(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)
Bung Box inks, which are made by Sailor, are truly to-die-for inks. I hoard my First Love Sapphire (review here) in its gorgeous bottle for special occasions.
Because Bung Box inks are so expensive ($43.00 per bottle at Vanness), it’s hard to shell out the money for one of these inks, especially now that they are packaged in the boring, regular-shaped Sailor bottles.
Photo credit: Vanness
Still, I am fascinated by the Bung Box colors, with awesome names like “Clown Tears,” “Fresh Oranges of Lake Hamana,” and “Ink of the Witch.” Samples cost $5.00 for 4ml at Vanness, so I ordered 4B (which seems to be many people’s first choice for a blue-black ink; Jeff reviewed it recently) and Sweet Potato Purple.
Sweet Potato Purple is a lovely, deep burgundy ink. It is one of the most interesting inks I’ve done chromatography on, with shades of pink, purple, orange and blue—so much complexity.
In my ink tests, it dried fairly quickly, so I would call it a medium-wet ink. It is not waterproof. It doesn’t exhibit much shading or sheen in my tests with a TWSBI stub nib.
But in the ink splats you can see some pretty green-gold sheen.
In wide nibs, the ink shades and sheens beautifully.
I tried to find some close matches to this ink, considering how expensive it is. The closest is Diamine Tyrian Purple which I reviewed here. But Tyrian doesn’t have the depth or complexity of Bung Box Sweet Potato. None of my other purple/burgundy inks were even close.
So, even though it hurts my pocketbook, this is one ink I’m going to have to purchase.
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