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TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige naka murasaki 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 produces a line of inks, inspired by the unique look of Ukiyo-e prints from Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868). Ukiyo-e prints are woodblock prints where the work of an artist is carved into wood by woodworkers and pressed onto paper by printers. This allows for the production of multiple prints of an artwork with some different colours as well. In this review, the centre stage is taken by naka murasaki, a dusty grey-leaning lilac ink, inspired by the colours of the wisteria blossoms in the 1856 painting “In the Kameido Tenjin Shrine Compound” by Utagawa Hiroshige. It is painting n°65 from the print series “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo”. In the 1660’s, Kameido Tenjin was placed at the eastern bank of the Sumida river in order to protect a new urban expansion project from evil spirits. In Hiroshige’s painting, the shrine is merely suggested by one of the two bridges within the precincts that mark the path to the shrine. The shrine was renowned for its wisteria blossoms with their beautiful lilac colour. This naka murasaki is for me an ideal colour to mark the start of spring. The lilac tones bring a playful touch, and also the much needed colour after the greys of winter. And the dusty grey-leaning undertones indicate that spring is just breaking the darkness of winter but hasn’t reached its full-on vibrancy yet. The resulting colour is just perfect: a really nice lilac – both playful and restrained - that looks serious enough to be usable in the workplace. Technically, the ink is a moderately wet and smooth writer, that works well with all nib sizes, and that can handle all types of paper. A superb ink, and another winner in the TACCIA ink series. 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. Naka murasaki has a medium dynamic range, without too much contrast between the light and darker parts. This translates to just the right amount of shading, not too heavy but definitely present, bringing that extra character to your writing that is the hallmark of the fountain pen. Shading is present in all nib sizes, just a hint with the EF nib and firmly present with F nibs and above. Well done! The ink’s chromatography shows a colourful mix of dyes: rose-pink, green and sky-blue. And these really bright colours combine in a mysterious way to create the dusty lilac looks of naka murasaki. A masterful mix – kudos to TACCIA’s ink masters! From the bottom of the chroma, it looks like the ink has some water resistance, but unfortunately that’s not the case. After coming into contact with water, your writing totally disappears, leaving only some rose-pink smudges on the paper. So if some measure of water resistance is on your list, this is not an ink for you. 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 Pelikan M400 with F cursive italic Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Naka murasaki looks good on all types of paper, but I personally like it most on pure white paper, where the soft lilac colour looks at its best. There is a tiny bit of feathering on low quality paper, but nothing too distracting. With the low-quality paper, you also get a small amount of see-through and bleed-through – meaning that you won’t be able to use both sides of the paper. On the Yamamoto bank paper, some strange chemistry is going on. The ink shifts a bit into purple and blue-grey tones, losing the lilac in the process. Not at all bad-looking, but also not what the ink is meant to show. Just something to be aware of. Drying times are fairly low – in the 5 to 10 second range, moving up to 15 seconds for the really smooth Japanese papers. A new year, a new set of quotes. For 2024, I’ve selected the works of Mark Lawrence. I love his writing – dark medieval fantasy, often brutal and violent – definitely not for the faint of hearth. The characters in his novels are real-to-life – you get to know them in all their aspects, both good and bad. And the stories themselves are masterfully written, keeping you glued to the page for hours on end. Highly recommended! I’ve also added a photo 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, scan & photo are very close-matched. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The EF-nib already hints at the shading that the ink is capable of. But this shading really shows itself in all its glory in F-nibs and above. The ink handles all nib sizes with ease, but I like it most in my Pelikan with F cursive italic nib – just perfect! Related inks To compare naka murasaki 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. The closest I have to this TACCIA ink is L’Artisan Pastellier Callifolio Violet. But where Violet has more of that full-spring vibrancy, the TACCIA ink maintains a muted and subdued character, due to its dusty-grey undertones. Inkxperiment – Geometry 101 Circles With every review, I try to create a drawing using only the ink I am reviewing. These small one-ink pieces are an excellent way to show you the colour-range nuances that are hidden within the ink. And I simply enjoy the fun couple of hours these inkxperiments provide me: playing around with the ink in a creative way. Inspiration for this inkxperiment comes from the field of mathematics. I’m currently reading a book on the history of this pillar of science. Its foundations rise from early efforts on discovering the rules of geometry: lines, circles, triangles, … Fascinating stuff! For this drawing, I decided to focus on circles. For this drawing, I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper. I first painted the background with heavily water-diluted ink, applied with cotton swabs. For the filled-in circles, I used self-made rubber stamps and slightly diluted naka murasaki. For the other circles, I used bottle and tin caps of different sizes as stamps, dipping them in pure naka murasaki. As a final touch, I added the drowsy fisherman, lazely resting in his circle, enjoying the early spring sun. The final picture gives you a good idea of what can be achieved with naka murasaki as a drawing 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 first applied a “comic art” filter, which accentuates lines and added a bit of grit to the drawing. I then used a filter to move the colour to a bluer hue. For the final picture, I did a square cut-out, and brightened the result a bit. I like the end-result which perfectly fits the circle geometry theme. Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige naka murasaki is a great writing ink – beautiful colour and with excellent behaviour on a wide range of papers. Also, an ink with some lovely shading, that is present in all nib sizes. Another great ink from TACCIA, and one that certainly deserves a place in your ink collection. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types

