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Triple Ink Shoot-Out : Callifolio Cassis vs Diamine Earl Grey vs Sailor chu shu A couple of weeks ago I did a review of Sailor Jentle chu shu, and noticed I had some other purple-grey inks that look fairly similar in writing – Diamine Earl Grey and L’Artisan Pastellier Callifolio Cassis. All three of these inks are lovely, so a comparison is definitely in order. But which two of them to compare? Then @yazeh suggested to throw all three of them in the ring to fight it out. Interesting idea … Enter... the Triple Ink Shoot-Out – a special edition of the usual brutal fight. In five rounds, these three inks must engage in fierce battle to determine who is the winner. Choreographing a one-on-one battle is easy, but how to make it work with three contestants? Well… the triple shoot-out idea immediately brought to mind the iconic gun-fight in the final scene of Sergio Leone’s 1966 masterpiece “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. A memorable spaghetti western with an excellent musical score by Ennio Morricone. The ideal setting for a duel between three great inks. The hot summer sun shines brightly above the totally forgettable town Desierto in New Mexico. The shimmering heat creates wavering pictures of three lone riders that approach from different directions. Dust bowls blow through the only street in town when these strangers meet at the saloon. These are serious hombres that are not to be messed with. Tipping his hat, the tall blond stranger introduces himself – L’Artisan Pastellier Callifolio Cassis (“the Good”). The second rider – clearly a dark and silent type – simply nods his head in acknowledgement. Let’s introduce him: Diamine Earl Grey (“the Bad”). The third rider is the most extravagant of the bunch, and loudly and obtrusively makes his acquaintance: Sailor chu shu (“the Ugly”). Together they head for the saloon, eyeing each other wearily. Three dominant alpha males that come together… that can only mean trouble. A fight is in the air. May the best ink win … Round 1 – First Impressions The three strangers head to the bar. “Whiskey” … “Make that two” … “Tequila”. In one gulp, the glasses get emptied. “Another one”. The barkeep refills the glasses. Gulp … “Another one”. Seems like we are in the middle of a drinking contest, neither man willing to be outdone by the others. All three of these inks make a stellar first impression. Wonderful colours, that look great on paper – both in written text and in swabs. These are inks that can be used for any occasion, both for personal journaling as well as in a business context where they make a great alternative for the more standard blue or black. Also technically solid inks: good contrast with the page, nice and aesthetically pleasing shading, smooth writing. Great looking stuff! In this first round, the three champions give their best, and down their liquor without blinking an eye: Cassis is at heart a grey ink with strong purple undertones that easily surface in swabs. Sailor chu shu is more of a grey-purple, where purple seems to be the base colour but muted and toned down (it gets a bit lost in the picture, but to the naked eye the purple is much more obvious). Earl Grey definitely is the odd one out: a cool blue-grey ink, but also with definite purple undertones. I personally like the looks of this one the best. In swabs, both Cassis and Earl Grey show lots of depth: you can easily see the purple undertones that are prominently there just below the surface. In contrast, chu shu looks a bit flatter – there is that mix of purple and grey, but it’s all at the surface with less of a layered and multi-dimensional feel to it. Bonus points for the first two. Shading is most prominent with Earl Grey and chu shu: strong but well balanced, enhancing your writing with some extra oomph. Cassis shows more subtle shading with a lot less contrast between light and darker parts. The chroma comparison clearly shows that Earl Grey is the odd duckling – a totally different combination of dyes, resulting in a cool grey ink with a subtle purple undertone. Cassis and chu shu share a similar lineage, with chu shu having more purple in the mix. Of these two, I prefer the darker grey looks of the Callifolio ink. All three inks stand up well to one another, with neither of them giving in. They are all technically solid inks, with great looks both in writing and in swabs. Any of them would be a good choice, but the rules of the game demand that we express a preference. For this first round, Diamine Earl Grey must be the winner – it’s overall the best looking of the three. Second place goes to Callifolio Cassis, simply because of its grey-er looks, and that extra depth in the swabs. Sailor chu shu finishes third – not last, because that makes it sound inferior, and that’s certainly not the case. Round 2 – Writing Sample “Ola amigos! Fancy some cards?” Locals and strangers