Alternately, other inks have languished for months or even years. It’s not that they are not beautiful colors its just that I am likely to have three or more similar bottles of ink.

I’ve become aware, over the years, my penchant for fine nibs limits the usability of inks that are lighter in color. Some lighter inks are often too light to be usable in a fine nib pen.

Also, 600 bottles is a lot of ink to store. I had it in my head that I could get the collection down to 100 bottles but everyone who knows me has laughed at my optimism. While I appreciate a good declutter, I also love having all the things I might need to make or create.

Over the years, I have gone on various adventures to fine the “perfect” grey ink, the one-true lime green ink and a mission to find the finest plummy purple color. This has left me with several, close-but-not-quite-right inks that have sat idle in my collection. I have also made various attempts made to bring a red or orange ink into my collection. I am just not a fan of red and orange inks. They’re pretty but I never want to ink up a pen with them.

Each month, I have been selecting a few brands and attempt to edit out some of the many bottles I own. So far, I’ve gone through my Montblanc inks, Robert Oster, and Sailor inks along with a few random inks. Patrons got early access to these sale inks but now I’m opening it up to regular readers of the blog.

This ink declutter/purge means that if you love red or orange inks, have been looking for that perfect grey ink or just want to try a lot of inks cheap, my loss is your gain.

If you’d like to get early access to sales like this or to participate in our monthly pen and book chat, consider subscribing to our Patreon.

The post Ink Declutter, Vol. 1 appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

Set #1 is a brighter assortment and includes  Haha, Nekoyanagi, Sakura, Nadeshiko.

I swatched each bottle on Col-o-ring paper and then used a 1″ circle punch to cut the swatches and glue onto the top of the lids.

It’s easy to see the range of colors in Set #1 when you view the cap swatches from above.

The Set #2 is a bit more muted and includes Ayame, Hinoki, Fuji, and Koke.

On the Col-o-ring cap swatches, there is a bit more diversity in the colors of Set #2 but it’s definitely a more wintery feeling palette.

I have debated endlessly with myself which set I like more and I can’t decide. Which set is your favorite?

Besides being a great option to get several inks in one kit, the bottles are smaller than the regular Manyo line (each bottle is 50ml) so its also great if you prefer smaller bottles of ink.

Unfortunately, Dromgoole’s is currently sold out of these sets, hence the eye candy post rather than a full review. These sets are an overseas exclusive so when they sell out they are gone! Full-sized bottles of the Manyo inks are still available for $24 each (50ml) and some other online pen retailers may still have them in stock so if you want to get your hands on these, I recommend googling ASAP. They won’t last long.

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Dromgooles for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

The post Eye Candy: Sailor Manyo Dual Shading Mini Sets appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

So, what do you do when the power goes out? You organize your ink stash, of course!

Regardless of whether you have 10 inks or 200, looking through your collection and determining what you like, don’t like, where you have accumulated a lot of the same color or realize you don’t have a single orange ink, taking time to review your ink stash can be helpful. Especially if you have plans to attend a pen show in the near future or want to keep yourself from continually buying the same turquoise ink from different makers over and over.

Step One: Inventory

If you have access to power (and I hope you do!) you can start by using a spreadsheet or FPC (Fountain Pen Companion) to inventory your collection. This is a great way to get on top of your collection. Exactly how many bottles and samples currently exist in your collection. Are any bottles almost empty? Have any bottles never been touched?

This is also a good opportunity to see if you have any specialty inks in  your collection. I believe in my heart of hearts that everyone should have a bottle of black ink and/or a permanent or document ink (Platinum Carbon Black does both very well). I also think everyone should have one bottle of sheening ink — it doensn’t have to be a super sheener but the effect of sheen on paper is something that is a great addition to an ink collection and reminds us all why we fell in love with inks in the first place.

Do you have a stash of shimmer inks? Do you use them? If not, why not? Doing an ink inventory assessment is a good chance to evaluate the whys of your collection. Maybe you’ve never bought a shimmer ink and by doing a review of your collection, you realize THAT shimmer is the next ink you need to try. See? This is fun. Start making your shopping list.

Step Two: Swatch Your Inks

The first step is to just get an idea of what colors you have. You can use Col-o-ring cards to make a color wash and then label the swatch.  I have added small codes on my cards. Since I sort my inks by brand in. my Col-o-ring and by color in my Col-o-dex, I use a simple “B” for bottle or “S” for sample so that I know how much ink I have of a specific color. I am in the process of adding additional symbols as well to increase my organizational acumen. The first addition is an “x” over the “B” or “S” if I’ve used up the ink (more specific to samples) or gave it away/sold it. I would like to keep the swatch card for comparison purposes so I don’t buy the same color again.

