Gawking at other pens.

I heartily approve of gawking. It effectively combines greed and regret into a word that sounds like a goose’s last gasp. Aesthetic Bay has turned gawking at pens into a retail experience, and as usual, I saw more pens than I had a sensible budget for.

Nakaya display

The Nakaya display had standard Piccolos with the equilibrium addition, Piccolos with clips, the NeoStandard and the Aesthetic Bay-exclusive long Piccolo. There was a single Decapod left.

Danitrio display

Shapely bamboo pens carved from buffalo horn formed a major part of the Danitrio display.

Sailor display

Sailor had two shelves all to itself. This one features the colored Pro Gear demonstrators, plus the recent Mica-finish issue. I don’t know about you, but I have yet to develop a fondness for glitter on my pens. Still, the Mica series is a good attempt by Sailor to reach out to the fashion market. That’s one way to do little shiny bits.

Sailor chinkin

And this is another. Comparing the little shiny bits on the Mica series to the expertly-applied shiny bits on the Sailor Chinkin series is like finding parallelisms between a box of paints and La Grande Jatte.

Inspiration

“Hagoromo” is one in a series of Sailor pens depicting characters from Noh. This is the artist’s original study.

Hagoromo

And this is the pen. The artist can decide to change details from the approved study to the actual pen – in this case, he felt that gold rather than green was better for the tree detailed on the barrel of the pen.

A selection of Sailor pens

These pens are huge, but light. For now, I am happy just to gawk.