Having So Many Inks

[Charles Skinner]

This is certainly not intended to be ANY kind of criticism of any of you ---- or me ---- After all ---- I am you, and you are me, -----so to speak, when it comes to buying more ink that we will ever use. With some collectible items, just "having" them is enough, like a great painting. People do not USE these paintings, other than to hang them on the wall and look at them.

 

So, why do we ---- and I include myself ---- do we buy so many different inks ----- "just to have them?" --- And at other times, me MIGHT fill five or six pens with a certain ink, and never actually use that ink again. Are we just happy to "have it" and happy just to look at the bottle?

 

At the present time I have four almost full Noodler's bottles. And I have other bottles in various stages of being "used up." Will I ever actually use every drop of ink in any of those bottles? Not likely!!!! Before I became addicted to colors of ink, I only used black ink ----- for many years. Then, --- a bottle of ink was like a bottle of milk. ---- "Use it up, throw it away and buy another one." ---- But, somehow, later I caught the "color bug." And I will never, never be able to use up all of the ink I already have, and I surely will buy more in the future. Should I find a way to display my inks, the way some folks display their fine paintings? I likely will not do that! I think some of my friends already have thought about me being a strange for using those old 1940's fountain pens! What would they think if they saw all of bottles of ink ----and most of which will never be actually put into a fountain pen to actually write a word or two?

 

But, we "collect" because we want to, and because we can, and unless we are spending "the baby's milk money," so be it. To each his own.

 

Your thoughts?

 

C. S.

[akustyk]

You're right, ink is a consumable with a shelf life, so it cannot be collected. People who are heavily into hobbies are driven by factors that are too many to name, especially if one doesn't want to offend their sensibilities.

[Sasha Royale]

You people are sick ! I have only seven inks.

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

(and 150 fp's)

[torstar]

I do wonder about 20 bottles in my collection as to what could I possibly have been thinking.

 

Part of the fun and phases of finding out things and it's great to stumble upon a forgotten colour and spark it up.

[Davros]

I use pretty much all of my hundreds of inks, and each has earned its place in my affections. (The exceptions to this rule get booted.) Yeah, I don't finish bottles much by myself, but there are exceptions.

 

I think it's fine to have limited palettes, but there's nothing wrong with options, either.

[Aetheric Continua]

I've been wondering the same things lately, actually.

 

I think of myself as on a kind of "quest" to find ideal inks for certain pens and situations. Currently I'm looking for ideal blues, blacks, and blue blacks. In the past I've looked for reds, browns, and greens. I also have inks that I know I will probably never use again (essentially all of my Noodlers inks because they're way more saturated/thick than I care for and usually take a very long time to dry) but I tell myself that if I ever get back into calligraphy then I'll use them for that. I probably have close to twenty bottles of ink with another on its way.

 

I think many people rotate inks, using some for a while, switching to another, then possibly coming back to previous ones when the mood strikes or they read a review and want to give them another shot.

 

What people use inks for could also help with actually using their wide selection of inks. For example, when pen pals and I write to each other, we tend to use a variety of inks for each letter/page/paragraph/sentence. Or for journaling, different inks for different moods or topics. I recall reading that Neil Gaiman (who wrote/writes with fountain pens ) alternates inks each day to see at a glance how much he's gotten for a given day.

I don't think I'll use every drop of most of my inks, but I like having the option. Worst case, I may have to dump a bottle, but I haven't yet and would likely only if it either gets contaminated or I need the space.

 

My contribution.

[Aetheric Continua]

I use pretty much all of my hundreds of inks, and each has earned its place in my affections. (The exceptions to this rule get booted.) Yeah, I don't finish bottles much by myself, but there are exceptions.

 

I think it's fine to have limited palettes, but there's nothing wrong with options, either.

What do you do when you "boot" an ink? Pour it down the drain? Sell/gift it away? Something else entirely?

[Charles Rice]

 

At the present time I have four almost full Noodler's bottles.

 

What, just four?

 

But seriously, sure, all the inks we buy borders of nuts, but otherwise the ink manufacturers could not stay in business. If all we every bought were the standard colors in the volumes that we need and nothing in excess, companies like Kanoodler's would go south really fast. They depend on our insanity and so do we.

 

Back in the days when fountain pens were the standard, nobody worried that they didn't have 87 shades of blue. They just bough plain old blue, but there millions of others buying the same ink, too.

 

Again, the only way the ink boys survive is to get us to buy as many of their supposedly different colors as we can.

Edited August 25, 2015 by Charles Rice

[Barkingpig]

I buy "additional" ink because it costs much less than pens! I see it as an "addition" to the pens I use & enjoy seeing the properties of the different inks in the pens.

It is how I enjoy spending my money @ this stage of my life. Other times I enjoyed other things but now it the "time of pen & ink." (Between the other things I have accumulated I don't worry what anyone will say about some pens & bottles of ink when "I am gone!")

[FinalEleven]

Even with 28 ink bottles, I feel like I don't have enough ink. There's always a color or a shade that appears in my mind that I want to use but I don't have that particular ink on hand. Out of the inks I have in my collection, I'm only looking to get rid of one of them. Everything else gets inked up and put in rotation.

And I am completely okay with this.

[amberleadavis]

I have mine displayed in my office like little works of liquid art. Clients come in, look at them, ask questions and once they know that I'm crazy, they feel free to tell me how they are "not" crazy.

 

http://sheismylawyer.com/She_Thinks_In_Ink/Potions_Cabinet/slides/IMG004.jpg

[migo984]

It depends on whether you think of using a fountain pen as just a mere tool to write with, or think there is an additional aesthetic benefit from having lots of ink colours to choose from, or indeed, nib widths. To me, there definitively is. Using a fountain pen is more than the mere prosaic articulation of letters. Ink is more than a utilitarian item. It enhances the experience and becomes artistic in its ability to express the character of the writer.