TACCIA Ukiyo-e Syaraku natane 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 produces a line of inks, inspired by the unique look of Ukiyo-e prints from Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868). Ukiyo-e prints are woodblock prints where the work of an artist is carved into wood by woodworkers, and pressed onto paper by printers. This allows for the production of multiple prints of an artwork with some different colours as well. In this review, the star of the show is natane, a golden-yellow ink with a hint of green undertones. The ink is inspired by the colour that appears in the kimono from “Segawa Kikunojyo III as Oshizu, Wife of Tanabe Bunzo.” This print of the actor Segawa Kikunojyo III is one of the most celebrated portraits of the onnagata (male actor in a female role) by the late eighteenth-century artist Tousyusai Syaraku. It portrays a character in the Genroku era play Hanaayame Bunroku Soga (The Iris Saga of the Bunroku Era), a drama that retells the true story of the vengeance of ten brothers for their father's assassination in 1701. The play was performed at the Miyako-za theater in the city of Edo in May 1794. For writing, this ink disappointed me. It writes really dry with a serious lack of lubrication. Also – yellow is a difficult colour to write with: not so good for dry pens / fine nibs, and definitely unsuitable for use on cream-coloured paper. Furthermore, the ink suffers from see-through / bleed-through on many paper types. And the list goes on… lines are smeared out instead of crisp with most nibs, except the fine ones. Overall, not a fantastic ink to write with. On the other hand, there is that lovely golden-yellow colour, that seems to shine of its own. When saturated, natane shows a beautiful green undertone that sets this ink apart from others I own in this tonal range. This is an ink that’s made for drawing! The ink comes in a 40 ml bottle, that is packaged in a beautiful box showing the corresponding Ukiyo-e painting. 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. Natane has a fairly wide dynamic range, while keeping a pleasant contrast between light and darker parts. This translates to soft shading, that is most evident in wet pens with wide nibs that can cover the complete expressive range of this ink. I like the writing in my Edison Collier with 1.1 stub nib, which is used in the scan below. The ink’s chromatography shows a truly diverse mix of dyes, with light-blue, rose and yellow tones appearing. This already hints at the green undertones that blossom up where the ink gets saturated. The resulting colour is really beautiful: an old gold-yellow with an antique vibe that seems to shine from within. I really like this ink’s colour. As can be seen from the bottom part of the chromatography, natane shows a bit of water resistance. The yellow dyes disappear, but a light-blue residue remains that makes it possible to reconstruct your writing. 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 Pelikan M400 with gold M-nib A small text sample, written with a Parker Sonnet with F-nib 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) Natane is too unsaturated to play nice with my usual Safari test pens. That’s why I used wet pens for my writing samples. These wet pens push the colour range to the saturated part of its spectrum, where you get that golden hue with a green undertone – which I consider the goldy-locks zone for this ink. As mentioned above, the ink has lots of technical shortcomings: low lubrication, absorbs too fast into the paper, resulting in wide lines and a fair amount of see-through and even bleed-through. You also get a tiny amount of feathering on many of the more absorbent papers. Overall, natane is a poor performing writing ink (my opinion). I liked the ink best with my Parker Sonnet with F-nib – the Sonnet tends to write more saturated (it evaporates water like crazy with that breather hole in its cap), which accentuates the golden-green end of natane’s colour spectrum. And the fine nib keeps the wide-writing tendency of this ink under control. Below are photos that show the ink on the different papers in my test set. My scanner has difficulties capturing natane’s colour well. The ink shows too yellow, and that inner golden light gets lost. For the sake of completeness, you can find an example of a scan below. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. Natane is too unsatured with my Lamy Safari test pens, which results in a light yellow that is barely readable. Also, the dry-writing Safari is definitely unpleasant to use with this under-lubricated ink. But I really like the ink with wet writers, and especially with my Parker Sonnet. Related inks To compare natane 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. The ink is different from other yellow-toned inks in my collection. The yellow dominates, but that barely-visible green undertone sets natane apart from its neighbours. Inkxperiment – hunter-seeker With every review, I try to create an interesting drawing using only the ink I am reviewing. These small one-ink pieces 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. Yellow-toned inks are usually great for drawing, so I had high hopes for this inkxperiment. Inspiration for the drawing comes from the novel “The Kraken Project” by Douglas Preston. A light read, where the plot centers around Dorothy, an AI program that escapes to the internet. At a certain point, virus-bots are sent out hunting for Dorothy’s signature. The drawing captures the moment where the virus-bots zoom in for the kill, with Dorothy desperately hiding behind her firewall. For this drawing, I started with a piece of A4 HP photo paper. I first drew the background, using some cotton pads and water-diluted ink, with parts of the scene taped out using washi tape. Next I drew the firewall using pure natane and a plastic card, and painted in the figure of Dorothy. I finally added the hunter-seeker virus-bots executing their attack. The final picture turned out quite well, and gives you a good impression of what can be achieved with this TACCIA ink in a more artistic setting. 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 first abstracted the drawing, and then used a filter that overexposed the scene. Finally I added a lens blur filter – keeping Dorothy in focus, but seriously blurring out the image of the killer-bots. I quite like the end-result, which emphasizes Dorothy’s despair when the hunter-seekers initiate their attack. Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Syaraku natane is a difficult ink. Not really suited for writing and with lots of technical issues. You really need to hunt for the right combination of pen and paper when working with this one. But it’s also an ink with a beautiful golden-yellow colour that works great for drawing. I will continue to use it in my Parker Sonnet, but will probably use most of my bottle for doing ink paintings. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types

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

TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hokusai koiai TACCIA is a Japanese stationery company, that is 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 paintings from Japan’s Edo period (17th century). 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 is on koiai, a dark indigo blue with a heavy reddish-purple sheen. The colour is inspired by the blue tones in the world-famous painting “The Great Wave of Kanagawa”, painted by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). It is the best-known painting in his “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” series. The breathtaking composition of this woodblock print ensures its reputation as an icon of world art. Hokusai cleverly played with perspective to make Japan’s grandest mountain appear as a small triangular mound within the hollow of the cresting wave. Koiai is a wet and saturated ink, that can appear very dark in writing. It’s not a blue-black though, but a deep dark blue that is moving a bit towards teal territory - without actually getting there. This is an ink that I have mixed feelings about. In wet pens & fine nibs, the ink is too saturated for my taste, and the resulting very dark blue shade doesn’t do much for me. But use this ink with dry pens and/or stub nibs, and it truly blossoms, showing a wonderful indigo blue. You definitely need to hunt for the right pen/nib combination, but this extra bit of work is totally worth it. Koiai is also an ink with a fabulous reddish-purple sheen, that shows on many types of paper. 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. Koiai has a fairly narrow colour span, quickly moving from a stunning indigo-blue to a very saturated dark blue. Not a lot of shading in this ink, but instead you get lots of sheen in the saturated parts of the letter forms. This ink is a true sheening monster! This TACCIA ink works wonderfully well with my Edison Collier Nighthawk 1.1 stub – a beautiful indigo-blue, loads of sheen, and the pen’s colour matches the ink perfectly. I love it when all these details combine together for a wonderful experience… writer’s heaven! The ink’s chromatography shows a complex mix of dyes, with grey, purple, teal and sky-blue components in the mix. From the bottom part of the chroma you can deduce that all colour will disappear from the page when the ink comes into contact with water, leaving only a grey ghost of your writing. This is confirmed in the water test – colour washes away, with a grey-blue residue clinging to the paper, that remains quite readable. By no means a water-proof ink, but one that can survive a small accident. 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 an Edison Collier 1.1 stub Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Koiai looks good on both pure white and yellow-cream paper. The ink handles crappy paper well: on Moleskine I saw almost zero feathering, and even see-through and bleed-through are minimal. Drying time are quite long (15-25 seconds) on hard-surface paper, but on more absorbent paper the ink tends to dry almost immediately. This means you can use koiai as an office ink – I’ve used it in my Kaweco Liliput EDC pens with EF nib, and it worked perfectly on the lousy copy paper at work. I’ve also added a photo 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, the photo shows the ink a bit too dark, while the scans come closest to what my eyes can see. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The top lines are written with my dry-writing Lamy Safari test pens and show a nice dark blue. The ink starts to blossom when you reach the broader nib sizes (B and stub-nib). With my Lamy Dialog 3 – a wet writer with M-nib – the ink gets too saturated for my taste and loses a lot of its appeal. Koiai provides low-to-medium shading. What the scan totally fails to capture is the tremendous amount of sheen – this has to be seen to believe. Related inks To compare koiai 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. There are quite a number of similar-looking inks in my collection, so colourwise this koiai is not a must have. But that sheen… totally makes it worth it to own a bottle of this TACCIA brew. Inkxperiment – Romeo and Juliet With every review, I try to create a drawing using only the ink I am reviewing. These small one-ink pieces are an excellent way to show the colour-range nuances that are hidden within the ink. And every inkxperiment provides me with a couple of fun hours of quality time. Inspiration for this inkxperiment comes from the “Wyrd Sisters” – a Terry Pratchett novel with lots of references to Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear. But also, a love story between the young witch Magrat and the King’s Fool – one that made me think of Romeo and Juliet. The inkxperiment expresses Romeo’s desperation while trying to reach his Juliet. For this drawing, I started with an A4 piece of 300 gsm watercolour paper. I divided the paper in square grids and used the age-old potato stamp (known from kindergarten times) to print a background of squares using different water/ink ratios. I then used a plastic card to add labyrinth lines to the drawing, and with a glass dip pen added Romeo and Juliet. Technically a really simple drawing, but I like the end result that gives you a good idea of what can be achieved with koiai as a drawing 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 made a square cut-out of the inkxperiment drawing and used a metallic filter to convert the drawing to black & white. Looks great on a 75x75cm canvas poster against a white-painted wall. Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hokusai koiai is a dark indigo-blue ink with oodles of sheen. Not an ink for a wet writer though, because it tends to oversaturate. But combine it with a stub-nib in a dry pen and you will be in writer’s heaven! This is also a wonderful ink to draw with – I truly enjoyed experimenting with it. Not the best TACCIA ink, but certainly worth a try. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types

TACCIA Ukiyo-e Utamaro usuzumi 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 paintings from Japan’s Edo period (17th century). Ukiyo-e prints 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 center stage is taken by usuzumi, a well-behaved and good-looking black ink with a bit of a purple-brown undertone. The ink’s inspiration comes from a woodprint carving by the Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro, the leading ukiyo-e artist in the 1790’s in the bijin-ga genre of pictures of female beauties. He was known for his technique that focuses on the heads of his subjects. In the picture, the triangular composition depicts the profiles of three celebrities of the time: geisha Tomimoto Toyohina (middle), and teahouse waitresses Naniwaya Okita (right) and Takashima Hisa (left). The colour of usuzumi is based on the clothing of Naniwaya Okita’s kimono dress. Usuzumi is a well-executed black ink, with some intrinsic complexities that raise it above the average uninspired black. The ink has some purple-brown undertones shimmering below the surface. These are most visible in swatches and when using the ink for drawing. This black also has a bit of a golden-brown sheen when using the right kind of paper (e.g. Tomoe River, Kobeha GRAPHILO). I also like the soft & gentle shading that is present even when using fine nibs – really elegant and it gives some extra depth and character to your writing without being immediately obvious. Usuzumi is fairly water resistant, and can handle all types of paper (even crappy ones). If you’re looking for a good office ink, no need to look further. This one fits the bill perfectly. The ink comes in a 40 ml bottle, that is packaged in a beautiful box showing the corresponding Ukiyo-e print. 