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Teranishi Guitar – Modern Red Teranishi Chemical Industries – based in Osaka, Japan – was founded during the Taisho period around 1916, and got quite some fame as one of the earlier ink producers in Japan. For their 105th anniversary, the company introduced some stylish retro-inks, hinting at this exciting start-up period. The inks come in beautiful – almost art deco – boxes, containing a nice-looking 40ml bottle of ink. And please take a close look at the ink’s bottle cap: it’s marked with Teranishi’s original “Gold Star Guitar” brand, featuring a queen strumming a guitar … weird! I discovered the Teranishi inks in 2022, and have enjoyed them a lot. These inks are typically well saturated, but at the same time manage to look muted and toned-down – and the subject of this review is no exception. Modern Red is a beautiful cardinal red and as such a bit darker than your standard middle red. In my opinion also less pushy … looking at a full page of red can be difficult on the eyes, not so with this Modern Red. This ink has toned down the brightness a full notch, making it much more suitable as a writing ink. What I also like about this Teranishi ink is that it changes its looks depending on the paper used: from dark cardinal red to more orange-brown tones. Nice complexity that adds to the character of this ink. Modern Red is well-saturated, and writes with a nice wet and smooth flow. The ink works effortlessly with any pen and paper combination that I tried. Drying times are decent, but depend greatly on the hardness of the paper used. On smooth coated paper, you consistently get medium-long drying times in the 20-25 second range. On absorbent paper, the ink gets soaked into the fibers almost instantly with drying times in the 5 second range. With cheap copy paper this translates to a fair amount of bleed-through. 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. Modern Red has a medium colour span, ranging from a soft pastel-like red to the darker cardinal red. The contrast range is not too extreme though and translates to nice and subtle shading. Not a heavy shader, but it’s definitely there and looks aesthetically pleasing. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink shows lots of smearing. The text itself remains perfectly readable, but you get red all over the page. Something to be aware of. Water resistance is largely absent. From the water test at the end of this review, you’d deduce that all writing is lost. Surprisingly, that is not the case. All of that red colour simply disappears, but a grey ghost of your writing is left behind, which is just readable enough to reconstruct your writing. This is also evident from the chromatography: The red dyes get flushed away by water, while a grey base colour remains firmly attached to the paper. I wouldn’t call this disaster-proof, but it gives some peace of mind that reconstruction is possible. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Safari A small text sample, written with the M-nib Safari Source of the quote, written with a wet F-nib Pelikan Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The multi-paper writing test shows that Teranishi Modern Red works well with both white and cream paper. There is a tiny amount of feathering on low-quality paper but nothing too serious: even Moleskine paper worked quite well. This ink works surprisingly well on crappy paper. Just be aware that the back-side of the paper becomes unusable, due to a fair amount of bleed-through. Overall, a technically solid ink – what I’ve come to expect from Teranishi. I used photos for the writing samples above to get the most accurate results. For completeness, I also add a scan of some writing samples. Beware that both photos and scan are slightly off – the ink’s colour looks a bit too brown, and shows more red when viewed by the naked eye. The saturation and title pics above are closest to the true colour. So use the sample text pics primarily to get a feel of the ink across a range of writing papers. Below you’ll find some zoomed-in parts of writing samples. On HP print paper, there’s a tiny amount of feathering with the bold nib – just noticeable enough to be annoying. With F and M nibs, there’s still some feathering present, but only if you look really close. If you restrict yourself to EF/F nibs on low-quality paper, this Modern Red will do just fine. