Rose No. 5

Journal notes remind me that exactly five years ago to the day, I brought home from Shosaikan in Tokyo a new bottle of ink, a color that impressed me as a lone standout among inks. The color was Arabian Rose from Private Reserve. In 2006 purple inks were few in number and apart from Pelikan Violet, there was little to choose from. On my shelves at least, there was only the bottle of violet (Pelikan) and from De Atramentis a darker purple, Nicolaus Copernicus. Fast forward five years and you can easily find a wide selection of purple inks. The Goulet Pen Company offers a choice of thirty-two.

One of the many great things about Brian & Rachel and Goulet Pens is their monthly Inkdrop offer of five sample inks for a reasonable cost. The February theme is “My Inky Valentine” and is a selection of five ‘rose’ inks: (1) J Herbin Rose Cyclamen, (2) Noodler’s Ottoman Rose, (3) Noodler’s Shah’s Rose, (4) Private Reserve Rose Rage and (5) Private Reserve Arabian Rose.

With a bottle of Arabian Rose already on my ink table, the sample from Brian & Rachel was rather than an introduction, more along the lines of a reminder. For a long time Arabian Rose has been absent from my line up of weekly inks, but thanks to Inkdrop it has rediscovered the spotlight.

I’ve read reviews comparing this Private Reserve color to other shades by other makers, but no one has convinced me, or shown me yet that Arabian Rose is similar to another shade of purple. The closest match I’ve been able to find is a sister ink from Private Reserve, Plum. Compare the swatches on the right. The big difference is in saturation, but on the written page this difference is hard to detect. The color has an elegance to it, and while it is not an ‘office’ color, it makes up for that with practicality on the home front. Perfect for letters, cards and journals. Curious as to what would pop up, I googled Arabian color images—through squinted eyes the dominant color in the page of samples is pretty close to Arabian Rose ink.

The pen used to sample the ink today is a vintage Pelikan 100N with medium nib. I call it my ‘communist’ fountain pen, one that had its heyday in Budapest of the 1950s. (I bought it from a dealer in that city.) No question of ink flow and smoothness, the Private Reserve ink moving across the page like the silk of ballet shoes, a pas de deux of fine pen and ink. Shading is good, though some might wish for more saturation. I hesitate because I don’t wish to make that a complaint; the saturation of this ink is not a negative.

Drying time? Here is something that many users might find fault with. Arabian Rose is still sopping wet after fifteen seconds on the page. On the other hand, it is quite waterproof. I wrote several lines on white premium 90g copy paper and after allowing the ink to dry for ten minutes ran it under cold tap water for thirty seconds. The result was nine lines of still legible writing.

In the end it really comes down to the color. This could be the ink to nudge a person beyond the confines of standard shades. Arabian Rose is almost guaranteed to evoke comments from friends who see it in cards and letters. A good choice for Valentine’s Day. As Brian & Rachel suggest, be somebody’s inky valentine.

Put It Away

For years I made do with an old high school denim zip pen case that lived inside my backpack. But that didn’t seem to work very well after I bought my first “expensive” fountain pen. Care and protection became more important, and an interest in better pen cases developed.

I never did buy a pen rack, but three or four years ago I got one for a Christmas present, and it has been a pleasure to have and use. Made by Levenger, with its reputation for quality goods, the rosewood fountain pen rack in the pictures here lives up to that reputation. The photos show how it can be used two ways—open or closed. It makes a very handsome display either way, but particularly when it is open and displaying the fountain pens in a standing row of ten. Hard to see in the photo, but my initials are engraved on the front, near the bottom. This model is no longer available at Levenger, but they are offering now another good-looking pen rack on their website that’s worth looking at.

