Fathoming the Unfathomable

The new Kanilea Pen Co. Blue Moana fountain pen and Mau Loa cap band are inspired by the ocean's depths and universal interconnectivity.

- NICKY PESSAROFF

Dive with Kanilea Pen Co. into the crystal blue waters off the coast of the Hawaiian Islands. Take a deep breath and plunge, and once you're a few dozen feet below the surface, don't look down, fascinating as it may seem. Instead, look up through the prismatic, clear water toward the sunlight dappling the surface-a sight almost too bright to bear, if not for the enormous sea turtle coasting the surface.

Now, look through the thin layers of acrylic that compose the new Kanilea Blue Moana writing instrument: those surface layers of light blue, dark blue, and dappled white opacity and the translucent inner layers of sapphire and violet, those swirls like cresting waves, that slight chatoyance like the sun's rays hitting the ocean surface.

Those layers of color and light are not intended to evoke the sky-although they might to you, and for Kanilea's Karol and Hugh Scher, that's perfectly okay-but rather the ocean. And not the ocean as it appears next to black sand such as on the Kanilea Honokalani, and not the look of crisp ocean next to swirling white sand such as on the iconic Kahakai.

Rather, the new Kanilea Blue Moana writing instrument and the correspondingly released Mau Loa Argentium silver cap band represent the depths of the pristine blue Pacific Ocean that lap the shores of the Hawaiian Islands, the regenerative currents that feed Hawaii's flora and fauna, the endless renewal that occurs as those ocean currents swell and the trade winds blow.

It's all about the "felt" for Kanilea: the feeling of a pen gliding effortlessly across the page, as if the pen is merely an extension of the hand; and the feeling evoked by a memory, a moment in time captured in acrylic swirls. It starts with one of the many photos Hugh or Karol snapped on one of their trips to Hawaii during the past 40 years.