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. Usuzumi has a narrow dynamic range, with limited contrast between the light and darker parts. This translates to very gently shading, almost invisible but still present. With wet pens, the increased saturation tends to burn away most of the shading though. With the right kind of paper and the right kind of lighting, usuzumi shows a quite strong golden-brown sheen. The picture below is taken in extreme conditions (sunlight and a low angle) to give you a somewhat exaggerated view. In everyday circumstances, the sheen is much less prominent, but still there (especially in the saturated parts of your writing). The ink’s chromatography shows the complex nature of usuzumi: a black ink with purple components floating beneath the surface and even some sky-blue tones in the mix. Lovely stuff! The bottom part of the chroma shows that a strong dark-grey residue remains on the paper. This clearly indicates that usuzumi is a fairly water-resistant ink, which 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 an M-nib Kaweco Special Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) This black usuzumi works well with both white and cream paper. It’s also really well-behaved across all paper types in my test set. It surprised me in the way it can cope with really crappy paper like Moleskine: no feathering and almost zero see-through and bleed-through. Really impressive! This alone makes it an excellent office ink. Usuzumi is also well-saturated, and works great with all nib sizes. I’m currently using it at the office with a Pilot Capless with F-nib – a perfect business ink: writes well on all surfaces, and has that neutral unobtrusive look that fits the office setting. Drying times are good all across the board: in the 5 to 10 second range for most paper types (with the M-nib Safari). 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 EF nib, but easily visible in F-nibs and above. 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 (like in an overexposed photograph). Myself, I prefer this black in combination with drier pens. Related inks To compare usuzumi 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. The ink is different from other blacks in my collection - the closest I have is Kaweco Black Pearl, which is a bit less saturated and shows less depth and complexity. Looking at the grid, it’s truly amazing that black inks can show so much differences when you put them side-by-side. You might think that black-is-black, but no, there is an unbelievable amount of diversity across implementations by different ink makers. Inkxperiment – Modern Times With every review, I try to create an interesting drawing using only the ink I am reviewing. These small one-ink pieces 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. Inspiration for this drawing comes from the overly busy & hectic period I’m currently experiencing at work. My agenda is ruling the day, and work life is dictated by urgent stuff with near impossible deadlines. Not fun, but it happens from time to time 😉 This reminded me of the old black&white movie “Modern Times”, a masterpiece of Charles Chaplin that shows the pressures of modern work life at the time. I tried to capture this feeling in the painting. But also… it’s springtime in my part of the world, and a view out of the window shows nature awakening. This yearly pattern of rebirth in nature works wonders to re-energize my morale! So, when feeling overwhelmed in work, I tend to pause for a few minutes, and simply stare outside the window to the couple of trees in the courtyard with the sun playing through the branches. Excellent for recharging the batteries a bit! For this drawing, I started with a piece of A4 HP photo paper. I first drew the background, keeping some space for the window. Next I drew in the conveyor belt with the exhausted workers executing their daily tasks. With a plastic card dipped in ink, I drew the window frame. I then added the factory background with its geometric shapes. Lastly, I used my fountain pen to paint in the trees and birds in the courtyard. The final painting gives you a good idea of what can be achieved with TACCIA usuzumi as a drawing ink. Personally, I give it high marks – I really enjoyed the range of shades you can get with this ink, and the purple & brown undertones that appear in parts of the drawing. 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 an urban art filter to the scene. I then added the sparkling sun to the nature scene in the window, which combined well with the urban art filter, creating the illusion of a ray of sunshine falling through the window and illuminating the workplace. I next used a colour filter to create a more somber & industrial-looking colour palette, that fits with the subject of the drawing. I’m really pleased with the end result, which in my opinion enhances the original inkxperiment. Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Utamaro usuzumi is a near perfect black office ink: good saturation & contrast, water-resistant, can handle all types of paper. And as extras: a bit of added complexity with purple-brown undertones and a lovely golden-brown sheen. Also a great ink for drawing. In my opinion, this is a black ink that’s well worth getting. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types

TACCIA Ukiyo-e Utamaro benizakura TACCIA is a Japanese stationery company, that is 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 paintings from Japan’s Edo period (17th century). 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 I take a closer look at benizakura, a very bright red ink with a strong yellow-gold sheen. The colour is inspired by the red squares of the young girl’s dress in the painting “Girl blowing a glass toy”, painted by the Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro around 1792-1793. This is one of his drawings from the series “Ten Physiognomic Aspects of Women”. The portrait shows a young woman with a Taka-shimada coiffure, playing with a glass toy, known as a “popen”. This thin glass object has a bulb covered with a thin diaphragm at one end and a pipe at the other. When the pipe is blown or sucked, the diaphragm makes a popping sound. Benizakura is a very bright and saturated orange-leaning red, that moves towards rose-pink in its most unsaturated form. In places of high saturation, the ink presents a heavy yellow-golden sheen on the right kind of paper (like e.g. Tomoe River). To be honest, this TACCIA ink is too saturated and bright for my personal taste, so I’m not going to use it in its raw form after this review. I’ll probable darken it up a bit by adding some grey or black. Even so, I know there are lots of people that like their inks bright and strong, so I’ll do my best to give an objective review below. 