As for pen cases, I have six that I use regularly, though one of them was never meant to be a pen case, despite its efficiency as such. My description may be hard to follow, but begin with the black pouch case on the left, with the orange Lamy Safari sticking out. That is a soft leather case with a tie cord that I got at Shosaikan Pen Boutique in Aoyama. It was a complimentary gift with the purchase of $250 worth of goods. Moving up and slightly to the right, is a black leather case from Montblanc for one pen. It was included in the purchase price of my Montblanc Platinum 167 mechanical pencil. Directly under that one, at the top, is another gift, another Levenger design, the Ink ’n Blink. Look closely and you will see the eyeglasses on the right end, and the silver clip of a pen on the front edge of the case. This is a tremendously convenient pen & eyeglass case which I am never without. It too is leather. To the right of that is a three-pen Pelikan case, which is fairly standard. This one, too is always in my bag. The largest pen case (brown) is one I ordered from a Japanese magazine that I have since thrown out, and since there is not a word or label anywhere on the case, I can’t say now who the maker is. It is a ‘book’ type leather case for four pens, with pockets on the left for memos and cards. Last is the ‘Coffeebeat’ candy cylinder resting on top of the brown case in the center. I’m sure it never occurred to Meiji chocolate makers that their container makes an ideal single pen case. Hard, strong cardboard, with an added bonus in the wonderful coffee bean fragrance that wafts out when you remove the top. Unfortunately, that doesn’t last more than a month or two. Enjoy the chocolate coffee beans, and then keep the container as an ideal pen case.

Shosaikan Pen Boutique

Halfway through the day I got to thinking about Shosaikan, the pen boutique in Minami Aoyama, and trying to remember if they stocked J. Herbin ink. I had not been to the store in several months and decided today would be a good day for a visit, maybe a good day to bring home a new Herbin ink, or a good time to buy a Moleskine notebook. Good timing with Tuesday being a short work day, leaving me the whole afternoon to walk around Aoyama and spend some time browsing in Shosaikan. So, I shut down the laptop, locked up my desk and hit the road.

A bus and two trains later I came up out of the subway at Omote Sando, right in the elegant heart of Aoyama, and a fifteen minute walk down Kotoku Dôri to Shosaikan. This is a classy area of town, and the streets are lined with expensive stores and boutiques, but all are a pleasure to look at, and the window displays rival Fifth Avenue in New York. When the weather is bright and not too cold, walking around Aoyama is a great way to pass an hour or two. About ten minutes off the main road, a narrow and nameless almost-lane crosses Kotoku Dôri at the Nikka Whiskey building and turning right there, a few short steps will bring you to the door of Shosaikan.

The store is a dim and shadowy place with wood plank floors, lined on three sides with sparkling glass fronted pen cases. They carry a wide variety of fountain pens and some ballpoint pens, most of them either Japanese or European. A quick look at their website will tell you the full range of their fountain pen stock, but the only American names I have seen there are Cross and Monteverde. I discovered today that they have recently stopped carrying paper and notebooks, apart from very few examples. The Moleskines are gone I discovered today. You will find a wide selection of Noodler inks, De Atramentis, Pelikan, Stipula, Visconti, Private Reserve, Delta, Omas, Sailor, Pilot Iroshizuku and Montblanc. (I was surprised to find no J. Herbin ink today.) Not absolutely necessary, but if you want to spend a great deal of money, Shosaikan is the place. I looked at a Limited Edition Pelikan fountain pen today that was in the neighborhood of $4,500.

I have three pens from Shosaikan (two sailor and one Pelikan) and I’ve gotten excellent use out of each one. I used the Pelikan pen for about a week after buying it, and returned to the store wanting an adjustment to the pen, but instead they gave me a new pen, one not needing the adjustment I came looking for.

In my opinion, this is one of the better fountain pen stores in Tokyo.

Shosaikan Pen Boutique

5-13-11 Minami Aoyama

Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0062

Noodler’s Rattler Red

Noodler’s Ink seems to enjoy favor among many pen and ink enthusiasts in the US. A large number of blogs, as well as posts on the Fountain Pen Network offer reviews, comments or opinions about this American made ink. True, not all reviews and comments are one hundred percent complimentary, but enough of them are to make this one of the more popular inks among American enthusiasts. Some might jump on this statement as not completely accurate, but I can only base my assumptions on what I read, which admittedly is a moderate amount considering the number of pen and ink blogs out there.

