ASHFORD’s Planners’ Room Live: “M6 Refills”

Watch this week’s Planners Room Live on Instagram.

Mukai-san introduces ASHFORD’s entire lineup of M6 (Mini 6) sized refills sold commercially, including several new releases.

Ashford’s new promo video on the Heritage Series

Watch on Instagram, also on Youtube.

A video slideshow showcasting Ashford’s new “Heritage” series which officially launches this month. The “Heritage” series is the spiritual successor of the “Prescott” series (now discontinued) that launched Ashford as a system techo brand in Japan back in the 80s.

G.Itoya Live: System Techo Salon 2020

Update: Official details, including all the special editions made available for this event.

This is the system techo event of the year. You can watch the recording of this live-stream on Twitter.

Awesome video from Itoya Ginza as they tease us with the pre-opening displays for this year’s “System Techo Salon”, which will be held at G.Itoya Handshake Lounge located on the 10th floor, from Nov 6-24. It also features guests from the various makers in the system techo world, and a quick introduction to the various advance release and/or limited edition covers for sale.

Pretty much every release mentioned in the video has been covered in detail in the recent System Techo Vol. 5 that was released at the end of October, as well as PR posts on the respective company’s social media pages. However, you are able to see the actual items in the video as opposed to just photos in the magazine.

Since there is plenty of information in other sources, I won’t go into the details but here’s a list of everything that was introduced in the video, in order of appearance:

  • PLOTTER’s MINI5 refills.
  • Davinci launches new MINI5 refill series that uses Tomoe River paper.
  • System Techo magazines published by EI Publishing. Shimizu-san (the head editor) makes an appearance.
  • ???? - Advance sale - colors are Green, Blue and Red.
  • Kunisawa - Advance sale of Fine Diary Cover - Bible size, embossed leather.
  • Riowa - Limited edition, MINI6 and MINI5 size (no one cover has the same combination of colours, apparently). They sell wallets and was featured at ITOYA before when they suggested to them to make system techo covers, and voila, here they are.
  • Brelio:
      - Minerva Box - zipped version
      - Morbido - new colours
      - Cordovan - natural colour.
  • Davinci:
      - Roroma Classic new colours: Blue (advance sale) & Renga (Itoya limited edition)
      - Limited Edition “モウリス” (Maurice) Series: Mint, Rose & Coral
  • Bindex:
      - Binders - three designs: fish, puppies, and ??
      - ??: A5 & Bible rings have antique finish - particular feature is that it has a large ring, yet does not have a belt which is typical match for binder rings of this size.
  • KNOX/PLOTTER:
      - Advance sale of Authen MINI6 in Blue and Green - 10 units each. KNOX did announce that it would be available from their online store starting Dec [see reference post]. More closeup photos available here.
      - Plotter - limited edition colours in shrink leather. M5 cover comes with a leather shitajiki.
      - Note: An extensive show-and-talk by Plotter for this release can be viewed here.
  • Ashford:
      - Neofinard in Lavender,
      - Neofinard M6 Pink now available with a 19mm ring, and Bible with 25mm ring.
  • Ei Publishing (publisher of Shumi no bungu-bako and System Techo Style):
      - Note: They usually collaborate with different makers to produce their special edition releases.
      - Galuchat M5 in Pink is introduced. Shimizu-san who makes another appearance mentions that the stingray leather can last for a thousand years. Heh!
      - New: Irvine 2 M6 in 19mm rose-gold ring, square-back design. New M5 covers.
      - New: A revised Bible-size catalogue of all commercially available fountain pen inks in Japan. It was first introduced in 2019 in the same event (purchasable here) and this year we have its revised edition.
  • AQDO: Crocodile embossed leather cover.
  • PTM: Monet’s Japanese Footbridge cover, available in Bible and M5 size, with gold plated ring.
  • Brithouse:
      - Pinnochio cover available in 3 colors, only 5 units available.
      - The green one is meant to be available Nov 13 so it was not introduced.
      - Gold cover and other shiny ones are introduced, made with goat leather and printed with different designs. Also available in M5 size.
  • Refills (event-limited items):
      - Maruman’s Mnemosyne: Available in Bible size, with the introduction of the M5 size this year! (Oh, I’d give a kidney to stock up on these!! I wish they would make it commercially available, but I do understand that they are also trying to build a following for their loose-leaf system so helping competition isn’t exactly smart.)
      - Kunisawa “Fine Refill Pad”, with its gold & black plated sides.
      - Bindex returns with M5 refills, using Noritsu (of NOLTY fame) paper. (LOL. They make a stab at Nagasawa, notorious for having literally every refill in the market and more, that they have a refill that is new and not available at their stores.)
      - Kamiterior - Available in M5, M6 and Bible sized. Each packaging color is geared towards different paper use, such as for fountain pen ink, etc. Each packet is also composed of 5 different papers.
  • Brelio on display (first two days of the event):
      - Minerva box and Cordovan.
      - Leather care cream.

In conclusion, shoppers who spent more than 10000 yen on wares will receive a complimentary commemorative pin badge.

Knox/Plotter Weekly IGTV: Narrow Size vol. 2

Watch on Instagram. If you missed vol. 1, you can also watch it here.

Continuation of the Narrow size introduction video. Last week, Shimizu-san (chief editor of Shumibun) crashed the party with a System Techo Style Vol. 5 post-release discussion so they had to resume the Narrow series this week.

Fortunately, there were no distractions this time (heh) and pretty much every Narrow size line from Knox and Plotter were covered.