Alors, voici le texte de l’e-mail envoyé à Sanzen Paper Manufacturing ; Ce bel anglais au ton ”business” est l’œuvre de tab.
Your company recently announced that an agreement has been reached for taking over part of the Tomoe River activities.
The news came as a relief to our fountain-pen community
www.stylo-plume.org, the largest French-speaking group of pen aficionados. After following Tomoegawa announcements for over a year, as well as all kinds of rumors circulating in the fountain-pen communities worldwide, we are glad that the transfer has been made possible and we sincerely hope that Tomoe River Paper will live on, especially the 52 g/sm version which we particularly appreciate for its distinctive texture and coating, two specific features that enhance the inks colors and shading.
As effective Nov 28th, your company will start manufacturing and selling Tomoe River paper products, including the 52 g/sm. Although we understand that continuity in the output is difficult to achieve, we are also particularly concerned about the ink and fountain-pen friendly qualities of the paper to come.
A major change already took place last year when the production was transferred to Machine N. 9. We immediately contacted Mr Katoh, at Tomoe River Sales Dept. who kindly sent us some sample sheets of the new 52 g/sm ; our community set up a workgroup of experienced fountain-pen users in order to test it and a report was sent to Mr Katoh on Oct. 24th, 2020 (see attached copy).
As per our findings, the "Machine N. 9" 52 g/sm turned out to be less fountain-pen and ink-friendly than the previous one, despite undisputable ink-jet printing quality improvements.
We found the paper to have a higher density structure, which resulted in a less pleasant touch, and a clearly thinner mineral coating, both possibly responsible for what we perceived as a slightly lower quality paper during our tests.
Paper quality is a major concern for us, for our calligraphic and artistic work entirely relies on it.
We therefore wonder what Tomoe River will be like in the future: all the members of our community sincerely hope that Sanzen will try and set the machines back to the configuration of the "old" TR 52 g/sm.
We would particularly appreciate if you could send us some sample sheets of the paper you are going to produce, once it is "officially" released, as it may take long for the new stocks to reach France. We would be happy to test it, as we did last year on the New TR, and to share the results with you.
As a spokesperson for the community of stylo-plume.org, I thank you for taking the time to read my letter and to share our concerns.
Respectfully,
A suivre ...