My personal experience with Noodler’s has been limited to only two colors: Cayenne and Rattler Red, the red being the subject of this review. Tokyo is a very big city, one with a good number of pen shops, large stationery stores, and other stores that specialize in ink. Despite that, I have found Noodler’s Ink in only one store in metropolitan Tokyo, Shosaikan in the Aoyama district. I first bought a bottle of the Cayenne, but didn’t get much chance to use the ink, because for reasons unknown, the ink became corrupted within two or three weeks of sitting on my ink shelves. The original gorgeous dark and spicy orange turned to a horrible gray orange. My next try was one from the American Eel series, Rattler Red. For those unfamiliar with American Eel, it is a lubricating ink that Noodler’s began producing in 2005. I was especially taken with the color, which impressed me as an unusual red in a world where red inks are if nothing else, bountiful. Not counting the Noodler’s, I have thirteen other red inks on the shelves behind me, so a striking or unusual red will catch my eye. And that was the case with the Rattler Red.

It has not proven itself to be a completely satisfactory ink in my experience. The flow is not what I like, and the richness does not hold from the start of a line to the end. It also has a long drying time, a problem if you don’t like smears. I have filled out a review form and put it here, and overall my comments are not altogether favorable. It’s a pretty color, but…

Turning away from ink and Noodler’s for a few lines, I got something from an old friend in my hometown today, an article announcing the closing after 76 years of a somewhat famous stationery store downtown. Wonderful article, I thought, and so decided to tack it on to today’s post. Like me, I believe many others will have some understanding of what the writer is saying.

Store stood for a long tradition

Every Monday, members of the Press Club of Baton Rouge gather at a downtown meeting hall to hear some newsmaker discuss affairs of the day. But two doors down, at Latil Stationery Co., a quieter piece of news has slowly been unfolding: After 76 years, the store that loyal customers know as Latil’s is closing on Dec. 31.

That might not seem like big news in the scheme of things; every day, across the world, businesses close their doors. But Latil’s exit also seems to diminish, by one more degree, the older and more genteel form of expression that its pens and paper came to represent.

I first came to know Latil’s as a young reporter, when my newspaper office was a few blocks over from Latil’s longtime Third Street location. For much of the day, hunched over a newsroom keyboard, I filed stories for a daily audience of readers. But during occasional lunch hours at Latil’s, I’d find what I needed for more intimate writing — the blank journal for the odd thought, a box of stationery for handwritten letters, a nice, new pen to scribble what I wished.

The journals I bought at Latil’s and filled each year now rest on a shelf, and no lock is needed to protect the private musings inside. My handwriting is so bad that no one else could fathom the passages, anyway.

Some of what I scrawled ended up as essays or stories for newspapers, magazines, or a book. But in crossing from the personal to the public, I was always aware of a line being crossed, and the boundary was easy to see. The division between my public writing life and my private writing life was as clear as the blocks that separated my office from the stationery shop.

But in typing those three words just now, “private writing life,” I’m reminded of just how quaint the concept has become. When my teenage daughter reveals what’s on her mind, it’s not in a letter or a diary, but on a Facebook page intended for multiple readers.

And in this age of blogs and Twitter, what might have once gone into a personal journal is typically a post for the world to see.

Everyone in our family, uses e-mail, of course, and I couldn’t think of doing without it. But e-mails, even those exchanged between close friends, don’t have the same aura of intimacy as a handwritten note; that “forward” button on the computer encourages disclosure, not discretion. A handwritten note can be passed around too, but postal mail carries a strong tradition of restraint, a powerful promise of secrecy.

Yet in an age when people sell their private lives to reality shows, and the Internet routinely makes publicity from the personal, whether anyone really wants secrecy anymore is an open question.

What I’m trying to describe, I suppose, is a code of conduct, a tradition, that has always made a box of stationery or a journal a little bit more than a piece of merchandise on a shelf.

Latil’s was a part of that tradition, and I’m sorry to see it go.

From The Advocate, Baton Rouge, Louisiana • November 27

by Advocate staff writer Danny Heitman