Classic Pens LB5 Madreperlato Prototypes c. 2012

by Jim Mamoulides, March 22, 2024

Classic Pens LB5 Madreperlato prototypes in purple, blue, and red, c. 2012

What Might Have Been

During the prototyping process for the Classic Pens LB5, based on the Sailor King of Pen (or King Profit), several customization decisions were made, including an increase in the overall length of the pen and choice of cap band and its decoration. The most visible customization would be the choice of material and colors for the cap and barrel.

Two early themes for the pens were dragon, with a gold and blue color scheme, and phoenix, with a red color scheme. Sailor created several image mockups of the pen using images of various marbled pearlized resins with multi-colored bands on the cap and barrel to represent these two themes.

Classic Pens LB5 Madreperlato prototypes in gold, bronze, and green, c. 2012

Another material was considered, Madreperlato, a brand of pearlized acrylic made by the Italian company Sintetica. Sintetica provided pages of acrylic buttons (see examples below) showing the available colors. Six colors were chosen, in shades of red, blue, purple, gold, bronze and green. Stacks of semitransparent cast acrylic sheets were then diffusion bonded by Carville into rod blanks for prototyping.

Examples of Sintetica Madreperlato resin samples

The rod blanks were sent to Sailor in Japan and full prototype standard size King of Pen model pens were made in each color. The first batch of prototypes had black cap liners that showed through the translucent material, creating an unacceptible discolored look. The leftmost green and red prototype pens shown below have the black cap liners and reveal how they show through the translucent resin. The solution would be to change the cap liners to a clear type. Another batch was made with clear liners, invisible externally, as shown in the center pen of each color shown below.

The prototypes showed how the colors looked on the actual pens and as a result, they were not chosen for production. New choices were made and the rightmost pen in each color below is the final prototype, which became the production color. Small details like choice of cap liner and how the color actually looks on a physical pen demonstrate why prototyping is important.

Classic Pens LB5 Madreperlato prototypes in green and red, showing progressive changes, through the final prototypes, c. 2012

I’m not certain how many Madreperlato prototypes were made, but it had to be a small number, maybe one or two pens per prototyping batch, maybe two to four in each color, some with clear and some with black cap liners. These final, completely finished prototypes show what the LB5 might have been, given other choices.

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References

"Long Live the King" by Laura Chandler, Pen World, February 2014, pages 50-53, copyright © 2014 World Publications