THE SLEEPING VOLCANO is a fountain pen cloaked in a «snow» decor created and made by Olga Aloy, as traditional eggshell lacquer work. In its natural form, the sap has a light brown colour; when mixed with mineral pigments, however, it can take on various hues, although never white. In their efforts to make white for their works, however, the artists of old had the idea of encrusting fragments of eggshells into the lacquer ... and from that idea there arose an artistic technique known as RANKAKU.
This fountain pen was many months in the making. Once the base layers had been applied, the decoration was then laid as a mosaic of eggshell fragments applied one by one and then coated with a further layer of lacquer. Once it has been dried in the «furo» (a traditional cupboard with a humidity level of 80% and temperature of 23ºC), the piece is painstaking sanded until the shell reappears, prior to application of the next layer. No fewer than 18 or 20 layers are required for the motif to be entirely encrusted within the lacquer and the pen to acquire the silky sensuality characteristic of natural craft lacquers.
The clip seems to emerge from a magma of black diamonds (a mass of pieces of corundum made by a jewellery creator), twirling in a spiral around the tip before gliding down along the hood, like a flow of molten silver. The sheath of the capillary tube is likewise lacquered, for sensuality to the touch as well as good grip, while the nib is made of rhodium-plated gold (750/1000, 18 carat) for writing comfort.
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