The next step is to make it easier to browse through bottles. Using two methods, I created ink swatch samples onto my ink bottles. Bottles that had large flat tops got a swatch cut from Col-o-ring paper using a 1″ circle hole punch. I attached them with E6000 adhesive or Super Glue (glue stick won’t adhere to the plastic caps). Let the paper dry completely before cutting out the dots so the paper doesn’t tear in the hole punch. Ask me how I know this?

For smaller bottles or bottles without flat caps, I use Col-o-ring Dippers to label my bottles. I dip the Dipper card  into the bottle, add the brand and color name to the tag and then tie it around the neck of the bottle with string. Bonus: It makes each bottle look like a gift to myself.

Since I store my inks in an Ikea Alex drawer unit, labelling the bottles on the top make it easy to pull open the drawer and see the ink colors. Clearly, there are more bottles that need to be labelled but its progress.

Step Three: Purge

After inventorying, swatching and labelling your inks, you may discover you have some inks you don’t like or don’t want anymore. By going through this inventorying process, you can figure out what inks you might own in excess and where you may have a gap in your color spectrum.

If you discover you have samples you no longer want, spark up a swap with other pen fans. There are bound to be folks interested in a trade or swap on Pen Addict Slack, in any of the various Subreddits or Discord server. You might even find folks willing to swap or trade whole bottles of ink, just be sure to package them well and resist the urge to ship inks in the coldest times of the year as they do have a tendency to freeze. You could also sell excess ink.

With a current collection of over 600 bottles of ink, I realized that I have more ink then I could use in a three lifetimes. So I took on the challenge of reviewing and curating my ink collection to be a smaller, more easy to use collection. No one needs as many bottles of turquoise ink as I own.

While I love swatching and looking at all the colors, it was time to streamline the collection.

I’ve started the process of selling some of my excess inks. The first inks listed are from my Montblanc stash (Patrons got a first crack at the offerings, FYI). While I believe everyone should own one of Montblanc’s classic inks in a shoe bottle, unless the ink is a color you love and will use regularly, more than a couple is excessive (even for me). So I am keeping a smaller collection of Montblanc and selling off the rest. I’ll be continuing to list inks I’ve culled from my collection over the next few months and then I’ll probably do some ink sample grab bags because I have 100s of samples and nowhere to put them all.

Have you done a deep curation of your inks? What did you discover?

The post Curating an Ink Collection appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

Pilot Iroshizuku inks are now available in cartridges ($14 for 6 cartridges). Is this something we wanted as a pen community? I am not sure. If I said yes, I don’t thin I would have imagined each cartridge to cost $2.33 each. I mean I love Ku-Jaku but I like being able to put the ink into any pen that I own not just Pilot-specific cartridge-accepting pens.

Pilot Iroshizuku bottled ink is about $24 for 50ml (that’s $0.48 per ml). The bottled ink can be used in any fountain pen with a converter or piston filling mechanism while the cartridges will only work with Pilot fountain pens.

Of course, if you or someone you know is buying their first-ever fountain pen like a widely-recommended Pilot Metropolitan, then a pack of Pilot Iroshizuku cartridges would be a great starting point.

So, if you are trying to build a great starter kit for a graduate, fountain pen-curious friend’s birthday or what we like to think of as a “first taste is free” gift, then pairing a Pilot Metropolitan and a pack of Pilot Iroshizuku cartridges is a good way to do it. For more experienced fountain pen fans, this may not be your most flexible or cost-effective method to keep your ink needs met.

Of course, I say all this and then I thought “Oh, this is great to have at work in case my pens run our of ink during the day.” I think I drank the ink.

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Vanness Pen Shop for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

The post Mini-Review: Pilot Iroshizuku Ink Cartridges appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

Its a bright, vivid orange to help see you through the last grey days of winter. When compared to other oranges in my collection, I’d say its a bit brighter and happier than Sailor Apricot, if that’s possible. This ink will definitely show best with a wide nib to get all the shading,

TO ENTER: Leave a comment below and tell me what your favorite orange ink is. Play along and type in something. It makes reading through entries more interesting for me, okay? One entry per person.

