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Teranishi Guitar – Brilliant Mint Teranishi Chemical Industries was founded during the Taisho period in 1918, and got quite some fame as one of the earlier ink producers in Japan. The Taisho period is often remembered as a romantic era. For their 105th anniversary, the company introduced some stylish retro-inks, hinting at this exciting start-up period. The inks come in stylish – almost art deco – boxes, containing a nice-looking 40ml bottle of ink. Each bottle comes with a blank tag that can be used for a colour sample. Simply swab some ink onto the tag, and you have a handy guide to the true colour that’s in the bottle. It’s small details like this that mark companies that take pride in their products. I discovered the Teranishi inks in 2022. These inks are well saturated, but at the same time manage to look muted and toned-down. This combination works quite well, and I’m becoming very fond of this brand. In this review, the spotlight shines on Brilliant Mint, a weird type of colour that ranges from mint to aqua to turquoise depending on paper and lighting. It’s totally not my type of colour, but somehow Teranishi manages to make this look exotic and intriguing, instead of disgusting 😉. I usually scan my ink review text samples, but with the heavy shading on this Brilliant Mint this turned out to be impossible. In scans, the ink shows way to much contrast between light and darker parts. So, for this review, I almost exclusively use photos to show off the ink. Brilliant Mint writes wet and well saturated, even in the finest nibs. I liked the ink best with F and M nibbed pens, which lay down a somewhat more saturated line which hits the goldilocks zone for the contrast between light & dark strokes, with great shading aesthetics as a result. This Teranishi ink is a really strong shader though, and can be a bit too aggressive with some pen/nib combinations. You need to find the right pen to tame this ink. To illustrate the colour span of this Teranishi ink, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Brilliant Mint has a fairly wide dynamic range with quite some contrast between light and dark strokes. Finer nibs concentrate the ink more, and lean towards the right of this spectrum. This is – for me – the goldilocks zone of the ink, where shading doesn’t get too extreme and shows some great aesthetics. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the text remains perfectly readable, even if a lot of the dyes get displaced. Water resistance is mediocre: just good enough to survive an accident. Enough of the dyes remain attached to the paper to allow for a reconstruction of the written word. This is also evident from the chromatography that shows that some grey dyes clinging to the paper at the bottom part. The chroma also shows a balanced mix of green and azure-blue dyes, that work together to create the mint-turqoise looks of this ink. With Brilliant Mint, the blue dominates slightly, creating an intriguing colour – bold & adventurous, and this Teranishi ink succeeds in pulling this off. Pelikan Edelstein Jade is in the same colour family, a bit greener, but that ink gets the combination oh-so-wrong, and looks disturbing & nauseating to me. There clearly is a fine line between success and failure with this type of colour. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with the Lamy Safari M-nib Source of the quote, written with a Kaweco Sport with BB-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The multi-paper writing test shows that Teranishi Brilliant Mint handles all types of paper well, with only a micro-amount of feathering on Moleskine – not bad at all. With low-quality paper you will definitely get a bit of bleed-through, making it impossible to use the backside of the paper. Drying times are quite short on absorbent paper, but increase to the 20-25 second range on hard-surface paper. Not unexpectedly, this type of ink looks at its best on pure white paper. For the sake of completeness, I also add a scan of text written on a number of different papers. As you can see, the scan exaggerates the contrast enormously, making the shading look totally unrealistic. Below you’ll find some zoomed-in parts of writing samples. This Teranishi ink looks fairly consistent across the whole range of writing papers. Solid and with good contrast. Notice the heavy shading on the high-quality and hard-surface Iroful paper. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). All samples were written with a Lamy Safari. I also added a couple of visiting pens with fine/medium nibs: a modern Parker 51 with F-nib, my F-nibbed Lamy 2000 and a Pelikan M600 with M-nib. I like the ink best with the F-nib pens, where the dark strokes are really saturated, and the shading gets some extra “oomph” that looks superb. Related inks To compare Teranishi Brilliant Mint 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. Brilliant Mint has a unique shade that sits somewhere between Pelikan Edelstein Aquamarine and Apatite. Edelstein Jade tries to do the same, but fails miserably (my opinion). The grey components of this Teranishi ink contribute to the gritty faded look, and give a bit of a vintage vibe to the ink colour. Inkxperiment – Cubistic Relaxation With every ink review, I try to create a monochromatic drawing that shows off the colour nuances hidden within the ink. I always enjoy this part of the review the most: experimenting with the ink, and finding out how it behaves in a more artistic context. Always good for a couple hours of fun-time. For this drawing I had no specific theme in mind. But the ink made me want to do something funky, with a mix of realism and fantasy – slightly off, just like the ink’s colour. So I decided on a relaxing fishing scene by the water, but in a cubistic setting for just that touch of unreality. I started with a piece of Fellowes cardboard paper, on which I first penciled in the cubistic backdrop. I then used cotton swabs to draw in the sky, and Q-tips to paint the cubes. I then used the side of a plastic card to draw the tree, and used the rough side of a dish-washing sponge to draw its foliage. I finally added the stream flowing along the rocks and the lake in the foreground. The end result shows what’s possible when using this Teranishi ink for drawing purposes. Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. I started by applying an art filter that abstracted the drawing, followed by a couple of colour filters. I finished by toning down the colour saturation and increasing the brightness to create a more cartoony look. Conclusion Teranishi Brilliant Mint is not my type of colour, but it managed to keep my attention with its intriguing combination of blues and greens. A funky and playful colour that succeeds where things could so easily go wrong (yes – I’m looking at you Pelikan Edelstein Jade). Like all Teranishi inks, this one is technically solid. If you like the colour, it’s certainly worth your attention. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types

Teranishi Guitar – Innocent Mauve Teranishi Chemical Industries was founded during the Taisho period in 1918, and got quite some fame as one of the earlier ink producers in Japan. The Taisho period is often remembered as a romantic era. For their 105th anniversary, the company introduced some stylish retro-inks, hinting at this exciting start-up period. The inks come in stylish – almost art deco – boxes, containing a nice-looking 40ml bottle of ink. I discovered the Teranishi inks in 2022, so it’s time to do the reviews. These inks are well saturated, but at the same time manage to look muted and toned-down. This combination works quite well, and I’m becoming very fond of this brand. In this review, the spotlight shines on Innocent Mauve, a dusty grape-coloured purple. This is not my favourite type of colour, but I will still do my best to provide an unbiased review of the ink. I definitely see myself using this as an office ink: in a fine nibbed pen, the ink looks quite dark and businesslike, and it also shows a bit of water resistance. I usually scan my ink review text samples, but with Innocent Mauve this turned out to be impossible. In scans, the ink turns into more of a lilac – wildly diverging form the real-life grape-purple colour. So, for this review, I almost exclusively use photos to show off the ink. Innocent Mauve writes wet and well saturated, even in the finest nibs. Wet pens and fine nibs lay down a fairly dark purple line. With italic nibs and drier pens you get lighter tones, and – in my opinion – more aggressive and less appealing shading. For me, the sweet spot for this ink is a fine nibbed wet pen. You then get a nice dark grape-purple colour with some beautiful unobtrusive shading. To illustrate the colour span of this Teranishi ink, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Innocent Mauve has a fairly wide dynamic range, with quite some contrast between the light and darker parts. Finer nibs tend to concentrate the ink more, leaning towards the right side of the spectrum. You thus get the darker grape-purple colour, and less aggressive shading. Dry pens fit the left-hand side of the colour range, which – in my opinion – results in a less appealing colour. The saturation sample below also illustrates the huge colour difference between photo and scanned image: first you see the photo, followed by the scanned image that definitely shows more of a lilac colour. Don’t be fooled … the lilac is an illusion! In real life, Innocent Mauve is a grape-coloured ink. And now the lilac leaning scan: On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the text remains perfectly readable, even if a lot of the dyes get displaced. Water resistance is mediocre: just good enough to survive an accident. Enough of the dyes remain attached to the paper to allow for a reconstruction of the written word. This is also evident from the chromatography that shows some grey dyes clinging to the paper at the bottom part. The chroma also shows the complex mix of dyes used to create this grape-purple Innocent Mauve. The grey at the bottom contributes to the dusty appearance of the ink – which is a constant theme across the Teranishi ink series. But I also see some cherry-red and sky-blue in the mix, which I hadn’t expected. Combined, these dyes create the dusty grape-purple colour of this Teranishi ink. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with the Lamy Safari M-nib Source of the quote, written with an M-nib Laban Rosa Lilac pen Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The multi-paper writing test shows that Teranishi Innocent Mauve handles all types of paper well. It even behaves very good on the low-quality Moleskine paper: no visible feathering, and only some see-through and bleed-through. The ink looks equally good on both white and more yellow paper. Drying times are in the 10 to 15 second range on most papers. Exceptions are the Kobeha GRAPHILO and Endless Regalia paper, which consistently showed longer drying times in the 20-25 second range. For the sake of completeness, I also add a scan of text written on a number of different papers. As you can see, this shows a lilac purple, that has zero relation to what your eyes see when looking at Innocent Mauve. