A $250,000.00 pen

[btboone]

Why yes it is. If I could have powered it from the house, I would have gotten the live tooled Mazak Nexus Quick Turn MS-Y or 5th axis Integrex. That would have added a whole new set of capabilities, allowing me to be yet lazier and less creative.

Mrplace, that's exactly what I thought when I first saw them. I think they are usually something like $10,000 or $20,000. I guess the grade of material might have something to do with it, or perhaps the ones you showed are more mass produced with assistance by machines. Maybe it the fact that there are more dragons per square inch. [] They also create value by limiting the number to so few. I think the ultimate reason is because they can.

 

[Rojo22]

I am an avid carver as well as turner, and appreciate the work that went into this pen. The difference between the pens in question are that one is much more deeply releived, almost to the point of a pierced carving style (the $250,000 pen), the carvings on the less expensive pen, are much shallower and less detailed. I have never worked on jade, but the skill involved to create such an object must have taken many hours, and a very deep knowledge of the medium.

The article states that the "pen" is an object of art, and I believe that the price tag reflects the art object, not the usefulness of the object as a pen.

I would be willing to bet that an electronic tool was used to create the pen. Dental drills and Foredoms have been used to create works like this, and I would expect that they were used in making this pen as well. Because a tool was used makes it no less beautiful to look at, or admire the art object. A tool is a tool is a tool.....

 

[Rojo22]

I thought these were funny:

"there are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman..."
Emile Zola to Cézanne, 16 April, 1860


I must be an artist rather than a craftsman, because my wife continues to tell me that I have no common sense.
Wesley C. Rolley

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.
- Samuel Butler


Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
- André Gide