F-STYLE of Gifu Hand-Wraps Mino Washi Around Each Pen Barrel — 18 of the 38 Ballpoint Patterns Are Cherry Blossoms
The barrel of this pen is not metal and not wood. It is paper. The "Mino Washi Yuzen Pattern" pens made by F-STYLE Co., Ltd. of Gifu are exactly that.
According to the official website, the process is: cut Mino washi printed with yuzen patterns, wrap it around each pen barrel by hand, one at a time, and finish it with UV acrylic resin. Mino washi is described as paper made with the water of the clear Nagara River. The company was founded in Gifu in 2012 and states that domestic craft artists and artisans make each pen by hand, one at a time.
Counting the 38 ballpoint patterns
PencilDB lists 38 ballpoints in this series, counting colour variants. We counted the words that appear in the pattern names.
| Word in the pattern name | Count |
|---|---|
| Cherry blossom (including weeping, night and dawn cherry) | 18 |
| Gold or silver leaf | 11 |
| Flowing water | 8 |
| Ichimatsu, plum, seigaiha | 3 each |
Several words can appear in one name, so the total does not add up to 38. Of the 38 patterns, 18 — nearly half — feature cherry blossoms. Many names layer another motif onto the blossoms, such as "cherry blossoms and flowing water", "cherry blossoms and rape flowers" or "cherry blossoms and hemp leaves".
Without cherry blossoms: the classics of Japanese design
The other 20 patterns have no cherry blossoms: seigaiha, same-komon, rabbit ichimatsu, goldfish, butterfly and flowing water, and "moonlight (the seven autumn flowers)". Traditional Japanese patterns such as seigaiha, same-komon and ichimatsu appear here. Merging colour variants, there are 29 distinct pattern names.
The same patterns are wrapped around fountain pens
The series includes two fountain pen types, a regular one and a MagnetCap one, with 12 patterns each. Most of their pattern names are shared with the ballpoints. The pattern does not depend on the shape of the barrel: the same name is wrapped around all three kinds of pen.
What we do not know
The thickness of the resin layer over the paper, the time needed to make one pen and the number made per year are not stated on the official website, so we do not know them. The exact location of the workshop is not given there either.