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). All samples were written with a Lamy Safari. I also added a couple of visiting pens: a wet-writing TWSBI VAC Mini with M-nib, and my Laban Rosa Lilac with M-nib. As you can see, Innocent Mauve handles all nib sizes well, but really shines with the finer nibs up to M-size. You get a more concentrated dusty-dark colour and more aesthetically pleasing shading. Related inks To compare Teranishi Innocent Mauve 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. Innocent Mauve clearly relates with Diamine Grape, but after a dust-storm has swept across the vineyard. The grey components of this Teranishi ink contribute to the gritty faded look, and give more of a vintage vibe to the ink colour. Inkxperiment – Walk in the Fields With every ink review, I challenge myself to create a monochromatic drawing using only the ink I’m reviewing. I always enjoy this part of the review: playing with the ink, and seeing how it behaves in a more artistic context. Always good for a couple of quality-time hours. Inspiration for this drawing comes from some early summer walks through nearby fields. The original drawing used a 3:2 landscape size ratio. But when the drawing was almost finished, I accidentally dropped a huge blob of ink on the left side. So I added a new sun to the painting, and used a square cut-out to crop off the ink blob, thus saving the inkxperiment (and avoiding starting over 😉 I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper. I drew in the background with heavily water-diluted ink. I then stamped in the flower field with a piece of tightly rolled-up kitchen paper, and added the house and road. I finally added the tree with my B-nibbed Lamy Safari and pure Innocent Mauve. Due to the ink blob accident, the last thing I added was the sun above the field of flowers, fitting nicely in the - now square - format. Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. I started by applying a colour filter that strongly enhanced the contrast in the original inkxperiment painting. Next I used a modern art tool that uses a superposition of shifted images with multiple colour filters. I like the more chaotic look of the end result, that still keeps true to the original concept of a “Walk in the Fields”. Conclusion Teranishi Innocent Mauve is a nice dusty grape-coloured ink with a vintage vibe. Not my usual type of colour, but I do like it in fine-nibbed wet pens, where it makes for a great office ink. Due to its fairly wide expressive range, this Teranishi ink also works really well as a drawing ink. If you like the colour, it’s well worth checking out. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types

Teranishi Guitar – Antique Black Teranishi Chemical Industries was founded during the Taisho period in 1918, and got quite some fame as one of the earlier ink producers in Japan. The Taisho period is often remembered as a romantic era. For their 105th anniversary, the company introduced some stylish retro-inks, hinting at this exciting start-up period. The inks come in stylish – almost art deco – boxes, containing a nice-looking 40ml bottle of ink. I discovered the Teranishi inks in 2022, so it’s time to do the reviews. These inks are well saturated, but at the same time manage to look muted and toned-down. This combination works quite well, and I’m becoming very fond of this brand. In this review, the center stage is taken by Antique Black. I’m not really into black inks, so I had no great expectations when trying out this colour. But boy, was I wrong. Turns out that this is not a black ink at all, but more of a very dark brown. The emphasis is clearly on “Antique” – a black faded with age that has acquired a dark brown patina. This Teranishi ink is also wonderfully complex with lots of colour hints below the surface … brown, blue, green… they are all present, and combine to give this ink a lovely depth and complexity. A big thumbs up for Teranishi’s ink masters! When scanning the ink, the brown tones seem to disappear, leaving more of a pure black image. See the line of text below, written with a B-nib. First the scan, and below that the same text captured with my camera. It’s only in the photo that the brown nature of the ink becomes apparent. Because of this, I exclusively use photos during this review. Antique Black writes wet and well saturated. When using a wet pen, a fairly black line is laid on paper, that ages to a deep dark brown while drying. On its own, it might be mistaken for a black ink, but that’s just a trick of the eye. Put a real black ink beside it, and the dark brown nature of the ink becomes obvious. Antique Black can handle all nib sizes with ease – from extra-fines up to the broadest stub – and it is at home on both white and yellow-cream paper. A great writing ink, that I enjoyed using. To illustrate the colour span of this Teranishi ink, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Antique Black has a narrow dynamic range, without too much contrast between the light and darker parts. This translates to really subtle shading. With fine nibs or wet pens, shading is barely present. But enough of it survives to give depth and character to your writing. It is still obvious that you’ve used a fountain pen instead of a ballpoint. With drier pens and broader nibs, both shading and the brown nature of the ink become obvious. Personally, I like the ink the most in the broader stub nibs. With these you really get that faded antique look! On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – a lot of the dyes get displaced, but the text itself remains quite readable. Water resistance turned out to be quite good. The darker dyes will be flushed away, but a very readable blue-grey image of your writing remains. I was fairly impressed by this. Water resistance is certainly good enough to survive most accidents, making this a good office ink. This is also evident from the chromatography that shows the grey-blue dyes clinging to the paper at the bottom part. The chroma also shows the complex mix of dyes used to create this antique brown-black. There really is a lot going on here! No wonder that this Antique Black shows such depth and character. