Pilot Iroshizuku "fuyu-Gaki"

[takkun]

Now that I'm back in school and writing/drawing more than I ever was in the corporate world, I've rediscovered FPs, and have amassed enough pens to really make an ink collection worthwhile.

 

A little background: I've always been a fan of black, blue-black, and blue inks. I've got too many. Particularly the most saturated examples of which: I have tiny handwriting and write with XF nibs, so I like things like Baystate Blue and Heart of Darkness that pop off the page at those sizes.

At my university, our bookstore has a pretty spectacular fine writing selection, where I bought my first Lamy Safari almost 10 years ago (and before I was a student!). We just had a huge student discount sale, so I took the opportunity to throw in a bottle of expensive ink I wouldn't otherwise buy. So I present to you Fuyu-Gaki.

 

http://i.imgur.com/gxOyTDhl.jpg

(click through for larger on all photos)

 

Not long ago, I bought a bottle of J. Herbin Rouge de Caroubier, primarily to expand beyond blues and blacks, but partly to have an ink for taking notes on documents printed in black. Unfortunately, it seems that intense-fire-engine-red isn't too useful for much besides annotations and grading. Something I could write, particularly letters, with, was in order.

 

This ink caught my eye based on an illustration done by the staff (see my next thread!) in the case with the ink--it looked like a deep reddish-orange shading to a lighter yellowish hue, much like the Elegant Lady peaches I savor every summer. The images I've seen online, my own included, don't do it justice. It's a very rich color, on the darker side, but not completely monochromatic.

 

The packaging doesn't disappoint--A simple silver box, with a minimalist label and simple typography, underlined with a single strip of sample color. The bottle is a squat elliptical cylinder with the same label and a polished plastic cap. As many have pointed out, there's a conical depression in the bottom to help get every last bit out. I love Noodler's bottles for their simplicity, economy and amusing labels, but the architect side of me wants to put this bottle on my bookshelf.

 

The ink itself is a deep red, and the clear glass showcases the color.

 

http://i.imgur.com/iisf6dZl.jpg

 

I loaded this up in a medium-nibbed Lamy 2000, a pen I reserve for letter-writing, to leverage shading and tone. (I actually wrote a letter to my parents, all of 40 miles away, to put it through the wringer) On Rhodia paper, the ink behaves almost like wet-on-dry watercolor--dark reddish around the edges, with lighter shading in the middle of strokes. More pronounced with faster writing. Has a very 'liquid' look to it. I like shading in inks, provided there's a dark tone to ground it, so to speak.

 

This ink is very smooth and lubricating, like writing on butter. The Lamy is already a very smooth writer, but wetter inks in this pen can sometimes saturate the page and make it feel mucky at times. This ink doesn't, despite it's saturation.

 

Best of all, as a lefty, it dries fast. About 5 seconds, according to the smear test.

 

On less-than-ideal papers, it handles well. On copy paper, it feathers very slightly, as to be expected; the shading isn't the most attractive, but it's usable, like a fine-line marker. On Canson drawing/illustration paper, you can feel the tooth of the paper pretty well, but the ink itself looks the same as good writing paper--and dries instantaneously.

 

http://i.imgur.com/UK4Zgdil.jpg

 

(ignore my rusty kanji and lack of closing quotation marks--I might scan this when I have access to a scanner and not a very old digital camera)

 

That's really what I have to say. The Iroshizuku series (translates to 'drops of color'--very apt!) seems to get universal acclaim for how it handles as an ink, and in my experience doesn't disappoint. Beyond that benchmark, I'm very picky about color. None of that sky-blue or light-charcoal stuff for me. The color of this ink, like BSB, is rich and exciting, and far off enough from pure red to be useful for general writing. To me, most non-blue/black inks are aesthetically interesting, but of limited practical use. This will probably be a staple for correspondence, but considering it's behavior on drawing paper, I could see it having some use in that venue.

Edited October 17, 2014 by takkun

[visvamitra]

Good review.

 

Thank you.

[Uncial]

I have this and I quite like it. Maybe I am loosing my mind, but every time I use it I want to eat it. It might be that it is so close to persimmon that I keep wanting to munch on one.

[siopaopei]

that is a pretty shade. thanks for the review.

[gwyneddd]

Nice review--I am a fan of Iroshizuku ink for every reason you pointed out from flow to color to the artistic flacon. I think I'd have preferred Fuyu-gaki to Momiji, which h is too pink for doing much writing. And I love those winter persimmon for lunch.

[DaveBj]

Nice review, especially the back-lit picture of the ink bottle.

 

For the record, "fuyu-gaki" translates to "winter persimmon."

