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Teranishi Guitar – Opera Rose Teranishi Chemical Industries was founded during the Taisho period in 1918, and got quite some fame as one of the earlier ink producers in Japan. The Taisho period is often remembered as a romantic period. For their 105th anniversary, the company introduced some stylish retro-inks, hinting at this exciting start-up period. The inks come in beautiful – almost art deco – boxes, containing a nice-looking 40ml bottle of ink. I discovered the Teranishi inks in 2022, so it’s time to do the reviews. These inks are well saturated, but at the same time manage to look muted and toned-down. This combination works quite well, and I’m becoming very fond of this brand. In this review, I take a closer look at Opera Rose, a rose-brick colour, an ink that has a vintage vibe and with lots of depth and complexity. I know it’s not a colour for everyone, but this Opera Rose is one of my favourites from the Teranishi ink series. Opera Rose is a well saturated ink, maybe a touch too dry in fine nibs, but it writes wonderfully well in broader and stub nibs. The colour is absolutely lovely – it sits somewhere between rose, brown and orange – depending on the light, it can look like any of these. Definitely a romantic era colour, aged-looking with those dusty undertones. It’s also a heavy shader: so much so that I couldn’t use scans for this review, but had to revert to photos (my scanner exaggerates contrast, and the results were definitely not what the eye sees). To illustrate the colour span of this Teranishi ink, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Opera Rose has a broad colour span with lots of contrast between light and darker parts. Wet pens and/or broad nibs tend to use the right side of the saturation range, where the colour looks at its best. Shading is prominent, but not too harsh – I found it to be aesthetically very pleasing. I would personally also pair this ink with pure white paper, where those beautiful rose shades come out best. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink behaved perfectly. Almost no smearing can be detected, and the text remains firmly on the page. Water resistance is also exceptionally good. Most of the rose-brick colour detaches from the paper, but a light blue residue remains that is perfectly readable. That’s much better than most non-waterproof inks. This is also evident from the chromatography, which shows an intriguing complexity with light-blue, rose-pink and yellow-orange dyes in the mix. The light-blue dyes remain firmly attached to the paper, as shown by the bottom part of the chroma. 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 Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with the Lamy Safari M-nib Source of the quote, written with a wet Pelikan M205 Demonstrator with M cursive italic nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The multi-paper writing test shows that Teranishi Opera Rose looks best with pure white and light-cream paper. On more heavily yellow paper you lose some of that old-rose vintage vibe. The ink also prefers high-quality paper – on lower-quality absorbent paper you get a tiny bit of feathering (just visible), and quite some see-through and even a bit of bleed-through. Drying times vary wildly depending on the type of paper: with hard-surface glossy paper it can take more than 30 seconds with the Safari M-nib. On absorbent paper drying times are almost instant, in the 0-5 second range. I used photos for the writing samples above to get the most accurate results. In scans, the contrast gets blown up, and looks totally unrealistic – see the scan below. My scanner captured the colour well, but messes up the contrast, making the text look harsh and unpleasant. 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 wet Pelikan M205 Demonstrator with a gold M cursive italic nib, and a Wancher Dream Pen with M-nib. This Opera Rose looks at its best in broader nibs (M-size or above) and/or wet-writing pens. Don’t mind the starting word of the text line written with the Dream Pen. That’s totally my fault – insufficient cleaning of the previous ink that was in that pen. After that first word, I wrote off-review with the pen until the rose-brick colour re-appeared. Related inks To compare Teranishi Opera Rose 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. Opera Rose has similarities with other inks, but remains in a category of its own. It sits firmly between rose-red-orange-brown, without really matching any of these. Nicely done of Teranishi’s ink mixers. I really love the colour they created here! Inkxperiment – Arachnid City As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. For me, that’s where the fun starts: experimenting with the ink to see how it behaves in a more artistic context. I love doing these little drawings – always good for a fun couple of hours. Inspiration for this drawing comes the book “Children of Time” by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The book tells the story of terraformed planets, seeded with a mutagen virus that force-evolved life-forms. Sometimes this went in a totally different direction than envisioned by the world-building engineers. On one world, a race of intelligent spiders evolved and created a civilization. When humans arrive centuries later, the two intelligences meet and must learn to live with one another. I started with an A4 piece of 300 gsm watercolour paper. I drew in the background with cotton swabs, starting with heavily water-diluted ink, and gradually adding more Opera Rose to the mix. I then used my fountain pen to draw in Arachnid City with its occupants (yeah… these critters are a bit posh… personally I would just call it Spider Town). I added webbing and communication poles (the spiders use vibrations sent along these wires to communicate long-distance). The chaotic look is just our human mind that cannot cope… to our arachnid friends, it all looks splendid and very civilized. The end result shows quite well what can be achieved with this Opera Rose in a more artistic setting. I personally like the broad range of tones that can be extracted from this single ink! 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 using a sketch filter that added echoes to lines in the picture, creating a vibration effect that works well with the spider theme. I then used a HDR filter to increase contrast. Finally I used a two-tone filter to add some colour variation, and dialed down the saturation to more earthy tones. The final picture captures well the chaotic city of the Arachnids with their world-perception based on vibrations in the environment. Conclusion Teranishi Opera Rose is a wonderful ink – a unique dusty rose-brick colour with a strong vintage vibe. An ink made for personal journaling, and one that also works great for drawing. I know this type of colour is not for everyone, but personally I love it. This is one of my favourites in the Teranishi line. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types