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. Benizakura has a fairly narrow colour span, with not a lot of difference between the light and dark parts. With a moderately wet pen, your writing will lean towards the more saturated part of the swab below. This translates to writing that shows little in the way of shading – the ink is too saturated for that. I only got shading when using a dry-writing Safari with broad italic nibs. The ink’s chromatography shows some unexpected complexity. The bright red is there, plus the rose-pink undertones. And there’s even some yellow in the mix, that makes this an orange-leaning red that looks fairly nice. The bottom part of the chroma already shows that most of the colour will disappear from the page when the ink comes into contact with water. This is confirmed in the water test: some rose-pink remains, but it gets heavily smeared out, and your writing will be mostly gone. Not a good ink when some measure of water resistance is on your wish list. This might be a good place to issue a word of warning. Red inks often stain a lot, but this benizakura is a real b*tch. Get it on your fingers, and you’ll probably walk around with bloody fingertips for a couple of days. In my case, people at work got curious: “did you hurt yourself?” … and I had to explain several times that inky fingers are a hazard of the hobby. Also… good pen hygiene is a must. To clean benizakura out of my review pens took 3 times the normal cleaning regimen, and I even had to use some cleaning solution to get rid of the last remnants of 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 Lamy Safari A small text sample, written with the M-nib Safari Source of the quote, written with a wet Pelikan M101N with F-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Benizakura can handle both pure white and yellow-cream paper. There’s a tiny amount of feathering on lower quality paper, but nothing too bad. As can be expected from a very saturated & bright ink, there is a fair amount of see-through, even on better quality paper. And you also get quite some bleed-through on the low quality paper. Not a good ink to use on the crappy copy paper that is typically used in the workplace. Drying times are all over the place, from near eternal on high-sheen hard surface paper, to a very reasonable 10-15 seconds on absorbent papers. I’ve also added a photo 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, the photo shows the ink’s colour a bit too dark, while the scans show a tiny bit too much pink. The intro pic with the ink bottle looks about right. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The top lines are written with my dry-writing Lamy Safari test pens, and show a small amount of shading that increases with nib width. With wet pens – like the Pelikan and Parker – the shading disappears due to the increased saturation of the ink. On the Rhodia paper used below, I didn’t see any of that beautiful yellow-golden sheen. You really need the right kind of paper to capture that. In my test set, most of the Japanese papers produced the sheen (with Tomoe River, Kobeha GRAPHILO and Yamamoto bank paper being the super-sheeners). Related inks To compare TACCIA’s benizakura 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. There are quite a number of similar-looking inks in my collection, so colourwise this benizakura is not a must have. On the other hand, the ink manages to find its own ground between the other reds – it’s still different enough to carve out its own place. Inkxperiment – A Birthday Card for my Sister With every review, I try to create a drawing using only the ink I am reviewing. These small one-ink drawings are an excellent way to show the colour-range nuances that are hidden within the ink. It’s always a pleasure to do these pieces – I really enjoy the time I can play around with the ink in this more artistic context. Inspiration for this inkxperiment was a no-brainer. My sister has her 60th birthday coming up in a couple of weeks, so I decided to draw her a birthday card – makes it a bit more personal than getting one from the magazine store. And with the same amount of effort, I got the inkxperiment drawing for this review 😉 For this drawing, I started with an A4 piece of 300 gsm watercolour paper. I first penciled in the different areas of the painting as a guideline. Next I painted in the background using heavily water-diluted ink applied through some kitchen paper. For the straight lines, I used a plastic card dipped in pure ink. The other elements were drawn in with a Lamy Safari with 1.1 calligraphy nib. While I like the design of the birthday card, this benizakura shows too little oomph to make the drawing look captivating. In my opinion, there’s just too little contrast in the painting. 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’m getting more comfortable with my digital toolbox, and was fairly confident that the birthday card could be saved. I first used an art filter that extends the contrast range, and that abstracts the drawing a bit. Next I used a filter that translated the colour range to a spectrum with yellow, green and blue. I finally added a vintage filter to age the painting up a bit. I quite like the end result: happy colours, and the composition looks good to me. So this is the birthday card that will find its way to the birthday girl. Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Utamaro benizakura is a very bright and saturated red, with a lovely golden sheen on the right kind of paper (like Tomoe River), but not much in the way of shading. Not my type of ink, but I’m sure there are lots of you that like their inks this bold and bright. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types

ink review : TACCIA Ukiyo-e - Hiroshige - ainezu 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 paintings from Japan’s Edo period (17th century). Ukiyo-e prints 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, I take a closer look at ainezu, a dark and stormy grey that is inspired by the painting “Sudden Shower at Shin-Ohashi Bridge” of the artist Utagawa Hiroshige. It was published in 1857 as part of the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo and is one his best known prints. Sudden showers are a recurring theme in ukiyo-e works and here, in what Hiroshige calls "white rain", the downpour is depicted using a large number of thin dark parallel lines in 2 directions - a difficult skill in woodblock carving. The dark clouds are produced using a gradated bokashi technique and vary significantly between prints. The rain, sheltering people and log raft at the centre of the image give the image a sense of movement. Ainezu is a dark grey with strong teal undertones, that are mostly visible in swabs or when using the ink for drawing. It’s a beautiful complex grey that lays down a wet & dark line that quickly dries to a lighter but still contrast-rich tint. A very strong shader, this one, even in fine nibs. And on top of that, it shows a fair amount of water resistance. All factors combined, this makes it an excellent choice for use at work: the dark grey colour will fit right in, and the strong shading and dark teal undertones will certainly draw the attention of your co-workers. I like this ink a lot: a great grey for writing, and one that really opens up when using it for drawing. 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. Ainezu has a fairly wide dynamic range, ranging from a pale indigo-tinged grey to a much more saturated dark teal-grey. The contrast between the light and dark parts is not harsh though, which translates to beautiful shading – very present but not too loud. The shading appears in all nib sizes - just a hint with the EF nib, but really present with F-nibs and above. The aesthetics are superb, adding lots of character to your writing. The ink’s chromatography clearly shows the lovely complexity of this grey: grey, indigo, some sky-blue, and – to my eye – a shimmer of green. The bottom part of the chroma also indicates that this is a fairly water-resistant ink, which is confirmed during water tests. TACCIA’s ink makers Hiroshi Ishiguro and Hanse Matsumoto know their craft, and created with this ainezu a wonderfully complex grey that just looks amazing. 