Onishi Seisakusho: the one-man Osaka workshop that inherited Visconti's lathes

Trace a fountain pen back to the bench where it was actually turned and the answer is sometimes surprising. The celluloid Viscontis of the 1990s were not made in Florence — they were made in Osaka. Those same machines are still running today, in a small workshop in Higashi-Osaka.

A workshop of exactly one person

Onishi Seisakusho sits in Nagata-nishi, Higashi-Osaka, among rows of small factories. There is one maker: Keizo Onishi. He does everything himself, from cutting the raw rod to the final polish. Shokunin.com, which stocks his pens, cites an Asahi Shimbun article of 4 April 2017 in saying that Onishi has worked with writing instruments for over half a century, since the age of fifteen. Becoming the man at the lathe, though, came much later.

His teacher turned Viscontis

After retiring from a company in the pen trade, Onishi became an apprentice to Kiyoshi Kato at the age of 65. Kato's firm, Kato Seisakusho Company, was one of very few in the world devoted to celluloid writing instruments. Around 1961 it exported under its own brand, Spaceman, and for a time it ran a factory in Alexandria, Egypt. Visconti's Manhattan, Ponte Vecchio, Ragtime and Leonardo da Vinci were made there.

Kato died in January 2010. The following year Onishi set up his own workshop, taking over Kato's machines and tools. Kato is said to have told him there was nothing left to teach.

Celluloid was the one thing he could not inherit

One thing did not carry over: the material. Celluloid is no longer produced in Japan, and the workshop now mainly uses cellulose acetate and acrylic. The patterning still differs from barrel to barrel, as it did with celluloid — without celluloid's flammability.

Some fifty steps, alone

A 2023 feature by Sumitomo Electric Hardmetal reports that Onishi performs roughly fifty operations himself — cutting, turning, drilling — and that the error never exceeds 0.2 mm. He was 81 at the time of the article. It also notes growing exports to the United States, Britain and Singapore, and that he was considering ebonite as a new material.

What to check before buying

Some will find a bought-in nib disappointing. Measured against the principle Kato left behind — no unnecessary ornament, good things cheaply — it is entirely consistent.

The work itself can be seen in a video published by the Shokunin.com channel (1,110 subscribers).

Handmade fountain pens at Onishi Seisakusho — video (Shokunin.com channel)

Onishi Seisakusho — fountain pens and ballpoints (Shokunin.com)

Superb fountain pens turned on a lathe (SumiTool TODAY, Sumitomo Electric Hardmetal)