Danitrio

[RayCornett]

I started a prototype FP thread yesterday because of a pen I am expecting to arrive Friday. A Danitrio Phantas lll Snake. I never heard of the company until I saw the pen someone had for sale. After some research and finding danitrio.com I found out the pen was a prototype of a pen discontinued over 20 years ago.

Now the company is mainly all about selling maki e pens made by several different artists but they also sell less flamboyant pens which are somewhat Nakaya-esque. From what I see now most of their pens are a grand or more.

Does anyone reading this thread have any of these pens or perhaps one of the old Phantas models? If so, I would be interested in your input.

[Jon Szanto]

Danitrio has been around a long time. Over on FPN there was a group that collected them called the Danitrio Fellowship. I'm certain if you search over there you will find lots of pens. The company was always somewhat schizophrenic, offering both very fine handmade pens, many of which were urushi finishes, as well as some lower end pens that looked like the common Chinese pens we see today. AltecGreen knew about about this stuff, I've asked and always gotten answers from him and then forgotten.

I've seen quite a few Danitrios for sale on places like the PenTrace green board, as well as eBay. Do some googling on your own and you'll come up with quite a bit of information.

[RayCornett]

Been Googling ever since I first saw the pen before I bought it. Still looking for the wealth of info. I can't even see anything on FPNs website. They banned me last year,lol. I do seem to find more info on their higher end pens than pens like the Phantas.

[Jon Szanto]

Well, that is unfortunate, as there are a lot of owners and quite a few threads on FPN. What about the JBar account? Anyway, I also assume you saw the similar item at Peyton Street Pens? As it says there, these were part of the earlier, low-end line. I'll see if I can't find the info Ricky shared with me about the history of the company/vendor/whatever that marked the shift from low- to high-end...

[RayCornett]

I guess they figured that was me somehow. It lasted a little bit. I did see the Peyton image. But considering their expensive high end pens their low end could possible be pretty decent. I got it for less than the one in the Peyton image. So, if it sucks it's not like I spent hundreds or thousands.

[Jon Szanto]

Well, all you will find is old ones, because they haven't made the low-end pens for a quite a while. Here is one explanation of the history of the company from AltecGreen (note that this is from about 2 years ago):

Dantrio have been around for a long time (ca. 1974) but their history with maki-e and urushi pens is a bit more recent.

The maki-e and urushi pens are made in Japan. Danitrio has quite a remarkable group of maki-e artists and they do a fair amount of OEM maki-e work for other companies. One quirk of Danitrio is that they employ maki-e artists to do the urushi pens rather than pure urushi experts. This leads to a distinct style of urushi.

I do not believe they make any of the low end pens anymore. Those pens were from a different era in Danitrio's history. Winedoc still has some in stock and was selling some of the older lower end pens at the LA Pen Show.

As for the raw ebonite pens, that was a partnership with Mr. Tsuchida who made the pens for Danitrio. Mr. Tsuchida passed away a number of years ago so that ended the production of the raw ebonite pens. Danitrio have made inquiries to other Japanese pen makers to make these pens but none would offer the pricing that Mr. Tsuchida offered to keep the prices low. At the price Danitrio would have to pay, it makes no economic sense to make these pens.

The current pens start at the basic urushi pens (~$1000) and go up to around $30-40K for some of full blown maki-e and chinkin pens.

Danitrio keep a low profile in the normal retail channels. In the US and much of the western world, you can go through winedoc. You can also get their pens from Aesthetic Bay in Singapore. It was only a few years ago that a few Japanese retail outlets started carrying Danitrio pens. It is hard to find Danitrio pens as well as Nakaya pens in the EU.

They seem to have a small but devoted and (wealthy) following. It's not unusual at the LA pen show for whole trays of Danitrio pens to be bought by a single collector on the first day. Some collectors will easily drop 6 figures on Danitrio pens in one go.