gather around the tables, cards are shuffled, a friendly game of poker starts. Money changes hands until suddenly… five aces on the table… that can’t be right?!? “Cheating bastardos!” Tables get overturned, fists get clenched and a serious brawl develops. The writing sample was done on Rhodia N°16 Notepad with 80 gsm paper. All inks behaved flawlessly, with no feathering and no show-through or bleed-through. With the EF nib, Cassis feels a bit “grippy” on the page, with sub-par lubrication. This improved considerably when using broader nibs. Earl Grey delivers solidly throughout: smooth and well lubricated in all nib sizes, with good contrast and some really nice shading. Sailor chu shu is also excellent, but a touch less smooth than the Diamine ink. At the start of the fight, “the Good” got a blow to the head, but quickly recovers; “the Bad” immediately grabbed a chair and is mostly untouchable. Chu shu “the Ugly” turns out to be a dirty fighter, dealing some serious damage. Overall, a memorable saloon fight that will be the talk of town for many weeks to come. Counting the points, Earl Grey is the clear winner, followed closely by chu shu and Callifolio Cassis. Round 3 – Pen on Paper After the fight, our trio feels no longer welcome in town. “I heard rumours about a stash of gold hidden by a soldier of the Confederates. Let’s move in with the military to find out more. They have a camp just a couple of miles from here.” The threesome mount their horses and depart town. “Last one at the camp buys the cold beers!”… and the race is on. This round allows the batlling inks to show how they behave on a range of fine writing papers. From top to bottom, we have : Clairefontaine Triomphe, Midori, Tomoe River 52 gsm, Paperblanks and Original Crown Mill cotton paper. All scribbling and writing was done with a Lamy Safari B-nib. All our champions did well, with no show-through nor bleed-through. But this round is not about technicalities, it is about aesthetics and beauty. Are the fighters able to make the paper shine ? One thing is immediately apparent: these inks might all share grey & purple, but they have totally different characters. Cassis is a purple-grey with the grey dominating. Earl Grey is a cool blue-grey with a purple undertone and Sailor chu shu is clearly a purple ink but toned down and muted. All three of them look superbly on the high quality papers in this writing sample. Earl Grey’s bronco consistently takes the lead. Wonderful shading, and lots of depth in the swabs. I love the looks of this ink. Next up rides Callifolio Cassis, closely matched by Sailor chu shu. Very close these two, but the darker hue of Cassis looks just a bit better on the page. When looking at crappy paper, we see that all three inks behave unexpectedly well with no visible feathering. There is some bleed-through – as is to be expected with Moleskine – but minimally so with Cassis. So in this race, Callifolio Cassis manages to enter camp just before chu shu. Earl Grey is already sitting at the bar, awaiting his first cold beer… Up to this round, Earl Grey is defnitely in the lead with Cassis and chu shu coming closely behind. I wonder whether the following rounds will change this picture? Round 4 – Ink Properties Given their experience as outdoors-men, the lieutenant asked our trio to tame some broncos. Fierce horses that are not to be trifled with. Given that this will most surely allow them to gain the soldiers’ trust and thus find out more about that stash of gold, our heroes agree. With some soldiers firmly holding the reins of the semi-wild horses, our heroes mount the saddle. Once the reins are released, the buckling starts… The inks have drying times in the 15 to 20 second range, with chu shu being the faster drying ink. On the smudge test, the text always remains easy to read, but with the Callifolio ink a lot of the dyes are rubbed off. The droplet test is the most conclusive: Earl Grey shows no water resistance at all, while chu shu easily survives a 15 minute soak in water. Some of the dyes get displaced, but what remains on the paper is certainly easy to read. Cassis retains just enough ink to be able to reconstruct your writing. After only a few seconds, Earl Grey is thrown from his bronco … not a good show! After a minute or so, Cassis’ bronco starts rolling on the ground, and “the Bad” must quickly jump aside in order to avoid getting crushed. But Sailor chu shu demonstrates his prowess and remains firmly in the saddle, calming the bristling horse until it follows his every command. Nicely done! The outcome leaves no doubt: chu shu solidly wins this round in spades. And Earl Grey is the obvious loser – horse-taming is clearly not his forte. Round 5 – The Fun Factor Welcome to the final round. Here I give you a purely personal impression of the three inks, where I judge which of them I like most when doing some fun stuff like doodling and drawing. And for this