Search the Community

UTSURIGI by PENLAND CAFE Penland Cafe is a fountain pen shop/ cafe based in Nagoya City, Japan. They sell a wide range of fountain pens including Montblanc, Pelikan, Aurora, Waterman and Parker, in addition to their wonderful inks. You cannot buy directly from them unless visiting the Penland Cafe in person. Instead if you are outside of Japan you must use a forwarding service such as White Rabbit Express, which is how I bought them. I only heard about Penland Cafe and its famous inks very recently, whilst perusing the famous rare Sailor inks thread. I had also seen pictures of their bottles pop up on Instagram and the like. From what I have read on-line people seem to stumble across the place whilst on holiday and end up buying a few bottles of their inks more as a souvenir. Aside from a couple of quick swabs and a a few squiggled words, I haven't heard much talk of these inks, let alone seen full reviews. There are four inks in the Penland Cafe line up; Utsurigi (sepia) Penland Green Red Cliff Fountain Blue*Picture taken from their website I did think about buying all four in the set but the blue didn't look that special to me plus I'm not really a blue ink person, generally (though I still manage to have quite a few of them). I'm not sure why I didn't purchase Red cliff, I think maybe it reminded me too much of Ancient Copper which unfortunately managed to stain the section of my Sailor KOP Demo Instead I went for Utsurigi and Penland Green, here they are; The ink I'll be looking at today (I think "review" is too lofty a word for this), is Utsurigi. The ink comes in the diamond-shaped bottle with a very psychedelic orange label on it (somewhat confusing for a "brown" ink). There is definitely a 70's vibe going on here. And like the 70's, these labels are sure to divide opinion. The crazy font replicates the Penland Cafe signage, I saw a picture of it somewhere but now I can't find it. I'll post it up if later if I can. Unusually for a Sailor ink, the cap is plain and unadorned with no sticker on it. Likewise the inks come in a plain Sailor box with no label on the front (although Shosaikan do this also). The box and bottle convince me that these are definitely Sailor inks. This may seem obvious but I remember there was some debate about it as to whether they were or not. Utsurigi is described as a colour-shifting ink that goes down black when wet, and dries to a sepia colour. However, I find I only get this effect when I use it on Original Crown Mill white card, where the ink does indeed go down a very deep saturated black and takes quite a while to lighten to a sepia. Thereafter it stays a pleasant sepia colour . *FYI the Original Crown Mill card I use here is a kind of heavyweight laid paper with a ribbed texture to it. I believe the range is called Silverline or something. Here is a sample below ; However when I use Utsurigi on Hobonichi or Rhodia it doesn't go down black at all but instead a kind of dark green, and quickly lightens to a stony green, and then dries not to sepia but to a green/grey/brown. A colour not too dissimilar to Cigar (!) or Gagome. Here is a writing sample snippet of Utsurigi on Rhodia. Incidentally it dries much quicker on this paper at least with the fine nib I was using. I used an X250 taken from my ever- expanding Jinhao collection, so line not so juicy... Here is a Cigar writing sample with a juicier Omas Paragon 18ct OM stub nib. As you can see my cursive "r's" need some work when writing at speed... And a Gagome sample written with a very wet and broad modified Twsbi steel Stub nib... Here is full page of Utsurigi on Hobonichi Techo TR paper; Here is a comparison of Cigar, Gagome and Utsurigi on Hobonichi (TR paper); Yes as you can see quite similar. Utsurigi doesn't really have the complexity of Cigar (or I forgot to mention it's doppelgänger Rikyu-Cha), but there are strong similarities. For example it is missing the crazy red sheen as you can see below- Cigar is the one not he bottom, obvs... Also as mentioned Utsurigi is more green as less brown if you look closely at the dry samples here... And here is a completely unnecessary picture of my Omas Paragon taking a fill from Cigar... I find Gagome to be a very pleasant but less complex and less brown version of Cigar. I think Utsurugi possibly edges more in the Gagome direction in that respect. All in all a very nice, unusual and not much talked about Sailor ink. I'm glad I tracked this one down... You can find out more about Penland Cafe at http://www.pen-land.jp/index.html