Pilot produced this pen in 2008 to mark ninety years of the corporation. Limited to 900 numbered pieces worldwide, it has been out of production since. It is no longer available through any retail channel, and the occasions on which examples surface on the secondary market are uncommon.

The decoration technique is raden (螺鈿): iridescent mother-of-pearl fragments, hand-inlaid into multiple layers of urushi lacquer. Each fragment is selected individually for its colour and cut to shape before being set into the wet urushi surface. Once adhered, the fragments are sealed under additional lacquer layers, then polished until the shell emerges flush with the surrounding lacquer. The reflective properties of the nacre interact with the black urushi ground to produce a surface that shifts between pink, silver and blue depending on the angle and quality of the light. Because each fragment is placed by hand and no two pieces of shell are identical, every example of this pen is a genuinely singular object. There is no two examples with the same distribution of iridescent tones.

The subject of the decoration is the toki (鴇), the Japanese crested ibis, Nipponia nippon. Its plumage carries a colour so particular that the Japanese language gave it a dedicated word: toki-iro (鴇色), a pale tone that oscillates between white, rose and apricot according to the light. This colour is considered in classical Japanese aesthetics to be among the most delicate in the natural palette, and the iridescence of the nacre reproduces its shifting quality in a way that no pigment could match. The species came close to extinction during the twentieth century through hunting, agricultural intensification and pesticide use. The last individual born in Japan, a female named Kin, died in captivity in 2003, ending the indigenous lineage five years before this pen was produced. Reintroduction programmes using specimens offered by China have since rebuilt a population on Sado Island. A pen bearing this image, made at the peak of that effort, carries a weight that goes beyond the purely decorative.

The pen is fitted with an 18-karat gold nib in size Medium.

Condition: never inked, complete with its original presentation box.

The lacquer body presents minor areas of surface tarnish consistent with seventeen years of storage, treated and stabilised with camellia oil, the traditional Japanese method for conserving urushi.

The mother-of-pearl inlay is intact throughout, with no cracks or losses.