Monday - June 04, 2007
Aesthetic Bay, o frabjous day!
Ah, the joy of brick and mortar, the tangible and testable and ooh-and-aah-able. On the second floor of Funan the IT Mall is Aesthetic Bay, where the only IT in sight is the POS system (which was giving the owner's wife a little grief, as it was newly installed). Everything else is glass cabinet doors, serious track lighting and a jaw-dropping selection of fountain pens. In the front cabinets are the European contingent: Delta, Montegrappa, Graf von Faber Castell, Visconti. There were Krones in both the limited edition and regular flavors. And then there was the Nakaya cabinet.
A red urushi model, two decapods, and two of the three pens that enthralled me, done in the chinkin style, with filigree reminiscent of old European textiles.
Mr. Tan, the owner, was gracious enough to let me take (shoddy) photographs of his breathtaking Nakayas, which I had only ever seen on the Nakaya website. Aesthetic Gallery is the only Nakaya dealer in the world. The pens come with their own kimonos. The smallest size, the piccolo, can accommodate the famous Platinum goldfish converter.
They are most beautiful, I think, when in the hand.
This is the one I could not put down. The red filigree chinkin piccolo. I wish I had brought a better camera. The nib is an elastic medium. I now know that "elastic" is not "flexible," the way I define it. Flexible to me means the tines spread and spring back. The elastic nib's tines hardly spread, although pressure does result in a touch of line variation.
I did not come away with any Nakayas. Sadly, I would have had to hock Lucien to afford the one I wanted. Does anyone want to throw some hack work my way?
In lieu of trading my onlyborn, I purchased oodlers of Noodler's Ink instead. How sad blue and black now seem. I now have Atlantic Salmon, Georgia Peach, Ottoman Rose, Saguaro Wine and Shah's Rose ("the carmine ink of ancient Persia"). Yes, they are all girly.
I do not want to think of the broken Dinkie.