 

I don't consider my selection (not 'collection', as I use them all) of >320 inks as being any different from my selection of coloured pencils (>400), or my drawing pens (>100), or my water colour paints (>100). I consider them all essential to enhancing my enjoyment of my writing, drawing and painting.

[clazbill]

I'm not building my collection very quickly at the moment - the budget demands it.

 

However, I do have a dream of building a personal collection of inks. One, I like ink. Variety is awesome. and Two, I enjoy the bottles and the artwork, so it's my own art collection.

 

I look forward to taking my collection of a dozen inks and expanding it to beyond ten times that.

[Davros]

What do you do when you "boot" an ink? Pour it down the drain? Sell/gift it away? Something else entirely?

Depends on the ink and why I'm not liking it. I'm pretty consistent about the qualities I like (wet and not black). If it's just a matter of flow, I will add surfactant to make it wetter. If I don't like the color, I usually give it 6-12 months, because I go through color preference cycles. If I still hate it, I gift the bottle. If it is something more serious (flow issues that aren't easily resolved, or smell), it might go to the art drawer to be used in washes or brushwork. Only very rarely does an ink go down the drain - I'm pretty open to a wide variety of qualities. I do give/sell samples of most of my inks most of the time, and that helps clarify. (I may make one exception and carry Scabiosa, because I am the only person in the world who hates that ink, but otherwise I couldn't in good conscience sell an ink I didn't like in one way or another.

[Tas]

and becomes artistic in its ability to express the character of the writer.

 

 

Beautifully, beautifully put . . .

[visvamitra]

Well - I used to have around 150, maybe 200 inks. And I tended to use most of them from time to time. At the moment I have around 40 bottles. I plan to cut the number to 20-30 but just for a moment. Once I sell some of my inks they'll be replaced by other inks worth trying and maybe, just maybe, worth keeping. If I would have to keep only inks I use systematically, it would be hard buty possible and I would finish with 10-12 bottles. But what's the fun of it?

 

PS: 200 hundres inks isn't a lot. I know of at least few people who have more than 1 000 bottles. How crazy is that ?

 

[inkstainedruth]

I actually try to get samples of ink first, so I have an idea of how well the ink performs and if I like the color. In some cases I haven't gone beyond the sample. It's more cost effective, in the long run (and I don't end up with stuff like Platinum Mix-Free Flame Red, which I thought was just hideous and and ended up giving away). OTOH, if I DO like the ink enough for a full bottle, I've got a ready-made "inkwell" for travel purposes, so it's a win-win.

I do have some inks that were only available as full bottles, for one reason or another. And, in the case of the Herbin Stormy Grey, I had a written exemplar (not just a review scan) and knew that it was just dumb to buy a sample when I already had seen what it looked like -- and knew I wanted it.

Why do I have so many colors (and in some instances two different inks that looks somewhat similar)? Because the color might be just enough different from something I already have. Or because I'm searching for something really specific (ended up with a bunch of samples or burgundies and red-violets because I was trying to match the color and sheen of something that had come out of a gel pen; found several inks I liked in the process, a few -- Herbin Poussiere de Lune and PR Burgundy Mist come to immediate mind -- that I could n't stand, and one that was just annoying (D'A Patchouli -- loved the color but absolutely hated the stinky scent). Or, because some inks just do better in some pens but not in others: Noodler's Walnut is fairly dry, and it made a dry pen kinda scratchy; but when I put it in a wet-writing Pelikan it was a completely different experience and made me want a full bottle of it....

And some inks I'll sample just to see what the fuss is about (Rouge Hematite, BSB) and end up liking them: me + Rouge Hematite (which is basically a brick red/orange, and I HATE orange) = .... Who knew?

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[saskia_madding]

I write a lot, and I go trough ink at a reasonable but not quick pace. I like having a lot of different shades of ink, for variety's sake. It's the same reason people buy a lot of different pens - to have variety in the choice of what to use. Ink does have a shelf life, but it's long. I'm still using PPS ink from a long time ago, after all!

 

Selling or giving away the ones i don't love used to be hard. Over time, with more and more inks coming in, it gets MUCH easier.

[haruka337]

At 65 inks, it's still not enough and I want more!

Will I ever use the bottles all the way through? Maybe, maybe not, but I'm big on sharing my inks with FPN members, I use bottles to trade for other inks or fountain pens, and I do use up ink (surprisingly fast) at work. And now, my two teen potatoes are beginning to give fountain pens a go.

65 inks sounds like much, but it would come no where close to filling a growler--it's more glass than ink. Even displayed, my bottles don't (visually) amount to much, but it makes me happy and I intend to double this happiness by January of 2016.

 

[Barkingpig]

I salute your "quest" & wish you joy in acquiring MORE ink! I have always pitied those persons who espouse "LESS is MORE!" FOR ME......."MORE IS MORE!" & pens & ink consume less of space than anything that has "caught my interest." I have only 2 cars instead of the six I had before purchasing the last one ten years ago. I have owned two houses @ the same time & now only have one.......so I think a "few bottles ink/pens is not really such a big deal.

 

My Mother liked quilts & always praised their virtues of not requiring a daily feeding, brushing or exercise as her other "pets" did. She said they seemed perfectly content to sit quietly "rolled up" inside a wardrobe until their turn came for a bed. Another friend, a Veterinarian praises her rescued cats which she claims her husband can never keep track of once she releases them to her barns. "Honestly he can never count them to know how many I have brought home! Can you imagine trying that with DOGS? Why they would be lining up to get his attention & my number would be UP!"

 

Ink takes up less space (& care) than cars, houses, quilts or cats! More ink...please.