Search the Community

TAG Kyoto – kyo-no-oto ruriiro TAG is a stationary shop in Kyoto (Japan) that produces some interesting soft watercolour-style inks. With the kyo-no-oto series, they produce a line of inks that replicates traditional Japanese dye colours. According to available online info, the manufacturing process of these kyo-no-oto inks follows traditional dying techniques dating back to the Heian era between the years 794 and 1185. The inks come in 40 ml bottles, packaged in luxurious thick paper with a texture that feels like heavy watercolour paper. In this review I take a closer look at ruriiro, a limited edition subtle deep blue-violet ink with a silvery shimmer. Yes… this is another ink with glitter, which seems to become more popular with ink makers. If you don’t care about that, just don’t shake the bottle and the glimmer particles won’t bother you. My feeling is that ink producers simply add the glitter to up-market their inks, supposedly to a more premium level, with corresponding price tag. It’s a trend that I personally can do without. The ink’s name reflects the colour of lapis lazuli, a vivid deep blue with violet undertones. In the Buddhist cosmology, “ruri” is produced on the south side of Mount Meru, the sacred five-peaked mountain that sits in the center of all universes. Ruriiro is a beautiful blue – it looks elegant & refined, and at the same time subdued & muted. The Buddhist connection fits this ink. For a TAG Kyoto ink, ruriiro is on the wet side, which was a pleasant surprise. I also noticed that there is fairly harsh shading while you write, with wetter parts being a substantially darker blue. But while the ink dries on the paper, that harshness disappears, leaving a muted blue behind with mostly soft and pleasant shading. The ink has a tendency to absorb into the paper, with quite a lot of see-through & bleed-through on most non-high-quality papers. For me, ruriiro is a samurai ink – refined, elegant, restrained – but with a deadly attack that only high quality paper survives. To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of a strip of 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. As you can see, ruriiro’s colour span is fairly limited – there is not that much contrast between light & dark parts (once the ink has dried). This translates to subtle-looking shading. Shading becomes more prominent with broad nibs & wet pens. What I like about this ink is that it adapts to the terrain – as you’d expect from a samurai warrior. This ink can look quite different depending on the pen/nib combination (see the nib size comparison’s below). Interesting! The ink’s chromatography clearly shows the strong violet undertones. It’s easy to overdo this, but with ruriiro, the blue & violet are nicely well-balanced. It’s definitely a blue ink, but with that violet undertone always subtly present in the background. Lovely! The bottom part of the chromatography indicates that the dyes easily detach from the paper. Ruriiro is not a water-resistant ink. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On every small band of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with an M-nib Lamy Safari The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Safari A small text sample, written the M-nib Safari Source of the quote, written with a Pelikan M101N (F-nib) Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Ruriiro is best used with pure white paper, where its elegance & muted character is best displayed. With more creamy paper, the ink loses most of its beauty. The ink coped well with all paper types with no visible feathering, even on (bleep) paper like Moleskine. But I already explained that ruriiro is a samurai ink: the katana cuts deep into the paper, and the result is visible on the backside. Quite some see-through and bleed-through on many paper types. Drying times are all over the place: from almost zero on highly absorbent paper, to a full 20 seconds on some hard-surface papers (with the M-nib Safari). I’ve also added a few photos to give you another view on the ink. Scanned images and photos often capture different aspects of the ink’s colour & contrast. That’s why I present them both. In this case, both scanner and photo capture quite well the real-world colour. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. Kyo-no-oto ruriiro works well with all nib sizes, even the finest ones. The ink keeps its subtle character across the nib range, and always leaves a nice contrast-rich line. Be aware that this ink adapts to the terrain, and can look quite different depending on the paper used. For my nib-size test, I use Rhodia N°16 paper which has a hard surface. With Rhodia, the ink is not deeply absorbed into the paper, but dries more on the surface. With ruriiro, this seems to result in more explicit shading. With more absorbent paper, shading becomes a lot softer. I personally find this terrain-adapting character of ruriio fascinating, and one of this ink’s strong points. Related inks To compare this muted violet-blue ruriiro with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. I have no other blue like this in my collection. There are similarities with Diamine Tchaikovsky and Callifolio Bleu Ultramarine, but they still look quite different. Inkxperiment – city rain With every review, I try to create an inkxperiment using only the ink I’m working on. This one-ink drawing is a great way to show off the colour-range nuances that are present in the ink. I really enjoy this more creative part of the review: always good for a couple of fun-packed hours. The last couple of weeks, we had some mild rain showers in the area. Not the gloomy wheather kind, but the occasional soft showers alternating with sunny periods. I love the look of the the city at the end of these showers – everything looks so fresh and sparkly. I tried to capture this “city rain” feeling in today’s inkxperiment. The concept for this drawing started with a quick outline sketch in my journal. I used water-diluted ruriiro to paint the background on a sheet of A4-sized HP photo paper. I then used cotton Q-tips to draw the city blocks on the horizon. Next, I painted the foreground details with brush & pen, using pure ruriiro. I then did a finishing pass over the drawing, adding some final touches. The resulting picture gives you an idea of what can be achieved with ruriiro in a more artistic context. Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and am now adding another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. Conclusion TAG Kyoto kyo-no-oto ruriiro is a great-looking blue-violet with a muted character. The ink definitely looks at its best on pure white paper. But what I find really fascinating about ruriiro is that it expresses itself so differently across paper types, and even across nib sizes on a single page. Not only a beautiful blue, but also an interesting one with some unexpected moves. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with a Lamy Safari (M-nib) Back-side of writing samples on different paper types