If you have never entered a giveaway or commented on the site before, your comment must be manually approved by our highly-trained staff of monkeys before it will appear on the site. Our monkeys are underpaid and under-caffeinated so don’t stress if your comment does not appear right away. Give the monkeys some time.

FINE PRINT: All entries must be submitted by 10pm CST on Friday, February 24, 2023. All entries must be submitted at wellappointeddesk.com, not Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook, okay? Winner will be announced on Monday. Winner will be selected by random number generator from entries that played by the rules (see above). Please include your actual email address in the comment form so that I can contact you if you win. I will not save email addresses or sell them to anyone — pinky swear. If winner does not respond within 5 days, I will draw a new giveaway winner. Shipping via USPS first class is covered. Additional shipping options or insurance will have to be paid by the winner. We are generous but we’re not made of money. US and APO/AFO only, sorry.

DISCLAIMER: Items included in this post were purchased with funds from our amazing Patrons. You can help support this blog by joining our Patreon. Please see the About page for more details.

The post Giveaway: Sailor 2023 Pen Show Exclusive Ink appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

Inside the world of fountain pens, there are several areas for people to focus. Some people concentrate on vintage pens, others love unique filling systems, and the list goes on. Personally, my favorite fountain pen focus is ink.

I first became interested in fountain pens when I saw the vast number of ink colors that are available. This interest soon became an obsession and I currently have too many inks (bottles, samples, cartridges) to keep track of without help. I fell back on a spreadsheet to keep track of my growing collection, but it wasn’t exactly useful other than a place I could look up ink to see if I already owned a sample before purchasing another!

Then the Fountain Pen Companion was created. Urban Hafner, a fountain pen person located in Germany, took on the challenge of ink tracking and created an online database where users can enter their inks, track them, and visualize their collections.

Over time, Urban has refined Fountain Pen Companion (or FPC) to include additional features including a friendlier ink entry screen, the ability to compare your ink collection to that of another user, an ink visualization tool, and plenty more.

The visuals don’t end with ink colors. Below is a chart of ink brands by volume.

I can’t talk about Fountain Pen Companion without also mentioning the Leader board. This is a board tracking the top 10 individuals in several areas like number of samples or total number of inks. This is a fun way to feel more in touch with fellow fountain pen people and ink collectors along with the community section and blog. Fountain pen ink reviews have recently been added to help with those new ink acquisitions.

Since this database came from the work of a single individual, I encourage people to think about supporting Urban’s work on his Patreon page. FPC lives on a server that Urban pays for, supports, and maintains.

One last feature I would like to point out – the Fountain Pen Companion has a mascot! The Fountain Pen Capybara was designed by Angela He (InkyConverters) and can be viewed on the FPC blog or on Angela’s Etsy shop (although it is temporarily closed until August).

As a side note, I am not affiliated with Fountain Pen Companion – I’m only a supporter and an avid user who thinks this is an amazing way to keep track of fountain pen ink. If you use FPC, leave a note or send a quick message of thanks to Urban!

The post Fountain Pen Companion appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

Our good friend, Julia van der Wyk, is teaching Ink Wash Painting this August at the San Francisco Pen Show.

We all have way too many inks than we can use in a lifetime so thankfully, Julia will show you lots of painting techniques to allow you to use your fountain pen inks (and any ink really) to paint still life, from nature and much more.  Practice brush handling, experiment with water and paper, and create an art piece in her hands-on workshop.

Class is Sunday, August 28, 2022 from 1-3pm and tuition is $85 including materials. Class is limited to 15 students so you should probably register ASAP to ensure your place. Julia asks that you bring an object to use for your first still life. Check out her Instagram feed for some ideas.

Class fee is separate from pen show entry fee.

There are lots of other interesting classes on the docket for the SF Pen Show. I’ll be working at the show so I won’t be able to attend any classes but I’m looking forward to living vicariously through anyone who is attending the classes.

The post Shameless Plug: Julia van der Wyk’s Ink Wash Painting Class appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

The inks we tested in this batch are clockwise from top left: Tesla Coil, Rotten Seaweed, Antique Sepia, Chimney Soot (Everlasting), Smokebox and Periwinkle. All inks sell for $15-$17 per 60ml bottle.

I’ll start with Rotten Seaweed which is in the range of my favorite colors — that muted lime green. Rotten Seaweed is a bit more gold-green than many in my collection. Its most similar to the Pen Chalet Robert Oster Exclusive Saguaro Green (second swatch from top). J. Herbin Vert Olive is a bit brighter and greener, Oster Chartuese (top sample) is a bit darker. In the middle swatches are Colorverse Pluto & Beyond and Gluon LE Edition from the Standard Model Set. While I have dozens of lime green, these were the closest. Rotten Seaweed is a more muted, golden green. I find it a very intriguing color and the shading gives an array of celery to day-old avocado colors.

