I get so excited when I find a new line of ink! The manufacturer of this line is Teranishi and I’ve come across two lines of their ink – Guitar and Taisho Roman. I have three of the Taisho Roman inks to show today. I picked these up from St. Louis Art Supply for $18.95 each which works out to $0.47 per mL.
The external packaging for the Taisho inks is almost identical to some of the Taccia inks, perhaps giving hints to the actual ink manufacturer. The bottle contains 40mL of ink and has a small tag attached with space for a tiny swatch of the ink although the paper used for the tag is too absorbent to show the ink color accurately.
The three ink colors I have here are Gentle Green, Smoky Navy, and Opera Rose.
Opera Rose is an interesting color – a bit under saturated terracotta or salmon orange/pink/brown. It shades but not dramatically.
Papier Plume’s 011 ink is a few shades darker than Opera Rose, but the color is a match.
Smoky Navy has some great shading and is a lovely blue-black ink. Occasionally a hint of sheen shows up but only in the swatch.
I had a hard time finding a match to Smoky Navy in my collection. The lightest portion of the swatch is a match with Diamine Prussian Blue, and the darker areas appeared to match Robert Oster Thunderstorm, but the camera brings out much more green in Smoky Navy.
I saved my favorite of the batch for last. Gentle Green. It immediately reminded me of Taccia Sabimidori with the way is wrote blue but dried to a definite green.
When comparing Gentle Green to Sabimidori, though, the colors were further apart than I had imagined. The heavier applications of Sabimidori are close to the color in Gentle Green, but the overall color is quite different. Wearingeul Mad Hatter is a good match.
The first page below is Tomoe River (TR7) paper
Next is Midori MD paper – this paper is cream rather than the white of the other two examples.
Finally, Cosmo Air Light 83gsm paper.
Here’s another shot of the Cosmo Air Light paper, turned to catch the sheen in both Gentle Green and Smoky Navy.
Scrolling through the photos of the paper types, you may have noticed how different the Taisho Roman inks appear on each. Gentle Green is the most obvious, but all three colors change between papers. I’ve photographed pairs of notebooks to show how much they can change.
Tomoe River 52gsm is on the left with Cosmo Air Light 83gsm on the right.
Cosmo Air Light 83gsm is on the left with Midori MD on the right. These don’t even look like the same inks.
So which ink and paper combination is your favorite?
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were purchased by me for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
In terms of manufacturer, what I’ve heard is that Teranishi makes Taccia inks (not the other way round).
I’ve been loving Smoky Navy so much so that resisting others in their line is tough!
Opera Rose on the Cosmo paper is my favorite! Definitely picking up a bottle of this. Thanks for swatching!