Terra Di Siena (Brown) - Stipula

[visvamitra]

Stipula Pen Company originates from Florentine, Italy and was established in 1973. Stipula is a historic term used by the ancient Romans to indicate faithfulness to an obligation. Stipula’s has accepted the obligation to its customers to produce quality pens utilizing ancient themes, designs, techniques and traditions. It sounds nice but from my limited experience with their pens it seems they doesn't really deliver what they promise.

Happily Stipula pens come with a limited lifetime warranty so the buyers are covered in case the pen fails.

Additionally there are rumors that Stipula has some problems and may cease operations. I'm not sure if it's the case but it seems their products availablility on the market (especially european) is limited and only few retailers carry their pens and inks. If anyone has some news / insights about Stipula situation I would appreciate the insights so that this review provides sound informations.

Stipula offers a line of eight inks sold in nice glass 2.4 oz bottles. Interesting feature of the bottles is the fact they have light polyethylene seal pushed in the neck of the bottle, visible when you unscrew the cap. The seal (is it correcy english term?) is rather hard to remove without splashing some of ink onto desk, wall, closest entourage.

The colors are:

1. Blu della Robbia (Blue)
   
2. Borgogna (Red)
   
3. Nero (Black)
   
4. Rosso Fiorentino (Florentine Red)
   
5. Terra di Siena (Brown)
   
6. Verde Muschiato (Musk Green)
   
7. Violet (Violet)
   
8. Zafferano (Saffron)
   

Terra di Siena is rather pleasant ink. On the other hand it's surprisingly light. I've bought a bottle and comparted to the ink I tired three years ago it's much lighter. I believe guys from Stipula buy some base ink and then mix it so the result is not always consistent. Here however the difference is quite striking. ANyway the ink flows nicely and doens't cause any feathering or bleedthrough.

The color is ok but it's niot the kind of brown I'm crazy about.

Drops of ink on kitchen towel

Software ID

Color range

Tomoe River, Kaweco Classic Sport, broad nib

Leuchtturm 1917, Kaweco Classic Sport, broad nib

Clairefontaine Triomphe, Kawecop Skylibe Sport, double broad

Rhodia DotPad, TWSBI 580, stub 1.1

Water resistance

[Tas]

[Gazcom]

Nice brown, but I agree on it's lightness. Absolute Brown is more on my taste.

On Anderson Pens I discovered that Stipula has released some new colours and renamed the whole lineup (making quite a mess, some of them has three names!).

Don't grab my words as pure truth, but the current situation should be the following:


Nero - black - ebony black
Zafferano - Saffron
Verde muschiato - musk green
Terra di siena - sepia
Rosso fiorentino - florentine red
Borgogna - burgundy - dark red
Blu della robbia - deep blue
Viola giaggiolo fiorentino - viola - purple
Notturno Giannutri - dark blue
Ferro dell'elba - grigio fumo - fading gray

*NEW*

Verde risorgimento - bright green
Grigio lava - dark grey
Azzurro - light blue
Rose - sweet pink

Plus the 4 IG inks recently released

[visvamitra]

That's fun

[kronos77]

How do you rate the flow compared to other inks? I am looking for something that flows well, maybe average, but not really heavy like Aurora Black does.

[visvamitra]

The flow is nice. It;s not crazy wet ink as Auroras or J. Herbin Eclat de Saphire / Perle Noire but still quite wet. I would say if we take Aurora Black and J. Herbin Eclat de Saphire as 5 (on 1-5 scale), Terra di Siena's flow is something like 3,75.

[senzen]

Great review. Writes like a chocolate milk drink, and not the nicest one...

[tinta]

This is a really nice sepia toned ink, with good potential for shading. Thank you Visvamitra for reviewing it.

[Jim7310]

Thanks much for the review. How quickly did it dry?

[kronos77]

I am color blind but I am deciding between this and Diamine Terracotta. The Stipula seems more of a straight brown while the Terra is said to be an orange brown. Yet there seems to be some similarities. Does the Stipula have some orange notes to it or am I not seeing right. Are those reddish undertones I see or something else?

Edited January 8, 2017 by kronos77

[visvamitra]

Stipula is more subdued than Terracota. It does have some reddish-orange accenrts. Personally - between these two colors - I prefer STipula to Diamine.

[rudyhou]

this is less saturated than i expected. reddish sepia-like.

[mehandiratta]

thank you for the review...

[PenPaper52]

 

This is my kind of brown. Like green inks the colour brown is growing on me.

Thank you.