Birmingham Pen Co Tesla Coil is a heavy sheening ink in a deep blue with a very visible red/pink sheen. Its a color that is pretty common in the ink world nowadays and is similar to Diamine Maureen, Organics Studio Nitrogen and the Colorverse Dromgoole’s Exclusive NASA Blue.

These inks always remind me of those automotive paint colors that look different in sunlight. Super sheeners like this will catch the light and look more red than blue but in lower, less extreme light or on different paper stocks, the sheen may not be noticeable at all.

Inks this sheening can have some rub off because there is so much pigment that it sits on the surface of the paper. If it comes into contact with any humidity or moisture, the color can smear. Tesla Coil is no more likely to do this than any of these other colors but just be wary. This smearing is of particular concern to lefties and folks who like to use both sides of the paper in their notebooks as there can be some transference.

Ah, Periwinkle! Laura and I were laughing because she’s been reviewing periwinkle hued inks the last few weeks in honor of the Pantone Color of the Year and here I go, encroaching on her theme. Birmingham Pen Co. Periwinkle is  a more orchid reddish purple that some of the colors she’s reviewed (ink 1 and ink 2). Compared to the swatched shown above, Periwinkle as a beautiful shading ink, is a bit darker than Ferris Wheel Press Little Robinia and warmer in hue than Troublemaker Foxglove or Kobe #57 Himeajisai/Hydrangea. Its hard to say definitively if this is my favorite of the lot but its darn close.

Ah, Smokebox. I love a good grey ink an Smokebox is right up there in the shading, neutral/cool grey category along with Kaweco Smokey Grey, Edelstein Moonstone and Montblanc Oyster Grey. Smokebox is a more modestly priced ink when compared to Montblanc and Edelstein but the Kaweco is in a similar price range.

I know it was probably unfair to put Birmingham Chimney Soot Everlasting ink up against the reigning champ of permanent black inks but it’s the only permanent black ink I own. Remarkably, it performed quite well with just a little color transfer  on the largest, most ink saturated writing on th top of this card. On both cards, over the lettering,  I brushed a wet paint brush over the writing to test its waterproofiness. Chimney Soot is a competitor!

The last ink I tried was the Antique Sepia which is a color-shifting ink. It has a lot of mossy green with pools of a warmer pinky-beige and some deeper teal halo-ing. Finding a comp to this weas a challenge. I don’t have a lot of color shifting inks but the Troublemaker colors (Petrichor and Kelp Tea) have some of the same hues but with different over- and under-tones. Kala Abstraction Pigment ink in Sierra Mist is the closest ink I have to the dominant color in Antique Sepia.

Overall, I’m delighted to see how vast the Birmingham Pen Co. ink offerings are and how much they are experimenting with a range of ink properties. Their generous 60ml bottle for approx. $15  is incredibly reasonable for indie-produced inks.

Check out their collection for yourself and let me know what your favorite colors are.

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Birmingham Pen Co. for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

The post A few Birmingham Pen Co. Inks appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

While answering a question about Sailor Apricot recently, I tried to find a full history of the ink’s turbulent past but couldn’t find a clear explanation. So of course, I decided to write one.

One long-running ink line was the Jentle group. This line started with a group of six inks: Sky High, Ultra Marine, Peche, Apricot, Epinard, and Grenade (some include blue-black and black in this group as well).

However, in 2014, Sailor decided to update the Jentle line, with the subtitle Colors of Four Seasons. Four Seasons replaced the six inks with Miruai, Nioi-Sumiri,  Doyou, Souten, Oku-Yama, Yama-Dori, Shigure, and Tokiwa-Matsu.

While there were several inks that were close to the original Jentle inks, they weren’t quite the same. Sky High had been a bit brighter than the new Souten. Oku-Yama was pinker than Grenade. Miruai and Tokiwa-Matsu were both close to Epinard, but not quite. Nothing quite replicated Ultra-Marine and there was no equivalent to Peche (no one complained about that, however). But the one that everyone missed was Apricot.

Soon Sailor Apricot became a currency by itself. Orange-ink-loving individuals hoarded the color when they could. People would exchange small vials of the ink in secret for large amounts of money… well, I don’t think it was ever quite that bad. But it became impossible to find.