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 Pelikan M101N with M-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Ainezu looks good on all types of paper – both white and more creamy ones. It lays down a wet and dark line that quickly dries to a lighter tint (5-10 second range). No feathering that I can see. And it can even handle crappy paper (like Moleskine) with ease – good-looking writing, and only limited show-through and bleed-through. A good ink for the workplace! 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, the photos capture the ink best. The scans seem to exaggerate the teal undertones in the swabs. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The EF-nib already shows a hint of shading. But it is with the F-nib and above that the ink’s elegant shading really comes into play. Look e.g. at the shading with the Safari M and B nib – that’s why I use a fountain pen! I personally prefer to use this ink with the drier pens where the shading is more prominent. With wetter pens (like the Pelikan M101N Lizard), the ink gets a bit too saturated and starts to drown out the shading. Related inks To compare ainezu 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 lots of greys in my collection, but this TACCIA colour still looks different from all the other ones. Diamine Earl Grey has that same complexity, but is a much cooler shade (cool as in cold, but it's really cool too ;-). Inkxperiment – Ungawa, Timba With every review, I try to create an inkxperiment using only the ink I am reviewing. These one-ink drawings are great for showing the colour-range nuances that can be achieved with a single ink. And it’s great fun to experiment with inks in a more artsy context – I love doing these inkxperiments. They are one of the many things I enjoy about the hobby. During the holiday season, I re-viewed some of the really old Johnny Weismüller movies – grainy black&white cinema, but fun stories and totally uncomplicated. I really enjoyed one of the scenes where Tarzan and his elephants come to the rescue. That’s where the inspiration for this elephant drawing comes from. The picture itself is an adaptation of one I saw on Pinterest. HP photo paper usually brings out the best in inks, so I decided to use it for this drawing. In this case, it really enhances the dark teal undertones in the ink. I started by wetting the photo paper, and drawing some circles on it with pure ainezu, using a glass jar as a stamp. Next I used several passes with a paintbrush and pure ink to darken up the center of the page. After the background had dried completely, I used a glass dip pen and bleach to draw in Tarzan on his elephant. Bleach reacts nicely with ainezu, producing a golden-white colour. The picture gives you an idea of what can be achieved when using ainezu for drawing. Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige ainezu is a near perfect writing ink – good technical properties on all paper types, fairly water-resistent, good contrast with the page and some very nice shading. Colourwise it is an intriguing dark & stormy grey with definite teal undertones. A beautiful ink that totally fits my tastes. Highly 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

TACCIA Ukiyo-e Utamaro aomurasaki 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 paintings from Japan’s Edo period (17th century). Ukiyo-e prints 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, I take a closer look at aomurasaki, a blue-purple-grey that is inspired by the work of the Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806). Utamaro was a highly regarded designer of Ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings. He is best known for his “large-headed pictures of beautiful women” of the 1790’s. The woodblock painting “Geigi”, part of a series of five Ukiyo-e prints known as “Five Shades of Ink in the Northern Quarter” was created in 1794-95. Aomurasaki is modeled after the purple-grey colour in the geisha’s kimono robe. Aomurasaki is a well-saturated blue-purple, that can look almost grey in writing. The ink looks soft, muted, understated but full of depth… a complex and sophisticated ink that reflects the geisha’s elegance. Not a vibrant ink, but one that is soft & easy on the eye, well suited for long writing sessions. The ink has good flow, and works well with all nib sizes, even the few EF-nibs I have. My first impression: a great-looking ink with lots of character. Makes me think of Mariko-sana from the James Clavell Shogun book – distinguished and elegant, but with emotions whirling below the surface. I like aomurasaki a lot. To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look and feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of a strip of 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with this TACCIA ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. Aomurasaki has a narrow dynamic range, going from a medium-light to a much darker purple-grey. The contrast between these light and dark parts is fairly low, which translates to soft and elegant shading. Shading happens in all nib sizes, with just a hint using the EF-nib, but really present with M-nibs and above. The shading is never too fierce, but always remains unobtrusive – it just gives that desirable extra oomph to your writing, without being in your face. I like the aesthetics of the result on paper… nicely executed. The ink’s chromatography shows aomurasaki’s complex mix of dyes… I see grey, rose-purple, light-blue, and hints of other colours. Thanks to the mastery of TACCIA’s ink makers Hiroshi Ishiguro and Hanse Matsumoto, these dyes combine to the beautiful blue-purple-grey colour of aomurasaki. The bottom part of the chroma shows that the grey dye remains firmly attached to the paper, while the colour dissipates with water. The water test confirms this. I wouldn’t call aomurasaki a water-proof ink, but it can survive accidents, and what remains on the paper is still readable. That’s a plus for using this ink at the office. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. Starting with this review, I’ve added a few new papers : Nakabayashi Prime notebook paper (75 gsm) Miquelrius 1839 recycled notebook paper (80 gsm) Yamamoto Bank Paper Takasago Premium (87.9 gsm) 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 an F-nib Yard-o-Led Source of the quote, with an Esterbrook journaler nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Aomurasaki looks really good on both white and creamy paper. It does prefer better quality paper, showing a tiny bit of feathering and some bleed-through on the lower quality papers in my test-set. Due to the saturated nature of the ink, there is also some see-through on multiple papers. Drying times with the M-nib Lamy Safari are in the 5 to 10 second range. 