[rpsyed]

I don't know much about Danitrios older pens but the new urushi and Maki-e ones are gorgeous! I especially like the Mikado Flat-top, and the Octagon models. When I have more money, I'd like to get one of the plain urushi ones.

[jde]

Ray, you might find this interview with Bernard Lyn of interest. The company has been around since the 80's, and Lyn gives a bit of history for you.

I've collected Danitrio in the past, and had a few of the older Danitrios. They were good writers with decent steel nibs. Heavier than I like, though. I've two Danitrios left, one urushi, and one SMALL Cumlaude, not the large one commonly available. I spell it "Cumlaude" instead of Cum Laude because that's how it's imprinted on the cap of my pen. This is one of my very favorite pens.

There are a lot of longtime Danitrio collectors on Pentrace. I bet you'd find some other Phantas owners there.

—Julie

[ethernautrix]

Danitrio has been around a long time. Over on FPN there was a group that collected them called the Danitrio Fellowship. I'm certain if you search over there you will find lots of pens. The company was always somewhat schizophrenic, offering both very fine handmade pens, many of which were urushi finishes, as well as some lower end pens that looked like the common Chinese pens we see today. AltecGreen knew about about this stuff, I've asked and always gotten answers from him and then forgotten.

I've seen quite a few Danitrios for sale on places like the PenTrace green board, as well as eBay. Do some googling on your own and you'll come up with quite a bit of information.

One quick clarification about the Danitrio Fellowship thread: The Fellowship was the model that Kevin Cheng (winedoc) and interested fpn members had Danitrio make (I believe only 66 were made (66, 68 - not sure), a made-by-committee model. I still have mine (smiley-face implied).

As I recall, Ricky has mentioned that we paid pretty much just cost, which was super generous of Danitrio.

[SteveE]

I still have about 4 of the lower-end pens. One had a bad feed, but DaniTrio sent me a new one quickly. Otherwise, they are just solid writers, that look pretty good for the cost. I especially like my ebonite Tosca, which I've had around 10 years.

[rpsyed]

As I recall, Ricky has mentioned that we paid pretty much just cost, which was super generous of Danitrio.

That is super generous of them! I remember when reading some of the old threads on FPN about the raw ebonite pens, winedoc said that Danitrio actually sold the raw ebonite pens at a loss. Pretty awesome of them to do just to get a limited number of their pens to people at a lower price.

[rwodaski]

I have one Danitrio pen, a beautiful Bat pen. It's a superb writer,m but really excels for drawing. A favorite.

[fncll]

I have two low-end DaniTrio pens and both are fine writers with reasonable size and heft for the price!

[Joe in Seattle]

I have a Phantas I double snake (like the vintage Parker). It's a fun pen, good writer. One of the "ruby" snake eyes fell out and Winedoc kindly repaired the eye.

[RayCornett]

I have a Phantas I double snake (like the vintage Parker). It's a fun pen, good writer. One of the "ruby" snake eyes fell out and Winedoc kindly repaired the eye.

I hope to find one of those as well. But this really is the only Phantas I have seen "in the wild".

[RayCornett]

Well turns out the tracking said delivered but it was not. Apparently the for sale sign on the house made the rookie mail carrier thing the house was vacant so he didn't even get out of his truck to take it to the mailbox. The same happened with a package the next day. Just found out yesterday he marked them to send them back to the sender but one was still in the back. The Phantas. So, they are redelivering it today.

[RayCornett]

Well, for those who have been keeping an eye on the pen acquisition thread my Phantas III Snake arrived and I have to say I am extremely happy with it physically as well as with how it performs. I would also like to add that by stroke of luck again today I received a Danitrio Densho eyedropper in matte black with a #8 18k M nib

[VertOlive]

I have the smaller Danitrio Cum Laude in tortoise. It writes nicely, but turned out not to fit my hand so well and the color of the material is not so pleasing to my eye. Sort of ho hum, ok pen I found for under $100. It will probably go up for sale soon.