ink.

Platinum's nibs are usually known for having a bit more 'feedback' - a bit more friction on the paper, rather than being 'buttery' smooth. While many fountain pen enthusiasts love their nibs to be as smooth as possible, many others find a little more friction helps to keep their writing under control.

Probably the most-loved range from Platinum, the #3776 Century is a traditional 'cigar shape', with rounded ends. They have Platinum's highly respected 'Slip & Seal' mechanism - inside the cap is a second inner cap, with a spring behind it, made to seal around the nib when the pen is capped. This keeps the ink safely sealed away with very little air around it, preventing the ink from drying out for far longer than most fountain pens.

Along with keeping the pen ready to go even if you don't use it for a while, this makes it much safer to use finely pigmented inks like Platinum's Carbon Ink.

Platinum's Izumo pens feature traditional Japanese craftsmanship, using materials like wood, bamboo, and natural urushi lacquer. They're beautiful little pieces of art in their own right, which just happen to be pens. But that's good for us, because we'd really have to stretch for an excuse to stock them if they weren't!

Maki-e is a traditional Japanese craft, where layers of urushi lacquer are built up, often over many months, with patterns built up in the lacquer using coloured gold powder and other materials, like tiny pieces of shell. It's a slow and painstaking process, with techniques passed down through generations, and craftspeople dedicating their lives to their work.

Even if you've never had any interest in luxury fountain pens, it's likely you've heard of Pilot. It's the same Pilot who makes the G2 gel pen, one of the best-selling pens in the world; and the needlepoint rollerball known as the Precise in the US, and the Hi-Tecpoint here in the UK.

But their range is huge, and also includes some of the finest quality fountain pens available. And as unexpected as it may be for a company so known for their mass-produced disposable pens, that range includes some beautiful and luxurious handcrafted pens, made with traditional Japanese techniques.

The Custom range is Pilot making the very best fountain pens they can, including the vacuum-filled Custom 823.

Other than the Custom pens, Pilot sells most of their luxury pens under the Namiki brand - similar to Toyota and Lexus. These are the pens where the usual mass production is left behind for beautiful hand-crafted art. Along with Maki-e, Namiki is known for using Raden - also using layers of urushi lacquer, but with pieces of abalone or mother of pearl being used for the pattern rather than gold powder.