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, the photos capture aomurasaki’s colour best – the scans of the writing samples are little bit too blue. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The EF-nib already shows a hint of shading. But it is with the M-nib and above that the ink’s soft & elegant shading really comes into play. At first sight, the shading is not really evident, but it is there – low-key and unobtrusive - simply adding character to your writing without being in-your-face. Very nicely done, in my opinion. The ink looks beautiful and well-saturated in the fine nibs (F and EF). This is a plus when using aomurasaki at the office, where premium quality paper is not typically present. By using a finer nib, you avoid excessive feathering and see-through/bleed-through on the lower quality copy paper. Related inks To compare aomurasiki’s muted blue-purple-grey 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. Kyo-iro Soft Snow of Ohara looks fairly similar, although with a touch more blue. Aomurasaki sits somewhere between Soft Snow of Ohara and Rober Oster Purple Rock. Diamine Vivaldi – another purple-grey – definitely leans more heavily towards grey. Inkxperiment – quantum tree With every review, I try to create an interesting drawing using only the ink I’m working on. Limiting myself to one ink allows me to showcase its colour-range nuances. It’s often quite a challenge, but always great fun. Inspiration for this drawing comes from an introductory Elementary Physics online-course I recently followed – trying to keep up-to-date with advances in cosmology and quantum mechanics. You just have to love science… from elementary particles like quarks and leptons, we get atoms, that combine to molecules, that come together in cells and that lead to the amazing large-scale structures we see in nature. Like the majestic oak, and ultimately ourselves. It’s just amazing that simple physical processes can lead to such complex emergent behaviour. I tried to capture my love of science in this quantum tree picture. I started with a piece of A4 HP photo paper, on which I painted the background with different water-ink ratios (using cotton pads). I then used different-sized jars as stamps to draw the circles (using bleach, that reacts quite strongly with aomurasaki). I filled an old and disused Kaweco Sport with bleach, and used that to draw the circuit-board lines, and the binary writing, finishing the painting. The drawing shows really well what can be achieved using aomurasaki for artistic purposes. In my opinion – a beautiful ink to draw & paint with! Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Utamaro aomurasaki is a great ink. Period. I love the understated nature of its blue-purple-grey colour, the elegance of its shading, and its overall writing properties. And on top of that, it’s also a superb drawing ink. Try it... I am sure you'll like it. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types

TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige asahanada 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 paintings from Japan’s Edo period (17th century). Ukiyo-e prints 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, I take a closer look at asahanada, a pale indigo-blue that is inspired by the painting “Dye House at Konya-cho” of the artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1857). In Hiroshige’s day, anybody who knew Edo could recognize the city’s three most prominent landmarks: distant Mount Fuji, Chiyoda Castle, and Nihon Bridge. This particular painting features both the castle and mountain, leaving no doubt that this is an Edo scene. Hiroshige positions the viewpoint for this drawing amid the windblown textiles of a dyer’s drying platform. This woodprint is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Asahanada’s pale light-blue is modeled after the colour present on the banners. Asahanada is a soft pale blue, with a bit of a green undertone. The ink feels delicate, and caresses the paper with a soft line that exhibits beautiful shading. On its own, you might be reminded of a cerulean blue like iroshizuku kon-peki or Pelikan Edelstein Topaz, but this asahanada is a much softer ink that definitely stands on its own. This is not really an ink suited for the workplace, but I most certainly enjoyed using it while writing in my daily journal. Asahanada prefers wetter pens/nibs, where it looks at its best. With finer nibs in dry pens (like the Lamy Safari), the ink becomes a bit to pale with too little contrast with the paper. I quickly switched to wetter pens (Pelikan, Edison) to fully enjoy this ink. 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. Asahanada has a fairly narrow dynamic range, ranging from a very soft indigo-blue to a more saturated almost sky-blue. The contrast between the light and dark parts is fairly low, which translates to beautiful soft shading. The shading appears in all nib sizes - just a hint with the EF nib, but really present with F-nibs and above. The aesthetics are superb, adding lots of character to your writing. The ink’s chromatography clearly shows the green undertones within the ink. These green dyes are very water-soluble, and will readily surface when using asahanada for drawing. The bottom part of the chroma also indicates that this is a fairly water-resistant ink, which is confirmed during water tests. TACCIA’s ink makers Hiroshi Ishiguro and Hanse Matsumoto know their craft, and created a beautiful soft ink with a relatively simple mix of dyes. 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 a Pelikan M101N with F-nib Source of the quote, written with an Edison Collier 1.1 stub Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the F-nib Pelikan) Asahanada looks gorgeous on pure white paper, where its shading and soft elegance really shine. I personally don’t like its look on more yellow/cream paper, where the ink gets a bit of a green tinge. The ink shows a tiny amount of feathering on lower quality paper, together with some show-through and bleed-through. Drying times with the F-nib Pelikan are in the 5 to 10 second range. 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, I find that the scans capture asahanada’s softness best – the photos make the ink look a bit too vibrant. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The EF-nib already shows a hint of shading. But it is with the F-nib and above that the ink’s elegant shading really comes into play. Look e.g. at the shading with the Edison 1.1 stub – that’s why I use a fountain pen! I personally prefer to use this ink with the wetter pens (Pelikan, Edison), where the ink gets a bit more saturated while preserving its soft and delicate nature. Related inks To compare asahanada 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. Among the inks I already used, I found nothing that compares to asahanada. But in my mind, it’s similar to the sky-blues (kon-peki, topaz) if you tone them down quite a bit. Inkxperiment – air elemental With every review, I try to create an inkxperiment using only the ink I am presenting. These one-ink drawings are great for showing the colour-range nuances that can be achieved with the ink. And it’s great fun to experiment with inks in a more artsy context – I love doing these inkxperiments, even if they don’t always come out the way I wished them to be. In previous reviews, I introduced the elements water, earth and fire. For this inkxperiment, the blue asahanada represents the element “air” in the form of an air elemental. HP photo paper usually brings out the best in inks, so I decided to use it for this drawing too. In retrospect, this was not the best choice. The green components of the ink really come to the front, and the delicacy of the pale indigo-blue has been lost. Watercolour paper might have been a better choice for this inkxperiment. Also, the air elemental didn’t come out the way I imagined… too clunky and certainly not airy enough. Well… inkxperiments are fun to do, even if they fail. And it’s from such failures that you learn. Based on this inky experiment, I would conclude that asahanada is best reserved for writing – where the component dyes get separated, the soft pale-indigo beauty of the ink gets lost. Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige asahanada is a very fine writing ink – on pure white paper, this pale indigo-blue produces soft & elegant writing that is great for personal journaling. And with a wet pen, the ink exhibits some truly beautiful shading! The ink looks gorgeous with the right combination of pen/nib/paper – in this case: wet pens, broader nibs, pure white paper. Leave this sweet spot though, and the ink quickly loses its magic. You have been warned! Personally, I really enjoyed using TACCIA asahanada, and I’m looking forward to explore more inks of the TACCIA Ukiyo-e line. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types

ink review : TACCIA Ukiyo-e - Syaraku - akasakura 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 paintings from Japan’s Edo period (17th century). Ukiyo-e prints 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. The star of this review is akasakura, a brick-red ink that is inspired by the work of Syaraku (Sharaku), an artist that is best known for his iconic portraits of kabuki actors. Inspiration for this ink comes from the portrait of Ichikawa Omezõ I (1781-1833) playing a warrior named Yakko Ippei who was unsuccessful in his attempt to defeat his enemy. This portrait, created by Syaraku in 1794, is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Akasakura’ s cherry red is modelled after the colour of the actor’s kimono. 
Akasakura is a muted & understated brick-red, that is slightly pink-leaning. It’s a warm red colour that looks quite nice on all types of paper. Not vibrant at all, but soft and easy on the eye. The ink writes with average flow, and works well with all nib sizes - even the finest ones. 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. 
As is often the case with red inks, this one stains heavily, and requires extra pen-care. It needed a double cleaning cycle to remove all traces of the ink from my pens. 
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. Akasakura has a fairly narrow dynamic range, ranging from a soft brick-red to a more saturated pink-leaning red. The contrast between the light and dark parts is fairly low, which translates to some beautiful soft shading. The shading appears in all nib sizes - just a hint with the EF nib, but really present with F-nibs and above. The aesthetics are superb, adding lots of character to your writing. That’s why we use fountain pens instead of ballpoints! 
The ink’s chromatography is a work of beauty, and shows the craftsmanship of TACCIA’s ink makers. Ink sommelier Hiroshi Ishiguro and colour consultant Hanse Matsumoto used a mix of mainly pink & yellow dyes to create this soft brick-red akasakura. The chroma shows that most of the dyes migrate with the water, leaving only some residue behind. What’s left on the paper is not really readable, just some smudges that hint at the original text. TACCIA akasakura is not an ink that can survive watery accidents. 
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 Lamy Safari Source of the quote, with a Pelikan M600 with M-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Akasakura looks good on all types of paper – both white and creamy ones. I personally like this ink best in combination with the more yellow paper. The ink shows a tiny amount of feathering on lower quality paper, together with some show-through and bleed-through. This is mostly the case with the broader nibs. Overall, it worked really well, even with the notoriously bad Moleskine paper. Drying times with the M-nib Safari are in the 5 to 10 second range. 
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, the photos capture akasakura’ s colour best – the scans of the writing samples seem to be a bit too pink. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The EF-nib already shows a hint of shading. But it is with the F-nib and above that the ink’s soft & elegant shading really comes into play. It’s this lovely shading that lifts this brick-red above the pack. I personally prefer to use this ink with the wet Pelikan with M-nib, where the shading looks at its best. The shading also looks truly gorgeous with really broad italic nibs - like the 1.9 mm calligraphy nib (but that’s not a typical nib for daily journaling, more something to use on greeting cards). Related inks To compare akasakura’ s brick red colour 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. Kyo-Iro Flaming Red of Fushimi is of the same colour family, but a bit more vibrant. In contrast, TACCIA akasakura looks more muted and dusty. Inkxperiment – fire demon With every review, I try to create an inkxperiment using only the ink I am presenting. These one-ink drawings are perfect to show off all the colour-range nuances within the ink. And they are certainly fun to do - definitely my favourite part of every ink review. In previous reviews, I introduced a river goddess and forest god - these also happen to represent the elements water and earth. I therefore decided to continue on this theme, and create the full series with the four elements. For this red ink, that element definitely is fire - hence the fire demon at the erupting volcano. 
I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper, and a small doodle in my daily journal. To paint the background, I dripped ink in different water/ink ratios on a piece of kitchen towel. The ink transfers to the photo paper through the kitchen towel, creating the background pattern of the volcano’s lava stream. I used a paper cutout to draw the demon’s silhouette on the photo paper, and then used a brush and fountain pen to paint in the figure, adding the wings and horns. The volcano on the left was drawn in with a piece of cardboard and pure akasakura, and for the lava bubbles I used a fine brush with pure ink. Final touches were added with a B-nibbed Safari. The resulting drawing shows what can be achieved with this TACCIA ink in a more artistic context. Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Syaraku akasakura turned out to be a really nice brick-red ink with truly phenomenal soft & elegant shading. I also liked that this is a muted and non-vibrant ink - easy on the eye even with a full page of text. Overall a very good ink, that could handle all nib sizes and papers really well. I’m looking forward to further explore this ink series. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types