Tim, another Japanese pen maker who has mastered Urushi is Martin Pauli who goes under the name of "manupropria" here. A link to some of his work is here:
https://www.penturners.org/members/manupropria.25197/#xfmgMedia
There is another from France and another from one other European country that has mastered the Urushi. What I have learned from each of those who have mastered Urushi is that they also are fluent in Japanese.
One aspect of Urushi that is so often characteristic of traditional Japanese cultural treasures is that one has to basically know or understand Japanese written and spoken language to create or operate within that realm. Teodor: "
Unfortunately the resources are very scarce in English language." I too ran into this phenomenon back when I moved to Japan in '86 and went to a "paint" store for some different kinds of finishes. NOTHING in English, and I had a 6 inch thick English to Japanese dictionary. It was more that 15 years later before I found Tung Oil. They had it the whole time I was there, but type or look up "tung oil" into a dictionary and nothing came up. Tung Oil in Japanese is called "China Tree Oil". I had seen that numerous times but did not connect it with "Tung Oil" until after about 15 years and purchased some and smelled it. Tung Oil! As Francis Xavier once said: "
Japanese is the devils tongue!"
That is beside the point of Urushi as a finish. I don't know how long Teo takes to make a pen but Martin (Manupropia) once mentioned that on average a pen takes about 30 days, and most of that time is for the finish. Sure, it can be rushed, but true connoisseurs will know immediately upon seeing it.
