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TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige ruri TACCIA is a Japanese stationery company, that - as far as I know - is now part of the Nakabayashi group. They offer high-quality fountain pens, inks, pen-rolls, notebooks, etc. More specifically, TACCIA produce a line of inks, inspired by the unique look of Ukiyo-e prints from Japan’s Edo period (1603-1867). Ukiyo-e paintings are woodblock prints where the work of an artist is carved into wood by woodworkers, and pressed onto paper by printers. This allows the production of multiple prints of an artwork with some different colours as well. In this review, the spotlight shines on ruri, a colour that I can only describe as a dark and saturated light-blue 😉. I know – that doesn’t make much sense, but that’s what I feel you get. The ink has the softness, fragility, tenderness of a light-blue – but at the same time it is quite saturated and can get fairly dark. A really nice ink colour with a lot of depth to it. The ink’s inspiration comes from a woodprint design by the Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige, more specifically from his first print “Sunny Morning after Snow at Nihonbashi Bridge” (1856) in the “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” series. The ink’s colour is derived from the different shades of blue appearing in the river. The print has a limited palette of bright blues and soft red, grey and brown. Particularly striking is the vivid ruri blue of the river and the sky, for which Hiroshige took advantage of the new European pigment Prussian blue. Although far from realistic, the colours evoke the crisp light of a bright winter’s morning. Ruri is an inspired vivid blue, wet and saturated, and with a complexity of dyes that really add depth to the colour. The ink shows little shading with fine nibs, but with M-nibs and above the shading is really prominent while still being aestetically pleasing. The darker parts of the ink show an impressive and beautiful red-purple sheen on the right type of paper (more specifically Japanese papers like Tomoe River, Kobeha GRAPHILO, Yamamoto bank paper). The ink writes really wet though, a bit too much for me in wet & broad-nibbed pens. The sweet spot for this ink is in the M-B-1.1 range with a dry-writing pen: great shading, and the vivid saturated blue looks particularly lovely. The ink comes in a 40 ml bottle, that is packaged in a beautiful box showing the corresponding Ukiyo-e painting. Lovely packaging for an excellent ink. 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. TACCIA ruri has a narrow dynamic range, with limited contrast between the light and darker parts. This translates to very gently but still prominently visible shading. With wet pens, the increased saturation tends to burn away most of the shading though. Dry writers lean towards the left side of the saturation range, showing that nicely saturated light-blue with excellent shading. The chromatography shows the complex nature of this ink: ruri mixes sky-blue and rose-pink dyes that magically combine to give us that elegant vivid blue. Lovely stuff! The bottom part of the chroma shows that most of the dyes detach from the paper when coming into contact with water. Not a water-resistant ink, as is confirmed by the water test at the end of this review. 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 Lamy Safari A small text sample, written with the M-nib Safari Source of the quote, written with a B-nib Platinum 3775 Century Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) This vivid and well-saturated blue ink can handle both white and cream-coloured paper. For me, it looks best on pure white paper, like the Clairefontaine Triomphe. The ink writes really wet, and as such requires high-quality paper. With cheap & absorbent paper, you get quite a bit of see-through and bleed-through. Surprisingly for such a wet-writing ink, drying times are fairly short with the M-nib Lamy Safari: 10-15 seconds on most paper types, climbing to 20-25 seconds for the hard-surface high-sheen papers. Technically, the ink is really good too: on crappy paper, you get only the tiniest amount of feathering – fairly impressive for such a wet ink. Even on Moleskine, the results are surprisingly good. For the sake of completeness, I also add a photo of text written on a number of different papers. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The ink’s saturation makes for a good contrast with the paper across all nib sizes. Shading is soft & gentle, almost undetectable in the finer nibs, but becoming truly stunning with the M-B-1.1 nibs. It really adds to the character of your writing. Beware that wet pens will shift the ink to the saturated portion of its dynamic range, where the shading is mostly burned away. The sweet spot for this ink are dry writers combined with broader nibs – great colour and lovely shading! Related inks To compare ruri 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. Diamine Blue Velvet comes really close colour-wise, but lacks a bit of the depth & complexity that makes this ruri such a great-looking blue. Inkxperiment – Dark Side of the Moon With every review, I try to create an interesting drawing using only the ink I am reviewing. These small monochromatic paintings are an excellent way to show the colour-range nuances that are hidden within the ink. And I totally enjoy the fun couple of hours these inkxperiments provide me. A couple of days ago, I had my favourite rock band’s album on the speakers: “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd. The first album I bought as a teenager, and still a musical highlight. I realized that this album got published in 1973 – making it 50 years old today. Unbelievable! The music sounds as fresh, compelling and mind-bending today as it did all these years ago. This is truly an all-time classic! No need to look any further for inspiration! For this drawing, I started with a piece of A4 HP photo paper. I started by taping out the iconic prism of the album’s cover art with washi tape. Next I drew the background, applying water-diluted ink through a kitchen towel. After removing the washi tape, I used a plastic card dipped in pure ink to draw the prism and the rays of light passing through it. I then added the psychedelic sound waves travelling across the soundscape. As a final touch, I added the iconic heartbeat from the intro/outro title tracks. The end result is my tribute to the 50th anniversary of this timeless classic. 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. For this computational derivation, I started with applying a negative filter to the original drawing. I then used an urban art filter to lift out the main topic (prism and heartbeats) and place them on a gritty grey & black background. Next I used an ‘antique photo paper’ filter to age the colours and arrive at a more monochromatic look. I really like the end result that keeps the main topic of the painting, and makes for a great neutral-looking computer screen background. Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige ruri is a great-looking blue – vivid & saturated, while still keeping a soft, fragile and light apperarance with great depth & complexity. I really like the colour of this one, especially with what I consider its sweet spot: a dry writer with a broader nib, while using high-quality pure white paper. A really nice ink from TACCIA’s ink brewers. Recommended. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types

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