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). All samples were written with a Lamy Safari. I also added a couple of visiting pens: a Pelikan with F-nib, a fairly dry Kaweco Special with M-nib, and a wet-writing Pilot Capless with M-nib. This Teranishi Modern Red looks good in all nib sizes. You’ll also notice a substantial difference between wet and dry writers: the wetter Pelikan and Pilot pens write a much darker saturated red. So you can tune this ink to your liking by adjusting your pen. Nice! Related inks To compare Teranishi Modern Red with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. As you can see, there are lots of alternatives in this colour range: Diamine Blood Orange and Carnival are fairly close matches for Modern Red. Inkxperiment – architexture “Lighthouse” As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I am reviewing. A fun endeavour that’s always good for a couple of hours tinkering around with the ink. I simply love experimenting with inks to see how they behave in a more artistic context. Red inks have always been a challenge for me when creating an inkxperiment, and this Modern Red was no exception. I’m a great fan of Jim Butcher’s writing – especially his Harry Dresden novels. The author has now started a steampunk series “The Cinder Spires”, which I’m thoroughly enjoying. So I decided to try my hand at some architexture drawings with a steampunk feel. When the airships move to home base, it’s always good to have a guiding light. That’s where the lighthouse comes in. Its beacon shows the safest path to the docking bay even in the darkest hours. I started with an A4 piece of cardboard paper and painted in the foreground and lighthouse contours with water-diluted ink. Immediately things went wrong… red inks don’t dilute easily, and the ink was still way too dark. The lighthouse should have been a much lighter rose-red. Instead of jumping out of the window, I decided to own my mistake and follow through with the drawing. I used a glass dip pen and fountain pen to draw the lighthouse interior, and the side schematic of the beacon mechanism. I finished the drawing by adding the houses in the foreground, and the square imprints the airship sailors left with their beer glasses. I like the concept of this drawing, but not its execution. Well… lesson learned for next time. 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. In order to save the lighthouse drawing, some heavy duty digital manipulation is required. I started by using a filter that really stretched the contrast range. This worked wonders, and lifted the technical interior details from the too-dark background in the original drawing. I next used a vintage filter to give the drawing a more aged and steampunk feel. The resulting image fits my original intention nicely… and saves the inkxperiment from disaster 😉 Conclusion Teranishi Modern Red is a fairly saturated cardinal red, that writes wet and smooth. The ink works well with any pen/nib/paper combination. A decent ink … nothing wrong with it. But there are so many other reds in this colour range. If you already have some, there is not enough extra here to jusitify getting this Teranishi ink. Good but not exceptional. 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 – Emotional Olive Teranishi Chemical Industries – based in Osaka, Japan – was founded during the Taisho period around 1916, and got quite some fame as one of the earlier ink producers in Japan. For this review I did some digging on the internet to find out more about the company and its background. During the Taisho period (1912-1926), Japan experienced an influx of new technologies and ideas, bringing it swiftly into the modern age. Western philosophy and style were embraced, and permeated every aspect of Japanese life. New styles of literature and drama were introduced, influenced by Western novels and plays. This movement in Japanese culture became known as “Taisho Roman”, referring to the European age of romanticism that inspired it (and definitely not the Roman Empire as I originally and wrongly thought). Fountain pens also became popular in Japan during this time, with Teranishi producing its first writing ink, called “Guitar Ink”. As far as I know, nobody remembers where that “Guitar” reference comes from. One hypotheses that I found was that Teranishi exported a lot to the Philippines, where the guitar was a popular instrument. But there’s no definite explanation why Teranishi decided to associate its inks with guitars. That will probably remain a mystery forever. For their 105th anniversary, the company introduced some stylish retro-inks, hinting at this exciting start-up period. The inks come in beautiful – almost art deco – boxes, containing a nice-looking 40ml bottle of ink. And please take a close look at the ink’s bottle cap: it’s marked with Teranishi’s original “Gold Star Guitar” brand, featuring a queen strumming a guitar … weird! I discovered the Teranishi inks in 2022, and have enjoyed them a lot. These inks are well saturated, but at the same time manage to look muted and toned-down. This combination works quite well, and I’m becoming very fond of this brand. In this review, I take a closer look at Emotional Olive, a pale yellow-green with heavy shading and lots of depth. I had high hopes for this ink, but as will become clear in this review, the ink is a bit too pale to play nice with my favourite pens, which came as a disappointment. But don’t worry… at the end of the review I have some tips to save the day. Emotional Olive is well-saturated, maybe a touch too dry, but it writes really well when using wet-writing pens. My biggest issue with this ink is its pale colour… for me personally this yellow-green is simply too light, which results in two problems: 1/ contrast with the page is too low, resulting in eye strain when reading a full page of it, and 2/ the shading becomes too strong, making this already pale ink even more difficult to read. Due to that heavy shading and low contrast, I couldn’t use my scanner for the review pictures, but had to use photos instead. The colour of this Emotional Olive absolutely gets an emotional response from me: I want to like it, but I simply can’t … for me, this particular mix of yellow and green doesn’t work. Which really irritated me, because there’s hidden greatness in 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. Emotional Olive has a wide colour span with a stark contrast between light and darker parts. Wet pens and/or broad nibs tend to use the right side of the saturation range, where the colour looks at its best. Shading is really harsh in most pens, and too heavy to be aesthetically pleasing. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink behaved perfectly. Almost no smearing can be detected, and the text remains firmly on the page. Water resistance is exceptionally good. The yellow-green colour quickly detaches from the paper, but a light blue residue remains that is perfectly readable. That’s much better than most non-waterproof inks. This is also evident from the chromatography, which shows an intriguing complexity with light-blue, rose-purple and yellow dyes in the mix. The light-blue dyes remain firmly attached to the paper, as shown by the bottom part of the chroma. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with Nakaya M-nib A small text sample, written with a Pelikan M600 F-nib Source of the quote, written with a wet Edison Collier with 1.1 stub Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The multi-paper writing test shows that Teranishi Emotional Olive works well with both white and cream paper. Due to its paleness, contrast works best on pure white paper. There is a tiny amount of feathering on lower-quality paper, with the expected see-through and even some bleed-through. Drying times are average in the 10-20 second range, with the longest drying times on glossy paper. Overall, a technically solid ink – what I’ve come to expect from Teranishi. I used photos for the writing samples above to get the most accurate results. In scans, the contrast gets blown up, and looks totally unrealistic – see the scan below. My scanner absolutely messed up here: the colour is too yellow, and the text looks harsh and unpleasant. Below you’ll find some zoomed-in parts of writing samples. On Paperblanks, there’s a tiny amount of feathering – just noticeable enough to be annoying. I usually have no problems with Paperblanks paper, but noticed that there can a bit of variation in quality … sometimes I come across a page where the fibers are less densily packed, and where you get a tiny bit of feathering. Looks to me that the production parameters are not 100% under control. Fortunately, they get it right 90% of the time, so they still remain my favourite journals. 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 Nakaya M-nib that writes like a fine, a wet Pelikan M600 Vibrant Orange with a gold F nib, and an Edison Collier with 1.1 stub. This Teranishi ink looks at its best in fine-nibbed wet pens, where the ink tends to be more saturated, compensating a bit for Emotional Olive’s paleness. Related inks To compare Teranishi Emotional Olive 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-no-oto kokeiro is a similar yellow-green, but a bit darker, and more pleasant-looking. Inkxperiment – Geometry 101 Squares As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. For me, that’s where the fun starts: experimenting with the ink to see how it behaves in a more artistic context. And as is often the case with yellow-toned inks, this Teranishi Emotional Olive seems to be born to draw with. I love mathematics and am always in awe of the many ways it is used to concisely describe the physical world around us. That’s where the inspiration for my “Geometry 101” series of ink drawings comes from. Previous entries focused on circles and triangles, and in this episode I conclude the series with a study in squares. I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper, and used a cotton swab with heavily water-diluted ink to draw in the background. I then used potato-stamps to draw the squares, starting with water-diluted ink and adding more and more Emotional Olive to the mix. The corner structure was painted using a piece of carpet underlay as a stencil. I added final touches with a glass dip pen and pure Emotional Olive. The end result shows quite well what can be achieved with this Teranishi ink in an artistic context. Really nice drawing ink – I especially like the green/brown tones that show up on the photo paper. Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. I started by using a graphic art filter that abstracts the drawing a bit, and then used a couple of colour filters to steer the picture towards more greyish tones. For the final result, I rotated by 90° counter-clockwise. For some unknown reason, the picture looks stronger that way (my opinion). Conclusion Teranishi Emotional Olive is an ink that draws mixed feelings from me. I love the way it looks when using it for graphic artwork. But for writing … nah … it just doesn’t work for me. Technically no issues, but the colour is too pale, the shading too heavy, the yellow-green too unpleasant to my eye. Not my type of ink colour, but that’s just me. If you happen to like it, go for it! Saving the Olive Although I don’t like the colour tone of Teranishi Emotional Olive, this is something that is easily fixed. Yellow inks are easy to steer in a different direction, just by adding a drop of some other colour. Adding a drop of Antique Black (1:10 ratio) darkened up the original yellow-green sufficiently to remedy all my complaints: the colour becomes more of a golden-green, the extreme shading has been tamed, and the contrast with the paper is way better. Or you can choose to add a bit of red or blue, morphing the ink to an orange or grass green. There’s definitely more than one way to rescue the original bottle. 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 Taisho Roman - 2023 inks Teranishi Chemical Industry Co. Ltd came out with four new inks in their Guitar Taisho Roman series, adding to the twelve 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. From my experience with their predecessors, I'm fairly sure 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 the new 2023 inks in this series: in my opinion they are worth checking out. Full reviews of these inks are coming for sure, but it might take a while to get there 😉 So many inks... so little time. Below, for completeness, an overview of the other twelve inks in the Teranishi series.

Teranishi Guitar – Opera Rose Teranishi Chemical Industries was founded during the Taisho period in 1918, and got quite some fame as one of the earlier ink producers in Japan. The Taisho period is often remembered as a romantic period. For their 105th anniversary, the company introduced some stylish retro-inks, hinting at this exciting start-up period. The inks come in beautiful – almost art deco – boxes, containing a nice-looking 40ml bottle of ink. I discovered the Teranishi inks in 2022, so it’s time to do the reviews. These inks are well saturated, but at the same time manage to look muted and toned-down. This combination works quite well, and I’m becoming very fond of this brand. In this review, I take a closer look at Opera Rose, a rose-brick colour, an ink that has a vintage vibe and with lots of depth and complexity. I know it’s not a colour for everyone, but this Opera Rose is one of my favourites from the Teranishi ink series. Opera Rose is a well saturated ink, maybe a touch too dry in fine nibs, but it writes wonderfully well in broader and stub nibs. The colour is absolutely lovely – it sits somewhere between rose, brown and orange – depending on the light, it can look like any of these. Definitely a romantic era colour, aged-looking with those dusty undertones. It’s also a heavy shader: so much so that I couldn’t use scans for this review, but had to revert to photos (my scanner exaggerates contrast, and the results were definitely not what the eye sees). To illustrate the colour span of this Teranishi ink, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Opera Rose has a broad colour span with lots of contrast between light and darker parts. Wet pens and/or broad nibs tend to use the right side of the saturation range, where the colour looks at its best. Shading is prominent, but not too harsh – I found it to be aesthetically very pleasing. I would personally also pair this ink with pure white paper, where those beautiful rose shades come out best. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink behaved perfectly. Almost no smearing can be detected, and the text remains firmly on the page. Water resistance is also exceptionally good. Most of the rose-brick colour detaches from the paper, but a light blue residue remains that is perfectly readable. That’s much better than most non-waterproof inks. This is also evident from the chromatography, which shows an intriguing complexity with light-blue, rose-pink and yellow-orange dyes in the mix. The light-blue dyes remain firmly attached to the paper, as shown by the bottom part of the chroma. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with the Lamy Safari M-nib Source of the quote, written with a wet Pelikan M205 Demonstrator with M cursive italic nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The multi-paper writing test shows that Teranishi Opera Rose looks best with pure white and light-cream paper. On more heavily yellow paper you lose some of that old-rose vintage vibe. The ink also prefers high-quality paper – on lower-quality absorbent paper you get a tiny bit of feathering (just visible), and quite some see-through and even a bit of bleed-through. Drying times vary wildly depending on the type of paper: with hard-surface glossy paper it can take more than 30 seconds with the Safari M-nib. On absorbent paper drying times are almost instant, in the 0-5 second range. I used photos for the writing samples above to get the most accurate results. In scans, the contrast gets blown up, and looks totally unrealistic – see the scan below. My scanner captured the colour well, but messes up the contrast, making the text look harsh and unpleasant. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). All samples were written with a Lamy Safari. I also added a couple of visiting pens: a wet Pelikan M205 Demonstrator with a gold M cursive italic nib, and a Wancher Dream Pen with M-nib. This Opera Rose looks at its best in broader nibs (M-size or above) and/or wet-writing pens. Don’t mind the starting word of the text line written with the Dream Pen. That’s totally my fault – insufficient cleaning of the previous ink that was in that pen. After that first word, I wrote off-review with the pen until the rose-brick colour re-appeared. Related inks To compare Teranishi Opera Rose with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. Opera Rose has similarities with other inks, but remains in a category of its own. It sits firmly between rose-red-orange-brown, without really matching any of these. Nicely done of Teranishi’s ink mixers. I really love the colour they created here! Inkxperiment – Arachnid City As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. For me, that’s where the fun starts: experimenting with the ink to see how it behaves in a more artistic context. I love doing these little drawings – always good for a fun couple of hours. Inspiration for this drawing comes the book “Children of Time” by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The book tells the story of terraformed planets, seeded with a mutagen virus that force-evolved life-forms. Sometimes this went in a totally different direction than envisioned by the world-building engineers. On one world, a race of intelligent spiders evolved and created a civilization. When humans arrive centuries later, the two intelligences meet and must learn to live with one another. I started with an A4 piece of 300 gsm watercolour paper. I drew in the background with cotton swabs, starting with heavily water-diluted ink, and gradually adding more Opera Rose to the mix. I then used my fountain pen to draw in Arachnid City with its occupants (yeah… these critters are a bit posh… personally I would just call it Spider Town). I added webbing and communication poles (the spiders use vibrations sent along these wires to communicate long-distance). The chaotic look is just our human mind that cannot cope… to our arachnid friends, it all looks splendid and very civilized. The end result shows quite well what can be achieved with this Opera Rose in a more artistic setting. I personally like the broad range of tones that can be extracted from this single ink! Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. I started by using a sketch filter that added echoes to lines in the picture, creating a vibration effect that works well with the spider theme. I then used a HDR filter to increase contrast. Finally I used a two-tone filter to add some colour variation, and dialed down the saturation to more earthy tones. The final picture captures well the chaotic city of the Arachnids with their world-perception based on vibrations in the environment. Conclusion Teranishi Opera Rose is a wonderful ink – a unique dusty rose-brick colour with a strong vintage vibe. An ink made for personal journaling, and one that also works great for drawing. I know this type of colour is not for everyone, but personally I love it. This is one of my favourites in the Teranishi line. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types

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

Teranishi Guitar – Gentle Green Teranishi Chemical Industries was founded during the Taisho period in 1918, and got quite some fame as one of the earlier ink producers in Japan. The Taisho period is often remembered as a romantic period. For their 105th anniversary, the company introduced some stylish retro-inks hinting at this exciting start-up period. The inks come in 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 Gentle Green, a wonderfully complex blue-green, that leans towards teal territory without quite getting there. A type of colour that’s easy to mess up, but Teranishi’s ink creators know their craft and succeeded in producing a lovely mix. Well done! Gentle Green writes wet and well saturated. It also has a trick up its sleeve: the ink writes quite blue, but turns to a soft green while drying – a really cool effect. It’s also a heavy sheener, showing a reddish-purple sheen on the right kind of paper. This ink can handle all types of nib – from EF to ultra-broad – and looks great on both white and 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. Gentle Green has a medium colour span, without too much contrast between the light and darker parts. This translates to aesthetically pleasing shading. The more saturated parts of your writing will also show a red-purple sheen on the right kind of paper, making your writing look extra interesting. Wet pens will push the colour towards the more saturated part of the spectrum, resulting in a fairly dark green look. But even in this case, there’s still some shading left. A beautiful ink on paper! 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 good enough. Most of the colour dissipates, but a light blue residue of your writing survives, even after 30 seconds under running tap water. That’s better than most non-waterproof inks. This is also evident from the chromatography that shows light-blue dyes clinging to the paper at the bottom part. