Platinum Kanazawa Leaf Maki-e Pens

Platinum Kanazawa Leaf Maki-e fountain pens

The Platinum Kanazawa Leaf Maki-e pens are quite new, only being released worldwide on February 1st (they arrived in the US later in the month). We had the unique opportunity to get some of them, and we jumped at the chance. It all began when we recently started getting into the Platinum Modern Maki-e pens, which are the same nib and body style as the Kanazawa.

So a couple of things happen when we start carrying new pens. Firstly, I have to write test them and provide samples for the Nib Nook. The Modern Maki-e pens are offered in fine, medium, and broad nib sizes, but the Kanazawa Leaf pens are only fine and medium. Here are my writing samples:

Writing sample of Platinum Kanazawa Leaf in fine and medium nibs

Okay, so the writing for the name of these pens is prettttttty tight, it was a lot to fit in a small area! I didn't really get to show off the best part about these nibs, which is that they are soft enough to give you some respectable line variation, almost on par with the Namiki Falcon. I wouldn't call them ‘flex' nibs, but they are soft and can give you variation up to about two nib sizes larger than their designation. You can see this a bit with the X's and figure-8's that I did in the samples.

This whole Maki-e kick really began when I purchased a new macro lens for my camera and had used the Modern Maki-e pens as my test subjects. The idea of having a whole new line of these detailed pens to photograph was really exciting for me! I spent a whole day photographing main pictures for these new Kanazawas, and yet another full day just with the macro lens to get the incredibly detailed shots you see below. I think these are some of my best pictures to date, I'm pretty proud of them! I will say that these pens are gorgeous, and the only editing on these pictures that I did was to make the detail as crisp as possible and to edit out dust. The rest is all the pens…

Platinum Kanazawa Leaf Maki-e – Goldfish

Platinum Kanazawa Leaf Maki-e – Mt. Fuji

Platinum Kanazawa Leaf Maki-e – The Moon and a Rabbit

Platinum Kanazawa Leaf Maki-e – Changing Autumn Leaves