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In the beginning of the Sailor bespoke ink journey, the Pen and Message shop generated quite a bit of interest with their inks. They actually have two “lines” of specialty Sailor inks: the Pen and Message line and Writing Lab, the latter a collaboration with another shop. I’ve never tried to obtain the Pen and Message inks; surprisingly some of them didn’t appeal to me. They quickly became hard to get once the craze for Cigar, a Pen and Message ink, took off. So this post is about the Writing Lab inks, which intrigued me greatly. They have three inks in the category and I’ll review them all, though I’ve reviewed one of them, Old Burgundy, in the past from a sample kindly provided by an FPNer. Quadrifoglio Vintage Denim Old Burgundy These inks are more expensive than other Sailor bespoke inks at ¥2,700 per bottle, which is about $23.86 US as of today (2/20/2017). This price doesn't include shipping to the destination or any charges incurred using a forwarding service. Each person is limited to purchasing one bottle. Pen: Edison Mina (F-steel) Papers: MvL=Mohawk via Linen, TR=Tomoe River, Hij=Hammermill 28 lb inkjet, Rhodia=Rhodia 90g ivory. Camera: iPhone 7 This is a deep, muted blue-black ink. More muted than the Sailor Shoushikan Seiran or Bungbox 4B. But it's not as muted (i.e., neutralized) as the Noodler's FPN Van Gogh Starry Night Blue. So that gives you an idea of the color, if you have any of those other inks. The handling is very typical of Sailor inks, so no problems at all, quite wet in writing. This ink has a fairly high dye load which shows up in the waterfastness test as a blue wash. Personally I really liked the ink, but I'm a fan of blues except for those turquoise colors. Not impossible to obtain, but requires effort, and is going to be fairly expensive. Maybe Sailor Blue-black would work almost as well for a lot less money. An attempt at a comparison between Sailor Jentle Blue, Pen and Message Vintage Denim, and Shoushikan Seiran "Indigo Blue" to give an idea of the color within a range. There is also spread to the back of the paper with the ink.

In the beginning of the Sailor bespoke ink journey, the Pen and Message shop generated quite a bit of interest with their inks. They actually have two “lines” of specialty Sailor inks: the Pen and Message line and Writing Lab, the latter a collaboration with another shop. I’ve never tried to obtain the Pen and Message inks; surprisingly some of them didn’t appeal to me. They quickly became hard to get once the craze for Cigar took off. So this post is about the Writing Lab inks, which intrigued me greatly. They have three inks in the category and I’ll review them all, though I’ve reviewed one of them, Old Burgundy, in the past from a sample kindly provided by an FPNer. Quadrifoglio Vintage Denim Old Burgundy These inks are more expensive than other Sailor bespoke inks at ¥2,700 per bottle, which is about $23.67 US as of today (1/22/2017). This price doesn't include shipping to the destination or any charges incurred using a forwarding service. Each person is limited to purchasing one bottle. Pen: Pelikan M400 (F) Papers: MvL=Mohawk via Linen, TR=Tomoe River, Hij=Hammermill 28 lb inkjet, Rhodia=Rhodia 90g ivory. Camera: iPhone 7 Quadrifoglio is one of three inks in the "Writing Lab" series of inks made by Sailor for the Pen and Message shop in Japan. It is a somewhat muted green, leaning towards blue rather than yellow. I personally prefer the latter, but this is very nice, not a bright color at all. The ink comes in the vase bottle still, perhaps one of the few left doing so, but the ink is also more expensive. I was somewhat surprised in the waterfastness test where there wasn't so much ink washed away by water, and when water droplets were blotted something was left behind. Perhaps enough to recover one's writing. No guarantees however as the ink isn't rated as water resistant. Sorry that the bottle image pic was so big, I thought I'd made it smaller than that.