Luckily, in 2016 (approximately), Sailor released another eight inks in the Colors of Four Seasons lineup. These inks were: Sakura-Mori, Kin-Mokusei, Yuki-Akari, Irori, Waka-Uguisu, Fuji-Musume, Chu-Shu, and Rikyu-cha.

Finally, Sailor answered the public’s need for an Apricot replacement.

Here’s a quick comparison of (approximately) equal colors between the Jentle inks and the Colors of Four Seasons inks:

But were Kin-Mokusei and Apricot truly equivalent? This was a question that obsessed many ink connoisseurs.  This has been debated many times in the past and is not in the scope of this article. However, I will examine this question in the future.

First, let’s finish the Sailor timeline of these inks.

2017 brought a surprising announcement – Sailor was rereleasing the original 6 Jentle inks! Finally, we could restock our Apricot shelves and complain about Peche again.

Image from Goldspot

At this point, Sailor switched gears from the 50mL jars on ink to the pretty but small 20mL bottles that now make up the Shikiori ink line. Sadly, this change meant that the price per mL jumped to nearly $1/mL (from $0.36 or $0.50 per mL), however, the bottles are easier to store next to one another.

The 20 Shikiori inks combine the Jentle and Colors of Four Seasons (1 and 2) inks with a few inks changed or dropped. The missing colors are Ultra Marine, Peche, Apricot, Epinard, Sky High, Grenade, and Fuji-Musume while new colors include Fuji-Sugata, Yozakura, Yodaki, Yonaga, and Shimoyo.

Shikiori 20mL bottles: Miruai, Nioi-Sumiri, Doyou, Oku-Yama, Yama-Dori, Shigure, Sakura-Mori, Kin-Mokusei, Yuki-Akari, Waka-Uguisu, Chu-Shu, Rikyu-cha, Fuji-Sugata, Yozakura, Yodaki, Yonaga, Shimoyo, Tokiwa-Matsu, Souten, and Irori.

So to summarize this look at one small section of Sailor ink history, I have laid out the various colors and line-ups. In the future, I would love to take a deeper dive into a comparison of the ink colors.

Please note with this chart – the dates are very approximate and should really only be used to create a general timeline. Inks were released and received at varying times depending on retailer locations and availability.

DISCLAIMER: I purchased the items for this review with my own money and all opinions are my own. Please see the About page for more details.

The post Ink Comparison: Kin Mokusei vs Apricot appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

The illustrations are fun although Aphrodite is a bit… not clothed. I do like the fountain pen in each drawing!

Each ink comes in a 50mL glass bottle and the packaging is not much larger than the bottle itself – not excessive but not minimal either.

Poseidon Green is not what I would call green. It is a lovely color, though. Rather than green, it is a teal or even turquoise that leans just a little towards green. Not much shading was seen in writing but it is a beautiful color.

Demeter Brown is an earthy color with a hint of red. In front of my eyes, these three cards looked very similar. under the camera, you can see quite a difference, though. There is some light shading in writing.

Apollo Orange is a very bright color! This is a color that could lead to pen crud if left too long in a pen, especially in a dry environment. Pen crud is a crystalization of the dye in ink, left behind as it dries. It can form crystals or lumps on the pen nib with some colors. It doesn’t harm the pen and typically comes off with a quick dunk in water. The best way to avoid it is to just write more with your pen!

Aphrodite Pink is my favorite of this bunch. A dark rose pink with a brown undertone. There is a bit of shading in writing but not much. Aphrodite is a unique color in my collection – nothing else quite matches it.

Finally, Artemis Navy Blue. I don’t know that I would call this navy blue – it is more a jewel tone sapphire with a bit of purple. There is a hint of sheen that shows up in normal writing – a subtle red. Artemis is a bit darker than Sailor Studio 543.

Finally, a full family photo. (I’m just now noticing I’ve misspelled Laban on Aphrodite…)

I have enjoyed each of these inks – a beautiful collection from Laban and not the typical colors you would expect from a first release of inks. At $20 for 50mL, it is very affordable. I’ve kept Aphrodite in a pen at all time since I purchased the bottle and it has quickly become one of my favorites.

I purchased my bottles and samples from Vanness Pens where you can get a sample for $2.60 or the full bottle for $20.

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were purchased by me and I was not compensated to write this review. Please see the About page for more details.

The post Ink Series Review: Laban Mythology Series appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.