Seven Oranges

Prompted by Brian and Rachel Goulet’s October inkdrop from Goulet Pens, I went digging in my ink stacks pulling out some resonant oranges to line up beside their “Autumn Leaves II” October inkdrop palette. Pretty much a sucker for inks in the orange range, and with shades enough to satisfy any Halloween or Autumn theme I have probably wasted money on some I too rarely use. But addiction to ink being what it is, the phrase ‘waste of money’ doesn’t easily get through to me.

In one important characteristic, orange inks are like their distant cousins, the grays. For both colors to work well they must have good saturation, otherwise the words wash off the page and a reader will have to squint to read. No matter how beautiful an ink is in the bottle, or in a swab test, if it produces hard-to-read lines of writing, then you don’t have an ink that is very useful. I could name a half dozen orange inks that fail the test—I have a few bottles gathering dust—but for this comparison I left those inks out and lined up seven oranges that have rich saturation and are not difficult to read on the written page.

Another thing about the seven inks displayed here is that each one comes from a reputable company consistently producing quality inks. The range is broadly international, covering inks from the US, Switzerland, Germany, England and Japan.

A word about each…

The inks on the chart here are by no means listed 1-7 in any particular order of preference or quality. It is a totally random arrangement.

1. Private Reserve Orange Crush: I lied. Private Reserve’s Orange Crush is one of my longtime favorites that has as much to do with a childhood full of Orange Crush pop as it does with the richness of the color. This one is perhaps the most saturated of the seven and produces lines that can almost be called delicious.

2. Caran d’Ache Saffron: Similar to Diamine’s beautiful Pumpkin ink, this one too has the needed saturation, and a softness not seen in the Orange Crush. Part of the Earth Colors series from Caran d’Ache, it is a perfect fit, looking much like something squeezed from the earth.

3. De Atramentis Buonarroti Michelangelo: De Atramentis has long been a favorite ink maker and this one comes from Dr Jansen’s Historic Persons series. Very close to butterscotch and not terribly far from its Saffron neighbor, this ink definitely has a renaissance flavor, a color familiar in the works of Michelangelo.

4. Diamine Sunshine Yellow: Perfect name for a near golden yellow-orange. Sprinkle some orange zest beside this ink and it would be a match. This is one in the October inkdrop which arrived yesterday and there hasn’t been time yet to try it a pen, so I am trusting the saturation will be similar in a written sample.

5. Sailor Custom Mix Persimmon: Another ink that is always in one of my fountain pens, it was mixed by Osamu Ishimaru at a Tokyo pen clinic. I placed a persimmon on the table and asked him to match the color. No question he hit the bullseye. It is the color of late autumn persimmons hanging on trees in Japan.

6. Iroshizuku Fuyu-gaki (Winter Persimmon): No argument with Pilot and blenders of the Iroshizuku inks; they too have captured the essence of persimmons. My tiny complaint about the color is that it is closer to the color of the fruit in autumn and not winter. As the fruit ripens you will see more red.

7. Iroshizuku Yu-yake (Sunset): Another ink I like despite not using very often. That isn’t because of anything that bothers me specifically, except that it always looks better in a swab than it does in a letter, journal or notebook scribble. Saturation is fine and it has all the good qualities of Pilot ink.

For those with a penchant for orange, red-orange or yellow-orange inks, any of the above seven will do the trick and have your pens drunk on smoothness. Except for the De Atramentis Buonarroti Michelangelo they are all available at Goulet Pens, where the service is No. 1. If you are interested in the De Atramentis ink, it is available at Art Brown.

Forgotten Ink

For those with a passion—some call it a malady—for the collecting of inks, the hobby has in some ways blown itself out of proportion. What does that mean exactly? It is by no means a dart fired at the makers of fountain pen ink, for they are only following customer demand and produce exactly what the market will allow. Rather, the numbers of available colors in bottled ink have gotten unwieldy for the collector and consequently outstanding shades of ink get lost in the shuffle. There was a time I could look at an ink and recognize the name at only a glance. As the reds and greens and blues multiplied, the browns proliferated, the purples mushroomed and the oranges snowballed, that sort of quick-read identification has become near impossible for anyone but the person who mixed the individual inks, and even they might be fooled on occasion. Most of us now have stacked on shelves inks of exquisite color that lay forgotten behind the heaped bottles of newer mixes.

Say hello again to one of the forgotten. Rummaging through the bottles accumulated on shelves and drawers here, I came upon one from the Caran d’Ache Colours of the Earth series, a red called Sunset. Don’t ask me to count through the different bottles of red ink on those shelves and in those drawers; anybody with a level head wouldn’t hesitate to say, “Too many! You’ll never use all that.” Quite true, but as stated above, a malady is involved. I have so much red ink that the beautiful Sunset ink from Caran d’Ache got lost in the jumble.

