Selan Fountain Pen
The pen pictured above is a pen from the very obscure pen maker, The Selan Pen Company. In the last 20 years I have only seen a handful of Selan fountain pens. The earliest I have seen is a 1930's plain lacquer pen, the most recent was a late 1950's Pilot Super style fountain pen. When I first saw this pen I thought that it was a 1950's Pilot. The cap, clip and nib are very similar to Pilot's popular "Super" line of the late 1950's. I imagine this was not an accident. As Pilot's pens grew in popularity, lesser known pen makers were prone to copy their successful competitors
The Selan above is a late 40's or early 50's Selan maki-e pen complete with the original box. The cap, barrel and section are made of hard rubber that was coated in rich urushi lacquer. Then an artist hand painted a rooster and cherry blossom design and then the artist coated that over in clear urushi lacquer. The rooster and blossoms are an ancient Japanese symbol. The rooster is very important in the Japanese shinto religion as are cherry trees and blossoms, but the two symbols together typically refer to a fresh beginning or a new start. Below is a typical Japanese woodblock print that depicts a rooster under cherry blossoms.
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