Pilot - Fountain pen

Hello, I am presenting this Pilot "Take," bamboo maki-e from 1978 by master Hyakusen Murata.

A Kokkokai maki-e pen dating from November 1978, Shōwa 53, depicting bamboo in color on black urushi, with 18-karat gold nib and an era sac filling system. A forty-seven-year-old piece, never inked.

Kokkokai is a collective of maki-e artisans founded in 1931 around Gonroku Matsuda, who later became a Living National Treasure. Its name is drawn from a quote by Namiki founder Ryosuke Namiki: "Just as sumo is Japan’s national sport, maki-e is the nation’s light."

Murata Hyakusen is one of the most emblematic artisans of this house. He worked within Kokkokai for more than three decades, and his distinctive style rests on the application of nashiji (pearl-skin gold powder) with a richness and luster recognizable to all.
His hand appears on several classics among the most sought-after: the Double Red Fish (Kingyo Yukari), the Kisshomon 吉祥文, and the Hagi 萩 (Autumn Herbs).
Among the rare pieces bearing his signature is an Emperor #50 in togidashi maki-e "Kisshomon" produced around 1989, made in very limited numbers exclusively for the leaders of Pilot-Namiki. In 2010, he again produced for Namiki an Emperor "Karaoke on cascade" in togidashi maki-e with raden inlays.

He is also the director of the Kanazawa Artisan Council, deputy director of the Kanazawa Lacquer Cooperative, certified Traditional Kanazawa Lacquer Artisan, and winner of the Mayor’s Grand Prize at the 55th Kanazawa Arts Exhibition as well as the Governor of Ishikawa Prize at the 24th Kanazawa Lacquer Exhibition.

The nib of this pen carries the date code 11-12-78, i.e., November 12, 1978, Shōwa 53 in the Japanese imperial calendar. On that date, Japan was in the thick of its postwar “economic miracle.” The country had become the second-largest economy in the world. Traditional crafts, far from being marginalized by industrialization, were experiencing renewed interest from an educated middle class concerned with quality and national culture. It is in this context that Pilot developed and maintains its Kokkokai workshop, producing high-quality maki-e pens for business customers and collectors alike.

The “Press Here” (sac à pressoir) filling system is characteristic of Pilot production from roughly the 1970s to about 1985. It consists of a vulcanized rubber sac housed inside the pen body, which is compressed by pressing directly on the side of the pen to expel air, then released to draw ink by capillarity. This system, inherited from the American sac-fill tradition of the 1920s–1940s and adapted by Pilot with its own access mechanism, is mechanically more complex and more luxurious than a simple converter, and that is why it was reserved for the high-end models of that era.

The bamboo (竹, take) is, along with plum, chrysanthemum, and pine, one of the four fundamental plants of Japanese decorative iconography. Its symbolism is deeply rooted in Confucian thought and in the wabi-sabi aesthetic: bamboo bends without breaking under snow, illustrating resilience and flexibility in the face of adversity. Its hollow stems evoke emptiness, a central Buddhist concept. Its evergreen leaves symbolize longevity.

In lacquer arts, bamboo is a particularly demanding motif to execute: the realistic depiction of the culms, with their regular nodes, their slightly bluish-green color, the texture of their smooth surface, requires the craftsman to master colored pigments in urushi lacquer, a technique more delicate than simply scattering gold powder. On this pen, the bamboo culms are treated in realistic green, with gold powder highlights for the reflections, on a deep black urushi background. This polychromy, especially rare for a Pilot pen of 1978, indicates a piece of high decorative ambition, well beyond the monochrome gold maki-e productions of that era.

To paint bamboo in green on black lacquer in 1978 is to reject the compromise of uniform gold powder: it is to choose the true color, the right color, even if it means multiplying the number of coats and operations.

The nib bears the marking 18K-750 and PILOT, as well as the manufacture code that allows dating the piece with precision. The choice of 18-carat gold, 750‰ pure gold, rather than the more common 14-carat (585‰) in Pilot’s standard production of that period, clearly indicates the high-end positioning of this pen. By way of comparison, Custom 74 nibs from the same period were fitted with 14K nibs; 18K nibs were reserved for Custom 742 and for maki-e editions of the Kokkokai line.

In forty-seven years, an unused 18-carat gold nib undergoes no measurable chemical change; gold is rustproof and does not absorb moisture.

The original box is made of paulownia wood (桐箱, kiri-bako). Paulownia is the noble wood par excellence for traditional Japanese packaging: light, moisture-resistant, naturally antiseptic, it has since the Edo period been the material for boxes storing precious objects, lacquer, ceramics, and ceremonial textiles. The presence of the original paulownia case, with the intact yellow Pilot cloth of the era, makes for a rare ensemble: most vintage pens that have changed hands several times have lost their box or inner packaging.

Pilot Kokkokai maki-e pens produced before 1985 are markedly rarer on the secondary market than those from the 1990s–2010s, for a simple reason: they were produced in smaller quantities in a Japan where the market for collectible pens was not yet as organized. Many have been used, stained, or simply lost. Finding a NOS specimen from 1978 with intact original packaging is a relatively rare event, and the combination of polychrome bamboo, rather than the traditional gold on black, makes it even more singular.