About US

From Reviewer to Maker

SIMEICHU began with years of looking closely at fountain pens.

Since 2016, our founder has been writing original fountain pen reviews through the Chinese pen community “钢笔爱好者” (Pen Enthusiast), which now has nearly 50,000 followers. Over the years, hundreds of original reviews have also been published and archived on nonopen.com.

After handling, testing, and writing about so many pens, we came to understand fountain pens from more than one angle: how they look, how they feel in the hand, how they write, how they are made, and where many products still fall short.

Around 2020, we began developing our own pens.

The goal was never simply to make something beautiful. We wanted to create writing instruments that met our own standards for design, craftsmanship, writing performance, and daily usability.

Why We Started

Many wooden fountain pens on the market follow a similar formula: a generic metal grip section paired with a wooden cap and barrel. The result can look disconnected, feel too thin in the hand, or create an uncomfortable step between the section and the barrel.

We wanted to approach wooden pens differently.

A pen made from wood should not only show the beauty of the material. It should also feel balanced, comfortable, refined, and reliable as a writing tool. This belief led us to design our own structures, proportions, and production methods.

How We Make Our Pens

In the early years, we worked closely with independent craftsmen and experimented with many materials, including solid wood, figured wood, stone, resin, rubber, stabilized wood, and lacquer.

Over time, our process has evolved. Today, we rely more on CNC machining for precision, followed by careful hand sanding and polishing to preserve the natural character of each material.

This approach allows us to bring together two qualities that are often difficult to balance: accurate modern manufacturing and the warmth of natural materials.

It also led us to reorganize our product line. Some earlier models and materials have been refined, standardized, or temporarily retired. What you see from SIMEICHU today is a renewed collection, gradually rebuilt around clearer standards.

Materials With Meaning

Wood remains one of our most important materials. We choose distinctive and often precious woods, using restrained surface treatment so the natural grain, texture, and warmth of the material can remain visible and tactile.

We have also developed stabilized wood pens, where color, pattern, and structure create a more expressive visual language. In the future, we hope to work more directly on custom patterns instead of relying only on ready-made stabilized wood blanks.

Beyond wood, we are also exploring lacquer. China has a long and rich tradition of lacquer craftsmanship, with several important regional lacquer cultures. By working with skilled lacquer artisans, we hope to develop pens that carry this tradition into objects made for daily writing.

The Meaning of SIMEICHU

The name SIMEICHU comes from the classical Chinese phrase “四美具，二难并”, written by the poet Wang Bo more than a thousand years ago.

The phrase describes a rare moment when beauty, joy, scenery, and experience come together. For us, it has become a way to think about making objects.

We want to bring together Chinese materials, traditional craftsmanship, and modern precision. We are interested in tradition not as decoration, but as something that can be understood, refined, and made useful again through contemporary design.

At the same time, we do not believe cultural meaning should come at the cost of function.

A fountain pen must first write well. It should feel comfortable in the hand, start reliably, and remain dependable in daily use. For example, some of our newer pens use an improved sealing structure so they can still start smoothly even after being left unused for days.

This is the idea behind SIMEICHU: original writing instruments shaped by long experience, built with respect for tradition, and made to be used.

An Original Studio From China

SIMEICHU is an independent fountain pen studio from China, created for writers and collectors around the world.

Although our business is registered to serve international customers, our design, development, production, finishing, and shipping are based in China. This is not a compromise. It is an essential part of who we are.

We believe Chinese-made writing instruments can be more than efficient manufacturing or familiar forms. They can carry original design, cultural depth, refined materials, and dependable everyday function.

Every SIMEICHU product is developed independently by our own team, from concept and structure to material selection, proportions, machining, finishing, and writing experience.

Our goal is not to copy what already exists, but to create original writing instruments from China with a clear point of view and a standard of our own.