The Well-Appointed Desk

On the seventh day of Inkmas I couldn’t resist featuring Kyo-no-oto #7 Hisoku ($28 for 40ml bottle). This smoky blue grey color is one of my favorite ink colors. When I first got into fountain pens, one of the first bottles of ink I bought was De Atramentis Pigeon Blue which is not too dissimilar in color and has remained one of my favorite ink colors though De Atramentis inks can be a little finicky to use as they are what I tend to describe as “watery” and others describe as wet. As a result, Pigeon Blue can often run a bit wild or make my lines look wider than I intended on certain papers or with certain pens.

So…

Hisoku is the perfect remedy since Kyo-no-oto inks are known to be drier inks. I think of them as sometimes feeling a little sandy or gritty if I am using super smooth paper and a super smooth nib. After the ink dries, I can actually feel the ink standing up on the paper and it feels a little chalky. That’s not a bad thing or it doesn’t have to be. It means my spidery fine lines stay fine and legible and the ink performs better on crappy office paper. Not great, but better.

Hisuku also has shading and a lovely reddish, purple sheen. The sheen will be more noticeable on paper like Tomoe River than on Rhodia but it creates a nice edge on the letterforms with the wider nib.

Pelikan Edelstein Aquamarine is probably the only other ink color I could find that was even close to Hisoku or Pigeon Blue. Organics Studio Nickel is lighter and starts to veer into the turquoise realm.

While I love Pigeon Blue and would never dissuade anyone from loving on a color based on service birds, Hisoku is going to be my next purchase as my Pigeon Blue is almost empty. Does Hisoku translate to “pigeon”?

TOOLS

• Paper: Rhodia Uni-Blank No. 16 with 7mm guide sheet
• Pens: Empire vintage traveling dip nib holder with Zebra G titanium nib ($33.50 per 10-pack), Esterbrook #2442 nib in a Shawn Newton custom nib holder
• Swatches: Col-o-Ring Ink Testing Cards
• Brush: Blick Studio #0 Synthetic Round
• Ink: Kyo-no-oto #7 Hisoku ($28 for 40ml bottle)

DISCLAIMER: This item was sent to me free of charge by Vanness Pen Shop for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

On the sixth day of Inkmas, the ink fairy gave to me…

Kyo-no-oto #6 Adzukiiro ($28 for 40ml bottle)! Yes. There is are NEW Kyo-no-oto colors and my own personal ink fairy made sure I got a sample of it ASAP.

Like all of the previous Ky-no-oto ink colors, this is a muted yet rich color. It’s a sophisticated  brick red. There is an ever-so-slight undertone of pink but the overall quality of this color is much more ruddy. It’s a red-burgundy but not pinky at all, I promise. My photos may have skewed cooler than intended.

There is some shading in the ink and Kyo-no-oto is a bit drier ink than others. It almost feels sandy to me which works well, especially on less agreeable papers though in some fine Japanese nibs you may have issues with hard starts. The advantages of the softer, more sophisticated colors and the ink that sits up on the page might be worth keeping some scrap paper for priming your pen every now and again.

For color comparison, Diamine Syrah is probably the closest in hue. Diamine Oxblood is a little more orange-y. Oster Maroon 1789 is more reddish and Bungbox Tears of a Clown more orange-brown. Montblanc Shakespeare Velvet Red is much darker, redder and there is no shading to speak of. Both Grenat and Antoine de St-Exupéry lean a bit cooler.

I tend to convince people to buy at least one bottle of Kyo-no-oto. For the bottle alone,  because I think the bottles are beautiful in their simplicity. It’s the only ink bottle I have on my desk at work. So, if this color speaks to you or you think it would make a great gift, I say buy it.

TOOLS

• Paper: Rhodia Uni-Blank No. 16 with 7mm guide sheet
• Pens: Empire vintage traveling dip nib holder with Zebra G titanium nib ($33.50 per 10-pack), Esterbrook #2442 nib in a Shawn Netwon custom nib holder
• Swatches: Col-o-Ring Ink Testing Cards
• Brush: Blick Studio #0 Synthetic Round
• Ink: Kyo-no-oto #6 Adzukiiro ($28 for 40ml bottle)

DISCLAIMER: This item was sent to me free of charge by Vanness Pen Shop for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

On the fourth day of Inkmas, I just went with my favorite color, nothing SUB about it… Robert Oster Sublime ($17 for 50ml bottle)!

Not only is lime green one of my favorite everyday colors, its one of my favorite holiday decorating colors too. I love to decorate with lime, sugar pink, minty blue and silver for what I lovingly call Fairy Christmas. Faded bottle brush trees, Shiny Brite ornaments, mercury glass and vintage elves are my favorites. So, to me Oster Sublime is a perfectly holiday green.

It’s also the closest I’ve found to the spot-on Well-Appointed Desk lime green. And trust me, I’ve looked. This ink has some nice shading though it does look a bit darker in finer nibs. There’s no sheening, but for me, that’s okay. I just want juicy lime green here.

See? I’ve been looking for a lime green for awhile. This is just  small smattering of the greens in my stash. Some skew more olive-y and some grassier. While Chiku-Rin looks great on the swatch, it tend to write much lighter. Vert Olive is a nice color but J. Herbin inks are notoriously watery and tend to misbehave on a lot of papers. Kobe #43 Gakuen Toshi is a bright summery green like Diamine Meadow and so neither fit my lime criteria, thought they are lovely colors in their own right. Diamine Light Green is close but is a little too green with not enough yellow for me. So, unless something else comes along, Sublime is my best option for lime green.Who knew it was so hard to find the perfect lime?

TOOLS

• Paper: Rhodia Uni-Blank No. 16 with 6mm guide sheet
• Pens: Empire vintage traveling dip nib holder with Zebra G titanium nib ($33.50 per 10-pack), Esterbrook #2442 nib in a Shawn Newton custom nib holder
• Swatches: Col-o-Ring Ink Testing Cards
• Brush: Blick Studio Synthetic #0 Round
• Ink: Robert Oster Sublime (50ml bottle for $17)