Loiminchay Qian Long Snow with White Jade Clip Fountain Pen

Loiminchay Snow with Jade Clip Fountain Pen – Limited Edition Masterpiece

The Loiminchay Snow with Jade Clip Fountain Pen is more than a writing instrument—it is an artistic statement, the result of vision, memory, and craftsmanship brought together in one of the rarest modern pens ever created.

Founded in New York in the early 2000s, Loiminchay was established by Patrick Chu to bridge the artistry of East and West. Every Loiminchay pen blends ancient decorative traditions—urushi lacquer, jade carving, eggshell inlay—with modern fine-writing engineering. Production is extremely limited, with each model crafted in small batches by master artisans.

The Snow pen was inspired by Chu’s childhood memory of seeing snow for the first time in rural China: “snowflakes danced in hordes with various rhythm … almost like Jackson Pollock’s painting.” To capture this fleeting vision, he chose the centuries-old Japanese technique of rankaku (eggshell inlay), since pure white cannot be achieved with lacquer alone. Tiny fragments of white eggshell are individually set into layers of black urushi lacquer, polished and sealed through dozens of cycles, creating the effect of snowflakes falling against a night sky.

What makes this particular example extraordinary is its white jade clip—a detail reserved for only a handful of Snow pens. Shaping and mounting jade to a pen body is a technical challenge few ateliers have attempted. The cool, translucent stone evokes shards of ice, heightening the snowy imagery and anchoring the pen as a singular collector’s piece.

The design itself unfolds like a story:

• Cap top and cap represent the sky and future, where snow is abundant, each flake unique.

• Barrel midsection is earth and present, with sparser flakes dancing in all directions.

• Barrel end symbolizes the past, where snow has settled into the ground, its form changed forever.

Technically, the Snow is one of the most demanding pens Loiminchay ever produced. Each body undergoes approximately 37 stages of lacquering, inlay, curing, and polishing over several months. Too much polishing removes eggshell; too little leaves imperfections. The finished body is then fitted with a large #8 Bock 18k gold nib from Germany, an oversized ebonite feed from France, and heavy gold-plated rings that hold the assembly together.

Only 70 Snow pens were produced across all variants, divided into tiny sub-editions by clip material: silver, pink gold, and several types of jade. Of these, only 20 pieces carried white jade clips, making them the rarest of the rare.

The result is a pen that appears deceptively simple—black and white—but whose simplicity reveals the immense difficulty of its creation. It is at once a functional fountain pen, a memory cast in urushi and jade, and a work of art meant to be held and used, connecting the human hand with nature’s fleeting beauty.

Key Features:

• Extremely limited production: only 70 Snow pens worldwide; just 20 with white jade clips

• Handcrafted urushi lacquer body with rankaku (eggshell inlay) snow motif

• Oversized ebonite body based on the Qian Long silhouette

• Large #8 18k gold nib with ebonite feed for exceptional writing performance

• Piston filling mechanism with generous capacity

• Symbolic three-stage design representing sky (future), earth (present), and ground (past)

• Jade clip—exceptionally rare, requiring unique technical expertise

• Approx. 5–6 months required to produce each pen; ~37 steps in finishing process

• A true fusion of Eastern artistry and Western fine writing engineering