Birmingham – Frank Gorshin Riddle Green

[crahptacular]

Birmingham – Frank Gorshin Riddle Green

 

The Birmingham Pen Co.’s line of inks (30 colors at the time of writing) feature various colors based on or inspired by notable locations or people associated with its home city of Pittsburgh, PA. I bought their sampler pack, and plan on slowly going through the whole line of inks, though I expect it will take me quite a while. For those interested, I posted some color swatches in a different topic (https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/328952-birmingham-pen-co-ink-swatches/) where you can get a quick idea of what the whole line looks like together.

 

Frank Gorshin Riddle Green is an interesting shade of grey that for some reason is labeled as a green. It’s not a green. If you stare at it really closely while meditating on the word “green," you can see some green undertones (you might also see some blue and some brown), but for me, I would never have expected this to be called “green”. Perhaps that's the "riddle" aspect! That being said, I did like the ink for sketching. It has some complexity to it, where the red-brown component could be teased apart from the green-blue component depending on how you tackled the ink. The doodle does a decent job demonstrating how the ink has more than one look—the paler areas have a cooler tone, the medium areas are warmer and browner, and at full saturation, it’s close to a neutral dark grey/light black. In writing, the ink is more monotonous—I liked the way it shaded on Mnemosyne, but it was closer to a flat dark grey on FC. For me, as a writing ink, it hits that middle spot between grey and black that is vaguely dissatisfying however you look at it. I’ll be using the rest of my sample for sketching, not writing, because I find it much more interesting that way.

 

Flow/Lubrication: Moderate

Shading: Low

Sheen: None

Water Resistance: Moderate-low

Other Notes: The ink pretty much dripped off the dip nib (runny/watery consistency), so the flex writing is mostly just blobs of ink that were blotted afterwards. It didn’t write particularly wet out of pens, though, and I had no issues with feathering or bleeding.

 

The following sample was done with a Pilot Elite (Extra Fine) and a Nemosine Singularity (Broad) on Tomoe River (68gsm, white, loose-leaf). Doodle was done with a Kuretake Menso brush (Small). Flex writing was done with a Leonardt 30 dip nib.

 

Inaccurate Image(s) Disclaimer: I’m pretty satisfied with the scan for the bottom half of the review (writing, smear, and comparisons are all good). The doodle is too cool/blue overall, but you can see how the lightest areas are bluer than the medium areas, which are browner—the contrast is accurate to what I see on paper, just the actual hue is a bit off.

 

Scan:

 

Photo: No photo this time. My phone isn’t cooperating with my computer and I’m having trouble transferring files.

 

 

Comparison inks from left to right (big smear is the featured ink):

KWZ Foggy Green, Birmingham Southside Park Fern Moss, Franklin Christoph Loden, Noodler’s Black, Sailor Kiwa-Guro

 

Writing Samples (scans; some color correction; papers of increasing absorbency), from Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day

 

Maruman Mnemosyne:

 

Tsubame Fool’s University:

 

Franklin-Christoph:

[crahptacular]

Wrong forum! Can I get this moved, or should I re-make the topic?

[Pensei]

Thanks again for the cool drawing. That ink is green only by the most loose definition.

[ParkerDuofold]

Hi C,

 

Thanks for the warning... this one was on my "I'm kicking it around" list,... now it's on my "forget about it" list.

 

 

- Anthony

[ParkerDuofold]

Just to follow-up...

 

I, too, love your artwork.

 

 

- Anthony

Edited December 21, 2017 by ParkerDuofold

[displacermoose]

I don't care for green inks but was prepared to drop everything buy it just for the association. That version of Batman was my absolute most favorite show in the universe when I was a kid, and I still love it dearly. But it isn't green. That makes me sad. I probably won't get it.

[Intensity]

Wrong forum! Can I get this moved, or should I re-make the topic?

Hopefully a mod will move it to Reviews soon. Beautiful review as always. Thank you! Now that I have a bunch of Birmingham Pen Co. inks, I appreciate them even more (they looked intriguing in your reviews before I had them). Moss Green is still my favorite, but I've yet to try more of them.

Edited December 23, 2017 by Intensity

[crahptacular]

Thank you to the mod who corrected my mistake and moved this to the review forum Sorry about the mix-up!

[rudyhou]

wouldn't call this a green ink at all. BUT i do like that shade of grey.

[pgcauk]

My, that Loden is a lovely thing! What a shame it's no longer.

I have become a real Fern Moss fan (just ordered my 2nd bottle) and that can easily pass for grey, but Riddle Green alongside makes it positively verdant!

I found my sample intriguing enough to give it a spin at least. I did notice that the rinse water (from my Ink Miser) was quite green indeed (the opposite of Fern Moss!), but no real trace of that on the page as yet.

Great review (and choice in literature) as always!

Edited December 8, 2018 by pgcauk