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with the Lamy Safari M-nib Source of the quote, written with a wet Pelikan M101N with F-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Because this is my first review of 2023, you also get a new set of quotes. This time they originate from Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" - well-written stories of a wizard in present-day Chicago. I you enjoy fantasy writing with a good dose of humour, these books come highly recommended. The multi-paper writing test shows that Teranishi Gentle Green interacts well with all paper types. It can even handle crappy paper like Moleskine with only barely visible feathering, which is quite a feat. On low quality paper you get some bleed-through, but nothing too excessive. This is an ink that handles paper very well. The ink shows a muted blue-leaning green on most papers, except the high-sheen kind. On high-sheen paper, the ink looks much more blue (see e.g. Kobeha GRAPHILO and the Tomoe River 52 and 68 gsm paper). Drying times are all over the place – below 10 seconds on absorbent paper to very high on high-sheen paper. Because scans don't always capture an ink's colour and contrast with good precision, I also add a photo to give you an alternative look on this Teranishi ink. In this case, both scan & photo capture the ink well. The scan seems to give the best colour indication. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). All samples were written with a Lamy Safari. I also added a couple of visiting pens: a wet Pelikan M101N Grey-Blue with F-nib, and my very wet-writing Yard-o-Led Viceroy Standard Victorian with an F-nib. As you can see, Gentle Green can handle all nib sizes with ease, showing great-looking shading in them all. Related inks To compare Teranishi Gentle Green 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. Gentle Green shares a large part of its DNA with TACCIA sabimidori – the same colour shift from blue to green during writing, the same high sheen characteristics. But the TACCIA ink is definitely more blue-leaning. Both are great looking inks! Inkxperiment – Little Red Riding Hood As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. For me, that’s where the fun starts: experimenting with the ink to see how it behaves in a more artistic context. I love doing these little drawings – always good for a fun couple of hours. Inspiration for this drawing comes from the Brothers Grimm tale of “Little Red Riding Hood”. I recently saw the "Brothers Grimm" movie – on Netflix, I think – and thought that this specific fairy tale would make a nice subject for an inkxperiment. The drawing shows the little girl on her way to grandmother’s cottage, deep in the woods. And boy, is she scared – what with all these stories of a giant wolf lurking around in the dark forest. If you can’t believe your eyes when seeing the drawing, you’re not alone. I couldn’t believe that all these colours were hiding within this single ink. Amazing! I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper. I taped out the tree trunks and squares with washi tape, and then applied water-diluted ink to the photo paper through a paper towel. The towel apparently absorbed most of the blue dyes, with green and yellow components settling on the photo paper. This created a very interesting looking background. I then removed the washi tape, and used a plastic card dipped in pure ink to draw the tree trunks and branches. The washi tape left some glue residue on the photo paper, which creates a sparkling effect in the tree trunks. I then used a dip pen to draw in the little girl and cottage, and coloured the square background with a Q-tip dipped in pure ink (which reacted blue with the photo paper). The end result is a very colourful little painting – quite nice, and not at all what I expected when starting with this inkxperiment. By the way. If – as I expect – you were looking for the big bad wolf … it’s not in the painting 😉. But just the feeling that it must be there somewhere is making you anxious. Which was also the purpose of the story: scaring little children, so they don’t go playing alone in the woods. 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 abstracting the inkxperiment drawing a lot, using a filter that removed most of the background, and using earthy brown tones to emphasize the dark forest. Next, I coloured the little girl red because – well – it’s Little Red Riding Hood. Finally, I used a mosaic overlay, and removed some of the squares. I quite like the end result, which keeps only the essential parts of the story, without too much clutter. Conclusion Teranishi Gentle Green is a great ink. Period. A wonderfully complex blue-green that combines good saturation with muted and toned-down looks. And on top of that it can handle all combinations of pen-nib-paper without any problems. And if you like to draw with ink, you’re in for a treat – this is some seriously good stuff! Highly recommended. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types