round, these inks are simply amazing. I did the drawing on HP Advanced Photo paper. The background uses heavily water-diluted ink. The flowers were added with a glass dip pen and pure ink. Their investigations led our trio of inks to a forgotten graveyard and a nameless tomb. Within lies buried the stash of gold. But which of them will take the treasure home? In the spirit of Christmas, they decide that instead of simply trying to kill one another, they will demonstrate their prowess with the revolver by shooting at canteens instead. Each will throw a canteen in the air and try to hit it as often as possible. Three… two… one… go! All three inks masterfully show their purple undertones that easily surface when drawing. Choosing between the inks will be difficult. The revolvers blast, and the canteens get a real pummeling, careening through the air with each solid hit. Unexpectedly, Sailor chu shu shows some really nice red-pink undertones surfacing among the more dark purple hues. Really nice. Cassis is also a really nice drawing ink, with more grainy grey showing in the drawing. I really liked the warmth showing in both these ink drawings. Earl Grey looks great, but looks a bit too cold compared to the other two. After the canteens have fallen to the ground, we start counting holes. Three holes for Earl Grey, four for Cassis and a whopping 6 solid hits for Sailor chu shu. By all rights, the gold is his! The Verdict All three inks in this shoot-out are winners in my book. But a choice has to be made, and so I will tally up the points as they were gained in each round: L’Artisan Pastellier Callifolio Cassis: 2 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 9 points Diamine Earl Grey: 3 + 3 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 11 points Sailor Jentle chu shu: 1 + 2 + 1 + 3 + 3 = 10 points The heroes of our story have been through a lot together – chu shu therefore decides to split up the loot. After all, there’s enough gold for the three of them! And even though the points indicate that Diamine Earl Grey is the ultimate winner of this triple shoot-out, the difference in outcome is small. Each one of these inks is a solid and beautiful one. You owe it to yourself to try at least one of them. Satisfaction guaranteed! Best wishes to you all for a splendid 2025 !

Sailor Jentle – chu shu The origins of Sailor date back to 1911 when Mr. Sakata and his brother founded the “’Sakata Manufactory” company to produce solid gold nibs. You can explore their history at https://en.sailor.co.jp/company/our-history. These guys have been around for a long time, so it comes as no surprise that they are well-known in stationery land. Over the years, Sailor has literally brought hundreds of inks to market… and till today, I never used or tested any of their inks. That's got to change. Last week I went exploring in my ink room (yeah… a room… can’t call it a cabinet any more), and there at the back of the shelf, hiding in the shadows, sat a dusty little bottle. “Hello stranger … why are you hiding over there. Let’s get you inked up … Woow… You’re beautiful !” Sailor Jentle chu shu is the perfect ink for autumn (which has arrived in my part of the world). It’s a nicely complex ink, with a colour that navigates the border between grey and purple. When used for writing, it’s more of a purple-grey, but when you draw with it, it’s definitely a grey-purple, with the purple tones dominating. A lovely colour, totally suited for the season… melancholic, subdued, stormy clouds on a rainy day. A gorgeous colour that totally fits my taste. Also a technically solid ink, with good contrast and saturation, well lubricated, with excellent water-resistance, and fairly short drying time. A superb ink that I should have tried years ago. The bottle I rediscovered is from the Sailor Jentle collection – a 50 ml round bottle with a built-in ink well. I don’t think these are on the market anymore, but no worries, the same inks with the same names can be found in their Shikiori brand, with 20 ml square bottles. Same ink, different packaging. To illustrate the colour span of this purple-grey beauty, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Chu shu has a very narrow colour span, with only minor differences between the light and dark-saturated parts. This narrow contrast range explains the almost complete lack of shading in this ink. If you like your shading bold and strong, this is not an ink for you. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink shows only a tiny amount of smearing. The ink dries quickly in the 10 second range when writing with a Safari M-nib – even on smooth Japanese paper. So this might be a good ink for lefties. Water resistance is also remarkably good. Whether soaking the page in water for some time (15 min droplet test), or subjecting it to streaming tap water, the text remains perfectly readable. Excellent! The chromatography shows that most of the purple tones will disappear. Also some of the grey dyes move with the water, but a solid grey outline of your text remains. There is some damage, but your words will survive. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap 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 a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Safari A small text sample, written with the M-nib Safari Source of the quote, written with an Edison Collier with 1.1 stub Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The multi-paper writing test shows that Sailor Jentle chu shu works well with both white and cream paper. It also handles lower quality paper really well. Even the awful Moleskine paper could handle this ink, with only a tiny amount of see-through and bleed-through. Overall, a technically solid ink. In swabs, chu shu shows its purple undertones really well. Less visible in the written text though, which appears more like a grey. That is… until you put it next to a true grey, which is when you’ll notice that purple under-the-surface complexity that gives this ink its unique character. I used photos for the writing samples above to get the most accurate results. For completeness, I also add a scan of some writing samples. My scanner is incapable of capturing the ink’s complexity, and loses most of the subtle purple nuances. In this case, the photos show best what the eye sees. Below you’ll find some zoomed-in parts of writing samples. This Sailor Jentle ink looks fairly consistent across the whole range of writing papers. Solid and with good contrast. Notice the almost complete lack of shading, even in the broader nibs. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). All samples were written with a Lamy Safari. I also added a couple of visiting pens: a Pelikan M600 with an F cursive italic, a Pilot Capless with F-nib and my Edison Collier Nighthawk with 1.1 stub. This Sailor chu shu looks good in all nib sizes, with excellent contrast to the page. In the nib-size example, the camera did a lousy job of capturing the purple undertones (as in… they seem to be gone). The text looks like a dark grey, but in reality there is a hint of purple present that adds depth and character. Related inks To compare Sailor chu shu 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. As you can see, the ink has a rather unique colour setup and I don’t have a lot of inks that come anywhere close to it. Diamine Earl Grey is really similar though, with just a touch less purple in the mix. I might do a shoot-out of these two in the near future. Inkxperiment – mining town As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. A fun endeavour that’s always good for a couple of hours tinkering around with the ink. I simply love experimenting with inks to see how they behave in a more artistic context. For this grey ink, an industrial theme came to mind. Chu shu’s grey and purple colour brought back memories of the coal-mining industry in my home town. Up until 1970, there were three coal mines in operation. These are cultural sites now, but the mining terrils – mounds of geological spoil resulting from the coal mining activity – are still easily recognizable landmarks. I tried to capture the industrial gritty feel in my drawing. I started with an A4 piece of 300 gsm watercolour paper and painted in the coal veins with pure chu shu. Next, I used strongly water-diluted ink to paint in the sky (using cotton swabs). I then used my fountain pen to draw the buildings and mining towers, and coloured them in with cotton Q-tips. For the underground, I applied ink with Q-tips, and drew scribbles with my fountain pen to add some texture. The final drawing shows quite well what can be achieved with this Sailor ink in a more artistic context. Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added 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. I started by applying an urban art filter, and then used colour and contrast filters to obtain a more gritty feel. In this drawing, all softness is gone, and only the industrial grit remains. You can almost taste the coal-dust between your teeth. Conclusion Sailor Jentle chu shu is a gorgeous ink that I should have reviewed years ago - so glad I rediscovered it. It’s a beautiful purple-grey with tons of character, and with excellent technical execution: saturation, wetness, lubrication, water-resistance … all top-notch. Only the lack of shading might disappoint. I’m sure many of you have a bottle of it in your stash. If so… I suggest you load up a pen with it and enjoy! Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types

Here's a little game! Only one is the named color but which one is it? Choose from (in alphabetical order!): Chu Shu - Sailor Jentle Keshimurasaki - Kyo no Oto Sakuranezumi - Kyo No Oto Scabiosa - Rohrer & Klingner Summer Storm - Robert Oster Sydney Lavender - Robert Oster Challenge question: Which is your favorite?!