Recently Ana presented me with a Sea Foam L12 Erste from Hinze Pen Co (you can find her original review here) and I was presented with a common problem: what color ink am I going to use?
I’m someone who loves all kinds of ink colors, and by virtue of working for The Desk, I come into a lot of ink (free samples, purchases, and more). It’s always exciting to play with new colors, but it also means I have a drawer full of possibilities every time it’s time to fill up.
How do you choose an ink for a pen? Sometimes I like to go matchy-matchy, but sometimes I like to go for a contrast. Do you choose colors based on how it will look or how the pen makes you feel? For instance, in this case I could have gone with a burgundy (my first instinct was Papier Plume Bootlegger’s Sacrament or DeAtramentis Deepwater Obsession but then I looked at the seafoam green resin (with just a hint of shimmer) and wanted something and settled for Taccia Sabimidori – a rusty green that turns blue (almost like indigo oxidizing).
This also brings me to a larger question, how do you pick which ink colors you’d like to own? I have a drawer full of many of the hues in the rainbow (I was tempted to say all the hues, but I know that’s not true!). I do try and only purchase bottles of ink that I like enough to use continually, and don’t overlap too heavily with shades I already own, but at some point I feel like there are diminishing returns in finding something new and different to add to the collection? And let’s not talk about how many years of refills I have stored in that drawer! (In knitting we have an acronym SABLE – stash acquired beyond life expectancy – I feel like it might apply here.)
Anyway, thanks for joining me for some inky musings on a grey November day!
Hi Laura! I have many more inks than what I see in your drawer–at age 70, I realize most of this is SABLE (we use the term in embroidery, too!). I feel a little guilty about it, but I am helpless against the siren song of beautiful colors. Luckily, I have family and friends who love fountain pens, too, so my ludicrous stash will be enjoyed by them someday. … Like you, I sometimes match and sometimes contrast. I think I like contrasting best! … I enjoy your posts, and Ana’s, too!
Well, my ink supply is large enough that I passed SABLE quite some time ago. I keep quite a few pens inked at the same time. I’m afraid to count them but it’s probably about 40 +/- . I only change inks when one is written dry and has been cleaned. Then I choose based on my existing currently inked list. Sometimes to help me decide I count how many inks I already have in pens are in each color group (blues, teals, purples, browns, etc.). I look at what I have the least of (though some I’ll always have in low numbers, like yellows or greys), and choose accordingly.