| In 1926, the Namiki Pen Company of Japan attempted to increase its market share of writing instruments in Europe. To achieve this goal, the company took the innovative and bold approach of making use of the unique and ancient art of maki-e (sprinkled gold powders on lacquer paintings). Traditionally, maki-e had largely been applied on flat surfaces such as writing boxes or inro. Applying the painstaking art of maki-e on smaller circular objects was an ambitious undertaking. The company’s secret success formula was a young but well known artist, Gonroku Matsuda, who was hired to select designs and train artists to produce high quality maki-e pens. Although only four hundred of these first quality writing instruments were made between 1926-1949, the craftmanship under Matsuda, the ‘father’ of modern lacquer work in Japan, was recognised right from the start. By 1929 the internationally renowned Alfred Dunhill Ltd of London signed a distribution agreement with Namiki and began marketing ‘Dunhill Namiki’ products which, today, continue to establish record-breaking prices among collectors around the world |
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