[tinysnail]

Nice review! I've been using a sample of this in my Edison Nouveau Premiere and haven't been particularly inspired by its preformance with the M or F nibs. Maybe I'll get a little more excited if I try it in a pen with a flex or italic nib.

[Febeleh]

Beautiful and certainly aptly named.

[sarahfar]

I am a huge fan of Iroshizuku ink. Fuyu Gaki is really one of the quiet spectacular. I would call it a very spectacular intense orangish color that has a shine. it has kind of a fall vibe but is very alive. I really like the Iro pink too, more so than the momiji....

 

Great review....

[HalloweenHJB]

Great ink, with a lot of subtlety and complexity. Akkerman's Oranje Boven is brighter, but fugu-gaki has more depth --at least, to me!

Thanks for the nice review and photos!

[jmccarty3]

I love this ink! It is much more to my taste than Momiji. I use it for marking up daily production reports.

[takkun]

Autumnal is the best way to put it--of course, on my ride home I started looking at their lineup and thought maybe Yu-yake might have been more up my alley, but on second look, it was too yellow-brown for me. This one has a nice deep redness to it, and really shines with my bigger pen.

[Green Ink]

I have this ink. I chose if from many orange samples because it just delights me. Makes me happy. Your back lit photo is really nice. I enjoyed your review!

[amberleadavis]

Thank you for the review. In prior fade tests, it has been a fader, which is so disapointing, because I really love this ink.

[rebcabin]

My initial impressions with Fuyu-Gaki are massive feathering on Maruman Mnemosyne A4 paper, just insane, out of a Namiki Emperor #50 broad-point. Yama-Budo and Momiji through similar #50 broad-points on the same paper don't feather nearly so much. I'm amazed and I have some interesting detective work to do! Is it that particular nib? Is it that particular paper? Is it broad versus medium (I don't do "anything finer in North Carolina" tyvm? Some combination of all those effects? I absolutely love the color; gotta figure out the feathering issue, what fun!

[rebcabin]

Here is Fuyu-Gaki with a couple of other reds. On the paper, the Fuyu-Gaki is *MUCH* more orange than the others. I will experiment with correcting the colors in Gimp, but I want to focus attention on the feathering. The other two inks don't show any feathering at all on this paper. There is no bleedthrough from any of them (I could post the scan of the back of the page, but it would be blank I've included some purples as a bonus. There is maybe a tiny bit of feathering from Murasaki-Shikibu, but none from the others. The scanning color accuracy is better for the purples. I will get some other kinds of paper for a follow-up experiment.

 

 

[rebcabin]

Here this is on Clairefontaine paper. All colors are feathering madly, but the Fuyu-Gaki most! It's interesting because Clairefontaine resists both Herbin Rouge Grenat and de Atramentis Purple-Violet very well. But the alternate Universe of Emperors is a one-way door and I am determined to make it all just work There is probably an effect due to the glacial speed of my writing. I "draw" rather than "write," but I can't help it.

 

There are two images: first, one from iPhone photography, which shows a little better how orange the Fuyu-Gaki actually is compared to the Momiji and the Bishamonten (yes, I misspelled Momiji on the paper). The second one is from my Brother scanner, and it makes the Fuyu-Gaki look much too much too much too red. It's really orange, really really orange!

 

CORRECTION: the Yama-Budo is a Broad. The sequence of nib sizes from top to bottom is Broad Medium Broad Medium Broad Medium

Brain said "Broad," hand wrote "Medium," can you figure that? Yes, it's because I "draw" rather than "write."

 

First, the iPhone photo

 

 

Now the scan:

 

Edited October 20, 2019 by rebcabin

[rebcabin]

Here I exaggerated the colors a little in Gimp ... totally by eye, no science, no skill, no nothing, just to try to stretch the photo a little to give something closer to the subjective experience of these inks. The Fuyu-Gaki is really really orange. This doctored photo makes Murasaki-Shikibu look too purple, it's more to the blue. But, because this is a review of Fuyu-Gaki, I wanted to show it against Momiji and Bishamonten. This exaggerated picture does show some difference between Momiji and Bishamonten, and they do look different in real life. I'm not sure they look like this: I think Momiji is "duskier" and Bishamonten is "purpler," but they are very very close, and it's difficult to say which is which when you don't have them right next to each other.

 

Edited October 20, 2019 by rebcabin

[chromantic]

While I don't use oranges a lot, I finally bought a sample of this and I've gone through the whole thing. Great color, great sheen, pretty well-behaved. Probably won't buy a full bottle but might buy another sample or two.

[MHBru]

I usually dont use reds but wanted an interesting one and fuyu gaki really fit the bill. Its my 5th irishizuku ink and i love them all.