Let me paraphrase what this Swiss company says about its line of nine different inks…

Caran d’Ache has drawn on its expertise and mastery of colour to offer lovers of handwriting a collection of inks in nine original tints. These nine inks offer the natural colours of the earth in a rich assortment ranging from sombre to tender to vivacious. The colours are an inspiration, expressing a mood, adding an emotional dimension to words, or marking a special moment—each colour finding its own nuance, with pen playing in perfect harmony.

There is very little exaggerated hype in this product copy. Most of us who collect fountain pen inks would quickly admit that the copywriter has hit the nail on the head in appealing to a customer base. For a look at the nine different tints in the Colours of the Earth series, click here.

Back to the forgotten ink, Sunset. The maker suggests in a further note of copy that the writer ‘Sympathize in Sunset.’ It sounds good, but that particular verb does not come to mind when I look at a sample of Sunset red, or when I see a written passage in this color. I might be more tempted to say something like, ‘Celebrate in Sunset,’ but the next person might also have another idea. There is for sure a good bit of ‘sunset’ in the color, but look at it long enough and several more associations will come to mind. A little of the tropical, of the Hawaiian Punch or the romantic, seasonal, and I can’t help adding, lipstick. Anyone telling you it is a totally unique shade of ink is pretty much out of the loop. A quick comparison reveals that Iroshizuku Momiji, Diamine Classic Red and J Herbin Rouge Bourgogne each come close to the Caran d’Ache Sunset. But that shouldn’t take anything away from the specialness of Sunset.

The sample page of quotes here was written using a Montblanc Generation with a 14 carat medium nib. Just as the copy says, the pen works in perfect harmony with the Caran d’Ache ink, writing smoothly without skips, spits or drag. A short sample of handwriting it is, but looking back at longer pages written in other notebooks with the same ink and the same pen show a smooth flowing curl of ink unwinding prettily down the page. On the downside—though perhaps not for all users—Sunset is a slow drying ink. On a separate page of tests, in writing single characters there was no difference in dryness between three seconds and fifteen. A short phrase of five words required a full minute to dry thoroughly, but then a dryer nib may produce a shorter drying time.

A Basket of Good Things

Weather today has played some dismal notes on my frame of mind. Rain, sleet and finally snow in all its metropolitan inconvenience make me yearn for different scenery, something to brighten and bring warmth to an opposite outward aspect. So I sit recalling the good things of past days, those out of the ordinary tidbits that have made me stop and exclaim, “Awright!”

Fountain Pen and Ink of the Week

Most every day for the past week I have used my Pelikan 200, dripping with the punchbowl red of Caran d’Ache Sunset ink. Please don’t misunderstand my use of ‘dripping’ to mean pen and ink are behaving badly. Both are splendid and just the thing for foul weather days.

A Drawing Much Appreciated These Days

An artist friend of mine told me last time we met to look through a stack of sketches and take one I liked. The nude life study (ten minute pose with a live model) in the photo here is something I found in that stack. I put it in the plainest of black frames with white matting.

Soundtrack: 187

Something I’ve almost worn out with repeated play, this is an oldie from 1997, a movie that starred Samuel L. Jackson. Artists include Massive Attack, Everything But The Girl, Galliano, Jalal and Bang Bang. Listen to some clips here.

Blog Posts Enjoyed More Than Once

Julie at Whatever put up a post on February 15 called, “A Year in the Life of a Tree,” which is a 52 week record of the gradual changes in her Golden Raintree. By all means look at it if you haven’t already. It’s here.

Check out the February 24 post on Inkyjournal with an especially good video from Aurora Pens called, “How to Make a Fountain Pen.” A very interesting five minute video.

Favorite Word of the Week

This is another of those rare and hard to look up words from the 19th century mind of writer Patrick O’Brian. In Chapter 8 of The Ionian Mission, No. 8 in the Aubrey/Maturin series, he writes, “…But what is much more to the point, what a set of clinchpoops we should look, was we to raise Cavaleria before the French.”

‘Clinchpoop’ is defined in the dictionary as: a lout, jerk, clod, boor, slob, boob, fathead, sap, moron and idiot. It also has two other less than pleasant meanings which I will leave out here.

Poem of the Week

“Elegy for the Personal Letter” by Allison Joseph. Read it here. (March 9, 2010 in the archive.)

With this basket of good things, I push away the chill and gloom of a day beset by rain, sleet and snow.