Scribo Grigio Fountain Pen Ink Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

If you follow Brad's Twitch streams, you'll know Scribo Ink as the ink that goes "thunk." It's a generous 90 ml blown-glass ink bottle in a lovely, creative design that stacks, if you collect a few of them. And once you've tried one, you'll want a few of them.

This is my first Scribo ink, but it won't be my last. This Grigio color lives somewhere at the intersection of grey, teal, and blue, and now so do I. It immediately ranks as a favorite on color alone, but it's also a very well-behaved ink.

The ink is wet and flows nicely, but has a very reasonable dry time of around 20 seconds on Rhodia paper. It shows shading beautifully, and even has a very slight sheen if you get a nice pool of it. It has almost no water resistance, and even the spot where I very carefully dabbed at the water drop is totally washed away, though the ink sat for two days between writing and water test. There's no feathering or bleeding.

Chromatography shows a complex formula for this enchanting color. There's a charcoal tone, with a soft slate blue, and a rose color that insists on photographing as brown, though it's very definitely pink-ish. The rose is a total surprise, making this one of the more delightful inks I've tested. When writing, it's dark enough to be an everyday ink, but it has enough variation in shade that it's more fun that a typical blue-black (sorry, Brad).

Beautiful, clever bottle, check. Gorgeous, complex color, check. Well-behaved writing, check. This ink wins at everything and I totally love it. The huge bottle sells for $39 at Vanness Pens. It's an expensive ink, but not unreasonably so, considering how much you get. Plus, the heavy bottle will help keep your papers from blowing away in a hurricane.

(Vanness Pens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Kala Nostalgia Gemstone Star Garnet Ink Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

It's easy to forget that gems and precious stones don't came out of the ground looking perfectly shaped and polished. While these rocks are highly desirable, they also require considerable effort to find and prepare before they're ready to be placed in a jewelry setting. Like most other things, they start deep in the earth and take on the same colors as earth: dusty, dark, dank shades with a lack of clarity and shine. There's certainly a beauty in the rawness of untouched gems.

Kala Nostalgia Gemstone Star Garnet is one in a series of inks that showcase the raw beauty of precious stones prior to discovery and shaping. Fitting with the idea of nearly indestructible materials and heavy metals, the ink is also highly water resistant. The gray undertone has subtle pops of dusty purple that provide a glimpse into the beauty that may lay beneath the ancient surface.

If you're not familiar, pigmented inks are a bit more permanent than regular water-based inks because they include microscopic particles in the ink that bond with the paper. This means that when the ink is exposed to water it mostly stays put. Water-based ink mostly wash away when exposed to water, so this can be a highly sought after quality if you need to ensure your work isn't compromised if you're caught in a rain storm or spill a drink on your paper. Prolonged submersion may be a bit too much for most inks (and papers) to handle, but reasonable real-world circumstances are mostly an acceptable challenge for pigmented inks.

Kala have several other pigmented ink options, so they're no stranger to the process. The ink goes on smooth when writing and dries fairly quickly. In my testing with a wet medium cursive italic nib, my writing was dry and smudge-proof after about 12-15 seconds — and even a few seconds faster with a fine nib.

Likewise, water drip and submersion tests were impressive. There is some noticeable blur around the edges of the ink lines, but there's no wash-out or streaking at all. The lines are easy to read and it's almost indiscernible that there was ever any water on the paper.

The coloring of this ink is mostly medium gray with a hint of dusty purple in some of the shades. It's a pleasant and neutral color that adds plenty of visual interest to your writing when compared to a standard black ink. It's certainly not going to win any awards for being bold or colorful, but it's also not boring. Pigmented inks are traditional pretty bland in the color wheel due to the type of pigments used in the ink. Bright colors are hard to achieve, so make sure your expectations are set properly.

There's not much in the way of shading, but the gray is a little darker in areas that the ink pools or takes longer to dry. Again, it's a straight-forward ink that gets the job done without any flash.

At $11.50 for a 30ml bottle, it's also on par for value with other inks.

If you're looking for a work-safe, semi-permanent ink that dries quickly and fares well in humid or wet conditions, this is a great place to start. If Star Garnet isn't your thing, there a few other colors to pick from as well.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Taccia Ukiyo-e Hokusai Sabimidori (Rusty Green) Ink: A Review

(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

The Taccia Ukiyo-e Hokusai collection is a series of inks based on the colors found in the works of Japanese artist Hokusai, in particular Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji. You can see Sabimidori in the painting below called Sundai, Edo:

Sundai Edo, By Katsushika Hokusai. This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy, CC0.

Sabimidori means "rusty green," and that's the perfect name for this ink which turns into a dusty green when dry and exhibits rust-colored sheen. When the ink is wet, however, it is a beautiful deep teal blue.

The 40ml bottle of ink comes well-packaged in a Hokusai inspired box.

On my Col-o-dex card, the ink swab looks dusty teal green. You can see the rusty sheen in the swirls and splats.

I've never tried Taccia ink before, but I'll say right off that I am impressed. In my testing on Rhodia paper, the ink flowed beautifully in my Sailor MF nib. It dries in about thirty seconds and is a well-lubricated ink. On white paper, the ink looks like a deep teal green, but you can see the blue component in the water test.

Chromatography reveals the secret of why this ink looks blue when wet and green when dry: it is primarily composed of blue with a touch of green. I really love these colors.

The sheen is most evident in my testing with a ruling pen. You can see glorious shading as well as that rusty sheen.

In my MD Notebook Journal, the ink looks more green than blue (probably due to the cream color of the paper). Again, the ink is wet and easy-flowing. It's a perfect match for my Bungubox Sailor Sanctuary Blue pen (review on that pen coming soon).

I created this doodle in my Galen Leather Tomoe River Paper journal (reviewed here). On Tomoe paper, the blue tones come through more than the green.

I'm in love with this Taccia ink, and now I want to try all the inks in the series. You can purchase a 40ml bottle from JetPens for $23.00 (at this writing JetPens is out of stock, but they plan to restock the ink).

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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