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with the Lamy Safari M-nib Source of the quote, written with a Pelikan M405 Stresemann with F cursive italic nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The multi-paper writing test shows that Teranishi Antique Black handles all types of paper well. It even behaves very good on the low-quality Moleskine paper: no visible feathering, and only some see-through and bleed-through. With the Kobeha GRAPHILO paper, there was clearly a chemical mismatch – on this paper, the ink shows a dark murky green. Not bad at all, but certainly not black or brown. Drying times are in the 5 to 10 second range on absorbent paper, and really really long on high-quality hard surface paper. For the sake of completeness, I also add a scan of text written on a number of different papers. You get mostly black tones (as I indicated earlier), but some papers (like Midori) really emphasize the brown. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). All samples were written with a Lamy Safari. I also added a couple of visiting pens: a wet-writing Pilot Capless with M-nib, and my Pelikan M405 Stresemann with F ci nib. As you can see, Antique Black can handle all nib sizes with ease, but the faded antique feel emerges mostly when using broad italic nibs. Related inks To compare Teranishi Antique Black 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. Antique Black really stands on its own among my other black inks. The comparison grid also clearly shows the wide tonal variety among black inks: pure black inks are rare, and most have coloured undertones… blue, purple, green, brown… The dark brown nature of the Teranishi ink is really obvious when it sits next to its other black ink cousins. Inkxperiment – Wednesday With every ink review, I challenge myself to create a monochromatic drawing using only the ink I’m reviewing. I always enjoy this part of the review the most: playing with the ink, and seeing how it behaves in a more artistic context. More often than not, an ink surprises me with its expressiveness. Inspiration for this drawing comes from the Nexflix series “Wednesday”, which made quite some waves in the internet ether. I readily admit that I binge-watched this series … twice! I totally dig its sense of dark humour. And a girl with an allergy for colour seemed like a good theme for this Antique Black inkxperiment. I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper. I taped out a square, and stamped in a background using heavily water-diluted ink. Next I used a piece of cardboard (bent into a rectangular shape) to add the film perforations. Next I painted in the spider in its web, and added the figure of Wednesday Addams to the square. To finish the painting, I darkened up the sides a bit, to put the spotlight on the girl and the spider. This little painting really succeeds in showing the faded antique brown-black of this Teranishi ink. It also surfaces the blue undertones in parts of the painting. I really like the end result, and this Antique Black definitely is a superb drawing ink. Lovely stuff! Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. I started by applying an “antique paper” filter to the original, while also turning up the brightness. This emphasizes the movie rail feeling. Next I used an urban art filter to add some colour to the picture. In a final step, I applied a colour shift filter to create the final inkxpired picture. Conclusion Teranishi Antique Black is a great ink. I’m not a black ink person, so I had no high hopes for this ink when I opened up the bottle for the first time. But the faded, antique dark-brown looks of this Antique Black quickly seduced me. It’s a beautiful ink with tons of character, both in writing and in drawing. In my opinion, this ink is well worth your attention. Check it out! Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types

This is one of the first four colours in Teranishi Chemical Industry's ‘Guitar’ Taisho Romance High Colour Ink series. (Just to clarify, Gentle Green is another; but Opera Rose and Nostalgic Honey are not. They just happen to be the only four of the ‘Guitar’ series inks I have, and three of them are kinda close in colour range, so I decided to do quick samples of them one after another on the same sheet.) I like the colour a lot. The subtle transitions in the shading are pleasing to the eye; I certainly don't want shading in my red ink to manifest as clearly demarcated segments along a pen stroke. Little or no feathering is evident, but there is some minor show-through and spots of bleed-through. Decent water resistance for a red ink, and drying time is acceptable.

Teranishi Guitar Taisho Roman - 4 New Inks Teranishi Chemical Industry Co. Ltd came out with four new inks in their Guitar Taisho Roman series, adding to the eight already existing inks in their line-up. These inks come in really nice vintage-style 40ml bottles, packaged in stylish boxes. Like their predecessors, these new inks look really nice - fairly saturated with a toned down colour palette. My first impression is that these will be great to work with. My taste usually goes to soft and watercolour style inks, and these saturated inks are not at all like that. But Teranishi manages to make all their inks look muted & vintage-like, and for that reason they totally work for me. I wanted to give you a quick overview of them: in my opinion they are worth checking out. Full reviews of these inks are coming somewhere in 2023, but it might take a while to get there 😉 So many inks... so little time. Below, for completeness, an overview of the other eight inks in the Teranishi series.

Teranishi Guitar Kaisho Roman ink series - quick overview I just got a new set of Japanese inks from Teranishi Chemical Industry Co. Ltd. Found them at Sakura - just a hop away from where I live. These inks come in really nice vintage-style 40ml bottles, packaged in stylish boxes. The inks look really nice - fairly saturated with a muted colour palette. My first impression is that these will be great to work with. I wanted to give you a quick overview of them: in my opinion they are worth checking out. Full reviews of these inks are coming, but it might take a while 😉 So many inks... so little time.